874 FINANCIAL REFORM AND THE ECONOMY
quantity because it had to be done in nominal violation of Chinese law against
its export to foreign countries. Decentralizing authority over minting by per-
mitting local officials and private persons to mint cash was a policy error. The
central government should have retained control over minting as it had done in
the past, probably because debasement or counterfeiting would have destroyed
the attempt to build confidence in the cash. The ordinary people never conceived
of copper cash as having any value greater than its intrinsic metallic value, and
brass ware craftsmen melted cash down to get the raw material for making their
products because they would be more valuable.
Won also argued that the lack of development of the market and the lack of
demand for metallic currency was also produced by damage to the basic pro-
duction of agriculture and other commodities by the Japanese invasions of
1592-98 and the two Manchu invasions of 1627 and 1637. The government's
policy to adopt copper cash in 1625 and again in 1633 was brought to a halt by
the latter two of those invasions. The vacillation of the government in promot-
ing the use of cash. as well as in adopting the taedong reform or the hop ae house-
hold registration system, must have created doubts in the mind of the public
about its commitment to the use of cash as legal tender. Won also blamed the
high ministers of state for their contentious opposition to the government's cash
policy, but despite the failure of that policy by 1657, Won was willing to con-
cede that the experience gained in attempting to circulate cash into the econ-
omy brought Korea to a higher stage of economic development and laid the
foundation for a more successful effort after 1678.^36
Wan's interpretation that the efforts of Kim Yuk, Hyojong, and other officials
to introduce copper cash into the Korean economy failed because the king finally
decided to withdraw cash from circulation in 1657 was excessively negative. The
evidence that appeared after the reinstitution of cash in 1678 indicates that the
circulation of cash continued in the private economy even after the government
stopped accepting cash for tax payments and suspended minting by government
agencies. It is difficult to fault the advocates of copper cash and paper money in
the Chason period because they used the best methods they could devise in the
hope of introducing cash and other modes of currency into the economy. A num-
ber of kings and officials attempted repeatedly to introduce currency through-
out the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Kings Injo and Hyojong as well
as Kim Yuk and others were thoroughly convinced of the importance of bring-
ing the Choson economy at least to the level achieved in Ming China. While it
may be true that the policy proved extremely difficult because the level of com-
mercial activity had dropped below what had been achieved in the late Silla and
Koryo dynasties, it would be difficult to argue that there was a total lack of pro-
gressive leadership in the seventeenth century, let alone the fifteenth. It would
therefore be mistaken to believe that progressive support for the adoption of cash
could only have originated in the writings of a few nascent scholars of Practical
Learning in this period because, as we will see, inspiration for this policy came