(21) There shall be no longer any outcast class in Korea but butchers, contortionists, acrobats, dancing girls, sorceresses and exorcists shall all be considered equal to others before the law.
(22) Even after holding high office a man may engage in business or other occupation, at his pleasure.
(23) The matter of the national examination shall be reserved for fuller discussion.
It is not necessary to go into an analysis of these proposed reforms. They speak for themselves; some of them were necessary and others were the reverse. But they form a striking commentary on the condition of affairs in Korea at the time. Whatever may have been the defects of this plan it was an honest and strenuous attempt on the part of the best statesmen Korea could produce and it promised much. If its terms could have been carried out it would have proved an inestimable blessing to the people of the peninsula, but one can easily see that some of the proposals struck at the very fabric of Korean society. For instance the attempt to make acrobats, dancing-girls and mudang the social equals of reputable people was of course absurd. The submerged classes cannot be enfranchised by a stroke of the pen. What Korea needed then and needs still is education. This alone will make fundamental reforms possible.
Early in August the currency of the country received serious attention. Foreign money was in use in the open ports but the general currency of the country consisted of two kinds of perforated “cash,” one called yŭp, each piece of which was called one cash, and the other called tang-o or the “five fitter.” These represented five cash each. The yŭp was the old, genuine and universally recognized money of the country. It was only in Seoul, the open ports and on the great thoroughfares near Seoul that the tang-o circulated. This tang-o was a debased coin made in 1883 and several succeeding years. At first each of the tang-o exchanged for five of the yŭp but within a few months the tang-o fell to an inevitable discount which increased year by year from 1883 until 1894, when it was found that they were practically the same. Successive issues of the yŭp had deteriorated the quality and size of the coin until it was worth only a fifth of its face value. For this reason the Government declared in August that the yŭp and the tang-o were on a par and that no distinction should be made between them. The fair thing would have been for the Government to redeem the debased tang-o at its face value but of course no one could expect this under the circumstances. It had proved an indirect tax upon the people equal to four fifths its face value.
At the same time the national financiers determined to place in the hands of the people a foreign style coinage, and soon a one cent copper piece, a nickel five cent piece and silver coins of twenty cent and one dollar denominations, which had been in process of manufacture since 1901, were issued. A few of them had been issued a year or two before but had not been well received. Now they passed current and were used, but it was soon found that the silver coins were being bought up and hoarded by wealthy people who placed no faith in banks, and soon not a single native silver piece could be found anywhere.
It was the intention of the Commission to withdraw from circulation all the old cash and replace it with the foreign style money. How absurd[absurd] this was will be seen at a glance. There is nothing else that people are so timid about as their money and the bare idea of making such a sweeping change was preposterous, but the Japanese were behind all these reforms and, while their intentions were of the best, they made the serious mistake in this as in other attempted reforms of hurrying things too fast.
Another important problem attacked by the Reform Commission was that of the revenue. It had always been customary to pay taxes in rice, linen, beans, cotton and a hundred other commodities[commodities], but it was decided now to change all this and have the revenue turned into cash in the country and sent up to the capital. In order to do this it was necessary to have banking facilities in the provinces and it was planned to establish a great national bank with branches all over the country.
An attempt was also made to effect an inspection and standardization of all the weights and measures in the country.
It was ordered that every house in the land should have its owner’s name and occupation and the number of his family posted in a conspicuous place on his front gate. This was to facilitate the work of postal, police and census officials and agents.