986 FINANCIAL REFORM AND THE ECONOMY
monopoly or oligopoly than Yu Suwon in the I73os, who planned to reorga-
nize all merchants into licensed oligopolies on the theory that the creation of a
number of shops in different neighborhoods and towns would prevent anyone
of them from cornering the market. He presumed that his new "educated yang-
ban-merchants" would behave honestly and altruistically, and he did not imag-
ine that they might enter into any kind of conspiracy to control the market and
raise prices. Ch'ae Chegong had seen what monopolists could do and sought to
counter them by opening the market still more.
The licensed merchants were incensed at Ch'ae's measure, and after he was
transferred to the post of magistrate of Suwon, they followed him there to demon-
strate against him. Contrary to the expectation that the private merchants would
have jumped for joy at the news of Ch'ae's policy for greater liberalization, some
of the owners of independent shops condemned it because they, too, had never
believed in the concept offree market competition and were hoping themselves
to attain a grant of monopoly privileges from the government. Now they had
lost that chance.
The fish and ramie cloth shops, for example, both applied for admission into
the privileged community of licensed monopolies, but in I794 the government
refused to grant permission and reiterated the policy of joint or open sales (t'ong-
gong parmae), which meant that monopoly sales would only be permitted for
the so-called six shops. Kang Man'gil has argued that the motive for this deci-
sion was initially financial: since the government could no longer protect the
monopolies against competition, it chose to profit by imposing commercial taxes
on all unlicensed merchants. On the other hand, Ch'ae Chegong clearly designed
his open sales policy to weaken the strength of the monopolies and permit the
growth of independent merchants.^26
The effects on some of the shops no longer covered by monopoly privileges
was adverse. By I803, sixteen unlicensed shops had suffered bankruptcy, and
they demanded relief from the government either by granting new or restoring
old monopoly and wholesaling rights or by reduction of their tax and service
obligations to the state. The government was only willing to grant them the right
to coJlect taxes from other merchants, not the right to reestablish warehouses
and wholesale selling operations, because it would only lead to artificial com-
modity price inflation at the expense of the poorer capital residents.^27
Private wholesaling, however, continued despite the ban against it, and in I 8 I 3
licensed fish shops complained that they were losing business to private whole-
salers. In addition, small-scale independent merchants were also outmatched by
the wealthier and rich merchants who used their capital to comer supplies and
elevate prices. To alleviate their plight the government occasionally granted per-
mission to the small private merchants to sell their goods to the government.^28
Commercial developments in the eighteenth century had outrun the perspec-
tive of both Yu Hyongwon and Yu Suwon. The former might not have been com-
fortable with the independence of private merchants because he had always