James B. Lewis

Kyŏngsang Tsushima structures mentalities socio-economic history

This article examines the frontier economy shared by Kyŏngsang Province and Tsushima Island. Leaving aside private trade, the official trade comes under scrutiny through Chosŏn government data. The size of the Japan element within the Chosŏn economy is gauged in terms of the volumes recorded in connection with the official trade and the geographic source of the official trade across Kyŏngsang Province. One purpose is to quantify the Japan trade. Another purpose is to canvas the writings of Chosŏn intellectuals and commentators for indications of literate opinion on the Japanese economic connection. The scale of the economy that involved the Japanese reached to about 43% of the taxation receipts of Kyngsang Province, and literate commentators lamented this enormous involvement in the domestic economy as a ‘burden“ on the country. When the figures are disaggregated, the true "costs“ are estimated at about 14% of annual provincial revenues. The author interprets these as transaction costs, because they were paid out without any expectation of return, unlike other transactions. The gap between 43% and 14% reveals a gap between the structures of trade and the mentality that interpreted those structures or, in other words, between what was exchanged and how those exchanges were seen by Chosŏn writers.