18세기 초 倭館 開市貿易의 거래 양상 -1721년 사례를 중심으로-

Abstract

This study aims to examine major pending issues and process of negotiation at open-market at Waegwan by analyzing records of 1721 in Bunryugisadaegang (『分類紀事大綱』). Starting from the 20‘s of 18th century, there was a significant shortage in supply of the main exports and imports, including white threads(백사) and silver(銀). Furthermore, there was a series of trade negotiations over interest on various merchandise in pawn, because of delayed payment of copper transacted in 1712~1719, According to its results, Joseon had to pay Chinese silks instead of white threads as the 15% interest for already received Gongmok. It was also decided to add 12% interest for late payment of copper sold to Joseon. However, there were still many problems such as delayed delivery of silver to Waegwan from Japan and dilatory arrival of white threads from China. Afterwards, Joseon managed to partly resolve these trade issues by reducing the amount of white threads. The previous studies have defined the mode of transaction at open-market trade as ‘advanced supply(피집),’ categorizing it in three: first, Japanese merchants supplied silver in advance and then received merchandise from Joseon ; second, Joseon merchants provided first products, such as ginseng, and then were paid in silver in parts ; third, merchants of two countries mixed these ways according to the situation. In addition to this, these research has apprehended allocation of silver(은할) as a Japanese term of advanced supply(피집), However, the records on trade negotiations give us a possibility to interpret allocation of silver(은할) and advanced supply(피집) in a different way: advanced supply can be defined as the way in which Joseon merchants provided merchandise to Japan in advance and were paid later in Japanese silver, while allocation of silver can be explained as the way in which Japanese merchants paid earlier in silver, copper, or gongmok and received after products from Joseon. It was a kind of overlapped claim-obligation relationship in order to expand open-market trades at Waegwan. The another important issue on the negotiation of 1721 was the price of merchandise. This problem was caused by a complicated interests not only between Joseon and Japan but also between merchants of Dongnae(동래 상인), official interpreters(역관), financers at Seoul(재경물주), and the government. In order to turn up these different interests, there was a series of negotiations in which the government actively intervened in the pricing of merchandise to benefit merchants of its own country.