CASH AND ECONOMIC CHANGE 985
their own living and had no choice but to wander the country penniless with
their ink and inkstones, sponging off the largess of others, making demands for
favors, or looking for some stroke of good fortune. It was obvious to him that
the merchants of China were far better than the scholars of Korea.
Pak also felt that an increase in foreign trade was essential to the well-being
of the Korean nation. He pointed out that Korea had been paying for its imports
of Chinese silks and medicines for years by the export of Korean silver because
it had no goods or products it could sell to them, and the depletion of silver had
caused its price to go Up.25
Pak gained a greater appreciation for commerce and cash from his travels in
China, and he became an advocate of greater consumption as the means of pro-
moting greater production of goods. It was not by chance, however, that it required
the stimulus of the more advanced Ch'ing economy to provide the inspiration
for these views, because no matter how much economic change had occurred
in Korea since the seventeenth century, not enough had occurred to produce
greater awareness of the advantages of commerce and production among gov-
ernment officials. Nonetheless, one might conclude that despite the conserva-
tive aspect ofYu Hyongwon's love for penny cash, his openness to the benefits
of commerce laid the groundwork for Pak's more advanced views.
Ch ae Chegong's Joint-Sales Decree of 1791The result of the conflict between private merchants (and private artisans
engaged in the selling of their own wares) with the licensed merchants in the
I 780s represented a significant advance for free market principles, but not a total
victory for unrestricted competition. King ChOngjo opted to institutionalize the
compromise solution of 1787 by promulgating the "1791 joint-sales" decree (sin-
haek t'onggong). The idea was fathered by Councilor of the Right Ch'ae
Chegong, an acquaintance of Pak Chega and other progressive proponents of
commercial activity in the 1 780s, who indicted the licensed monopolies for rais-
ing commodity prices artificially by three-to fivefold since his youth because
of their control over the supply of goods. But instead of recommending an end
to all monopoly privileges, he obtained King Chongjo's approval to restrict
monopoly privileges only to the "six shops" (Yug'liijon or Yukchubijon) over
the products they traditionally sold and to allow unlicensed merchants to sell
any products not covered by the six shops. The six shops were the highest level
shops in the capital with the largest obligations to meet state demands for royal
and government products, and they had been established either in 1637 or the
early seventeenth century after the Imjin War (1592-98).
Ch'ae sought to take vengeance on the licensed monopolies by allowing more
opportunity for the private merchants, but he could not call for the abolition of
all monopolies probably because the throne had to depend on the "six shops"
for supplying certain goods on demand. Nonetheless, he had less respect for