Korea

Joseon Korea ran for most of its history on grain and cloth rather than coin: rice measured in seok and du, and bolts of hemp and cotton, were the units in which taxes were assessed and wages paid. Copper cash returned for good in 1678, when the government began casting the sangpyeong tongbo, reckoned in mun, ten mun to a jeon and ten jeon to a nyang; by the later eighteenth century it circulated everywhere, though the state kept fixing its value against silver by decree rather than by market, which is why converting any Joseon sum into metal involves a judgement. Silver itself, imported from Japan and spent toward China, was counted in nyang of about 37.5 grams. What makes Korea extraordinary for a record of what creative work cost is the uigwe: the royal protocol books that documented weddings, funerals, portrait sittings, banquets and building works down to the individual craftsman’s name, the days he worked, and the rice and cash he was handed. Hundreds survive in the Kyujanggak and Jangseogak collections, many on the UNESCO Memory of the World register.

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Wages Paid to the 1,821 Artisans and Labourers Who Built Hwaseong Fortress, Suwon 1794–1796

King Jeongjo’s new walled city at Suwon, designed on paper by the young official Jeong Yak-yong before a stone was cut and built between 1794 and 1796, was the first large Joseon state project to hire its workforce for wages instead of conscripting it by corvée. The Hwaseong Seongyeok Uigwe, the official record printed in movable type in 1801, lists all 1,821 artisans by name, trade and days worked, and totals the wage bill at 304,817 nyang 8 jeon 4 pun against a whole-project cost of 873,517 nyang; a stonemason drew 4 jeon 5 pun and six seung of rice a day, a carpenter or plasterer 4 jeon 2 pun, an unskilled hired man 2 jeon 5 pun. The sum was paid in sangpyeong tongbo copper cash and is converted at the rate recorded by the National Institute of Korean History, four nyang of cash to one nyang of fine silver of 37.5 grams, then at a gold to silver ratio of 1 to 15. Because the Joseon state fixed the value of its copper coin by decree in order to capture seigniorage, the conversion is unusually uncertain and the figure is best read as a range of roughly 152,000 to 254,000 grams.

~190,500g

Hwaseong Seongyeok Uigwe, 10 kwon, compiled by the Hwaseong Seongyeokso 1796 and printed in Jeongnija type 1801, kwon 4 “Gongjang” and kwon 5–6 “Jaeyong,” Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies, Seoul National University; Suwon Cultural Foundation, “Fortification Story”; National Institute of Korean History, “Korean Currency.”