CASH AND ECONOMIC CHANGE 983
Pak Chega's Advocacy of Greater Commerce
Pak Chega, a nothos of an official, was able to establish a reputation for schol-
arship and gain a post as librarian of the Kyujanggak archives in 1779. He returned
from four visits to China that began in 1776 as an exponent of the superiority
of late Ch'ing civilization and wrote essays on Chinese carts, boats, walls, tile,
roads, bridges, markets, medicines, and weapons. While also interested in the
technological aspects of farming and animal husbandry, he was also a strong
advocate of commerce and foreign trade, and like Yu Suwon forty years before,
he believed that the idle and parasitic yangban could be turned into productive
individuals by encouraging them to engage in commerce, an idea he proposed
to King Chongjo in 1786. His open praise for the accomplishments of the Manchu
Ch' ing dynasty, however, earned him criticism from those who continued to view
the Manchus as a barbarians who had destroyed the beloved Ming dynasty and
twice violated the peace and security of Korea. Forced out of his capital post to
a provincial position, Pak was able to survive until he was arrested, tortured,
and exiled during the anti-Christian persecution of 1801.^22
In his "Treatise on Learning from the North [i.e., Ch'ing China]" (Pukhag'ui),
Pak described the thriving markets he witnessed in Yenching and other towns in
China, but he rued the incapacity of fellow Koreans to appreciate the Chinese
love of commerce because they regarded it as an inferior pursuit of profit. Even
though over a century of experience with copper cash and commercial devel-
opment had taken place, Pak claimed that Koreans were still unable to perceive
that commerce was indispensable to society. When they visited China and wit-
nessed the magnificence and prosperity of Chinese palaces, vehicles, decora-
tion, and textiles, they condemned them all as examples of the wasteful and
ostentatious consumption that had been responsible for the fall of the Ming
dynasty.
Virtually echoing the sentiments ofYu Hyongwon, Pak insisted that while mer-
chants did not produce things of value, they were engaged in the useful occu-
pation of circulating goods. The ancient sages had perceived the essential utility
of the circulation of goods and had invented the use of precious stones and shells
as media of exchange, and carts and boats as means for transporting goods past
topographical barriers.
By contrast with Ch'ing China, Pak felt that Korea was in danger of declin-
ing not from conspicuous consumption, but from its love of frugality. Unfor-
tunately, Koreans interpreted frugality to mean that you never spent your
savings to buy anything, but the consequence of that proclivity resulted only in
reducing popular demand and eliminating the stimulus for the production of
goods otherwise available in China. Koreans had no concept of the utility of
those goods, and
If you don't know what the utility [of the goods are], you don't know any reason
to produce them. If you don't have any reason to produce them, then more and