974 FINANCIAL REFORM AND THE ECONOMY
the cash shortage. If these agencies were to store silver instead and spend their
cash savings, it would dtive down the value of cash. They also thought that the
copper cash reserve could be expanded still further and the value of copper cash
reduced from its high value if the government either melted silver into smaller
pieces, minted more small cash of the value of one or two single coins, or cir-
culated silver coins instead of using cash. IO But Cho himself was not sure which
of the two views was correct.
Min Ongsu: Silver Coins or More Copper Cash
As commissioner (Tangsang) of the Office for Dispensing Benevolence, Min
Ungsu supported the idea of allowing the government to mint silver coins and
use them to pay its bills while granting the common people full freedom to use
copper cash in their market transactions because it would free more copper cash
for the market and reduce the high value of cash. There was enough silver in
Korea to make the plan feasible, but he predicted the tribute middlemen
(kong'in) would dislike it, and tax payments made by distant villages in cash
would have to be sent back (and replaced with silver currency payments).
Kim Chaero, however, was more afraid of the profits counterfeiters might make
from silver coins than of the problems of the cash sh0l1age. He predicted that
the government would have as much trouble in stamping out counterfeiters as
it had had in prohibiting the smuggling of ginseng by merchants, and he
asserted that most people simply preferred to retain only the old coins without
experimenting either with multiple-denomination coins or silver cash. Yongjo
agreed that the inability to enforce prohibitions was the reason why the people
had no respect for the law and the country lacked a spirit of law and order.
Min Ungsu also raised serious questions about the efficacy of Song Inmyong's
plan to force rich hoarders of cash to spend their savings within the next three
years before the old cash was declared illegal, because the people would doubt
whether any law could be maintained consistently for any length of time in the
future. Instead of forcing them to spend their cash, they would on the contrary
hold onto it even more tightly. He preferred forcing government agencies to
release their stagnating cash reserves on the market by ordering them to use their
cash to buy rice or silver for their reserve fund - a device similar to the usual
ever-normal commodity price stabilization system used for grain. YOngjo took
seriously Min Ungsu's warning that a total conversion of the currency in three
years might shatter public confidence in the validity and longevity of all gov-
ernment laws. He agreed that the only way the laws could be made to work was
first by establishing respect for law itself (ipkang), and that the only way to solve
the currency problem was by minting more cash. II
Pak Munsu: Silver CashPak Munsu also proposed minting of silver coin of (a weight of?) I -yang (8-9