COPPER CASH AND THE MONETARY SYSTEM 861When Kim Yuk was magistrate of Kaesong in r 648 he expressed chagrin in
a memorial to the king that his past petitions requesting the use of cash had not
been permitted. Now that he had been on duty for a year in Kaesong. he had
already noticed that cash had been used in Kaesong since 1643 and had spread
to neighboring districts like Kanghwa, Kyodong, P'ungdan. and yonbaek.
"Large items like land, houses, and slaves, and small items like firewood, brush,
vegetables, and fruit were all purchased for cash .... I am happy to say that I
know that cash can be adopted because even the young boys you meet in the
marketplace would never be deceived [by the use of cash]."
Even if the king were not willing to adopt cash for the whole country, he
could authorize it for P'yong'an and Hwanghae provinces. The people there
would at least benefit from not having to carry rice around with them when-
ever they traveled.
He proposed that the governors of these two provinces first establish mints in
provincial districts, and allow people to use cash to pay fines, redemption pay-
ments. or taxes, so that its circulation could take place without the need for any
coercive orders by the state. Kim urged the king not only to follow the successful
circulation of currency in Kaesong, but to copy precedents for metallic currency
established in ancient China:
In the past during the Sung dynasty, Chang Tsai wanted to buy a piece of land
in order to try to establish the well-field system. Even though the well fields had
been abolished since the age of antiquity. he still wanted to carry it out. How is
that the system of cash that has been in use from ancient times to the present [in
China] could be so difficult to carry out only in our country? The use of cash in
my district has in fact been [equivalent to Chang Tsai's] trial of the well field
system.^12In 1650, Kim Yuk returned from an official embassy to China with 150,000
mun (or 1.500 wmg) of cash that he purchased with funds saved from his travel
expenses, and with King Hyojong's approval he distributed the cash to tax col-
lection centers (tohoe) in Pyongyang and Anju to see whether it would stay in
circulation. Hyojong agreed that if it did, he would then order minting of cash
to take place in the upland regions to promote the circulation of more cash.
King Hyojong's Adoption of Cash, 1651Since King Hyojong resented his treatment by the Manchus while under deten-
tion in Manchuria and was determined to seek revenge against them for their
two invasions of Korea, he was only to happy to find some means of financing
the strengthening of Korean military power. The king was contemplating using
cash for this purpose, but in 165 I the Border Defense Command reported that
the supply of cash for P'yong'an and Hwanghae provinces was insufficient even
though the population was used to using it in the market. Hyojong was intrigued