INFLA TION AND DEFLATION 933
fiscal crisis after the invasion, did not have the funds to pay the licensed capi-
tal shopkeepers for the goods they had presented, and had to rely on them to
obtain their own supplies and goods for entertaining Chinese envoys and hold-
ing state funerals. Government grants of monopoly privi leges to licensed capi-
tal merchants marked the beginning of the so-called yug '~Iijiin, or six categories
of shops, each dealing in a different category of goods, which were authorized
to establish warehouses (toga) for storing their category of goods, and to col-
lect taxes from other, nonlicensed merchants.
The unlicensed operators consisted not only of professional merchants, but
of guard soldiers seeking to supplement their limited salaries, slaves ofthe pow-
erful yangban families, and artisans in handicraft manufacture who sold their
products directly to the pUblic. A more serious challenge to the licensed monop-
olies was posed by the development of large-scale commercial ventures not only
by wealthy merchants. but also by yangban and clerk-representatives of local
districts in capital agencies (chari). They also established warehouses to engage
in wholesaling, and contracted with producers to buy products in large quanti-
ties and to sell at prices cheaper than the licensed merchants. IS Kang Man'gil
traced the origin of wholesaling to the government's decision in I 6R I to build
warehouses to provide paper and cushions to the government and to store goods
for subsequent use. This measure was taken because the kong'in tribute agents
were unable to meet government demands for goods on time. Later on, private
merchants began to construct their own warehouses (toga) to buy products in
quantity or comer the market in a given commodity to restrain supply and drive
prices Up.16
The 1716 Famine and Demandfor More Cash. The commercial activities of
the unlicensed merchants and private wholesalers contributed to the demand for
cash and exacerbated the cash shortage during the moratorium on official mint-
ing in the early eighteenth century, but the hardships of deflation were not suf-
ficient to stimulate government interest until another famine in 17 I 6 created crisis
conditions. At that time Second State Councilor Yi Hi1imytmg declared that the
time had arrived for the government to purchase copper and mint more cash to
provide relieffunds for the starving. 17 Yi's request for humanitarian relieffailed
to generate much support because general attitudes toward cash had become
extremely negative. Min Chinwon, in particular, complained about the usurious
loans associated with cash and the insufficiency of copper. Two other similar
proposals in I7I7 and 1719 for reliefforfamine in P'yong'an Province and Cheju
Island were initially approved by King Sukchong but later rescinded because
of opposition to the perceived evils of cash. In 1724, the next king, Kyongjong,
also agreed to mint cash to meet a fiscal crisis, but Second State Councilor Yi
Kwangjwa opposed it from the outset and then, with the support of the Minis-
ter of Taxation, persuaded the king to cease further minting because copper was
too expensive, the cost of relief would break the goverment's hudget, and the
use of cash would itself only stimulate corruption and deceit. IS
A Nell' Basisfor Anti-Cash Prejudice. By the second decade of the eighteenth