926 FINANe] AL REFORM AND THE ECONOMY
King Injo had prohibited this kind of illegal manipulation of the standards of
quality for rice and cloth tax payments and defined the bolt of cloth at 35 "feet"
of length and 5 sae (400 threads) in width, but by 168 I the peasants were asked
to pay finer cloth of 6 sae (480 threads). This phenomenon was part of a gen-
eral trend toward demands by tax collectors for better quality cloth than the rough
cloth (ch 'up '0) that had been used primarily as the main medium of exchange
in the market. I Min claimed that tax collectors were not only demanding 6 sae
cloth from the taxpayers, they were also cheating the central government as well
by remitting only 5 sae cloth to the capital (a practice dubbed hwanmok or
"switching the cotton"), or collecting whiter or more polished rice from the tax-
payers and remitting an inferior grade to the capital. He suggested that district
magistrates supervise tax collections and ban illegal switching of tax payments.
Once Sukchong agreed, Min pressed for even greater reform. Even though
the government tightened procedures for collecting taxes in cloth, the Ministry
of War alone would still be entitled to collect 7 sae (560 thread) cloth under the
present rules. The only way to eliminate all corruption in cloth taxes would be
to accept Minister of Taxation Cho Sasok's advice to convert cloth taxes to cash
at commutation rates established in exact tables. He also warned that this pol-
icy could only succeed if the government resumed the minting of more cash to
ensure the circulation of cash throughout the country, and King Sukchong granted
his approval. Even though Won Yuhan has observed that the primary factor in
the decision was a desire to eliminate the cost of transporting cash minted in
the capital to the provinces, Min's main motive was to eliminate corruption in
the collection of taxes paid in cloth or rice.^2
Flaws developed in the new program almost immediately. Provincial gover-
nors could not bc trusted to restrict the minting of cash in the provinces to a
proper level because in ] 682 Yi Samyong, the governor of Cholla Province, was
charged with blatant profiteering and excessive minting.l Furthermore, early in
1683 the Ministry of Taxation reported it had run out of rice and cloth funds
and had no cash at all because tax receipts were so low, and Minister of Taxa-
tion Yun Kye complained that the coins minted by other capital agencies and
the provincial governors were so bad that the public lost confidence in them and
the value of cash had plummeted. He then obtained Sukchong's approval to make
the Ministry of Taxation the only agency with authority to mint cash, eliminate
cOlTuption, and convince the public that the officials were not simply trying to
profit by minting coins.
The chief of the Office of Royal Relatives, Min Yujung, also complained to
Sukchong about difficulties in the distribution of eash minted in the capital to
the provinces. When the Ever-Normal Bureau and the Office of Benefiting the
People previously sent cash to south Cholla and Kyongsang provinces, the com-
missioners (ch 'ain) entrusted with distributing cash throughout the villages were
ordered to make purchases of goods in the provincial markets for cash. Unfor-
tunately, these commissioners made personal profits by paying prices much lower
than those in the capital market. Peasant taxpayers who had to sell their bolts