Jinsang: Regional Tribute Foods for the Joseon Court

The kitchens of the Joseon palace did not shop for their ingredients. Much of what reached the royal table, and the altars of royal rites, was sent from the provinces as tribute, each district supplying the specialties of its own land and sea. This system shaped royal court cuisine, gave certain local foods national fame, and was one of the heaviest burdens Joseon farmers and fishers carried.

Gongmul and jinsang

Joseon distinguished two kinds of payment in kind. Gongmul (공물, 貢物) was tribute owed by every district to central government offices to fund their work: regular annual quotas of goods such as grain, cloth and metals, plus extra levies of paper, ink, ceramics and other items as needed. The quotas were based on tosan, local products, and they were long: according to the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, early Joseon Gyeonggi province owed 191 kinds of item and Gyeongsang 283.

Jinsang (진상, 進上), by contrast, was in principle a gift: local products that provincial governors and officials presented to the king. In practice it was compulsory, and households supplied the goods. Historians divide it into food for the royal table (mulseon jinsang), regional specialties (bangmul), offerings for royal rites, medicinal materials and even falcons for royal hunting, delivered monthly, seasonally or on occasions such as birthdays and holidays. Food tributes were the most varied and the most frequent, so that for ordinary people jinsang meant above all fish, fruit, game and delicacies sent to the palace.

What the regions sent

The surviving lists read like a map of Korea's larders. A few well-documented examples:

• Jeju citrus: Citrus from Jeju was tribute as early as 1052 under Goryeo. In Joseon the fruit was so prized that its arrival each winter was marked by a special examination, the hwanggamje, at which Confucian students received citrus and wrote compositions; it is recorded from the sixteenth century, though sources give different first years. Government orchards on the island grew from five in 1526 to more than fifty by the nineteenth century, and shipments ran from about the ninth month to the second. Jeju also sent horses, abalone and other sea products.
• Gongju, Chungcheong: The Digital Gongju Culture Encyclopedia lists obligations that included live deer in winter, ducks, oiled mats, and monthly medicinal roots such as angelica and ginseng.

Broadly, coastal districts sent fish, shellfish and seaweed, mountain districts game, herbs and honey, and farming districts grain and fruit. Ingredients such as daechu and bam were staples of court and ritual tables.

How the burden grew

Tribute weighed on people far more than its nominal size suggested. The quota lists were rarely updated, so districts were asked for goods they no longer produced or never had, known as bulsan gongmul, products "not produced" locally. Villagers then had to buy them, often through middlemen. The practice called bangnap, in which brokers took over delivery of tribute and charged for it, was originally tolerated for convenience but was banned once the Gyeongguk daejeon law code was complete. It nonetheless spread from the reign of King Seongjong (1469–1494) onward, partly because the clerks who received tribute in the capital were largely unpaid and lived off fees. Jeju's experience was typical: officials counted the fruit on each tree in the eighth month and held owners liable for any that fell, and the sea crossing claimed cargo and lives.

Reform: the Daedongbeop

The answer was the Daedongbeop (대동법), the "law of great unity," which replaced most payment in kind with a tax in rice (or cloth or coin) levied on land. Championed by the official Yi Won-ik, it began in Gyeonggi province in 1608, the first year of King Gwanghaegun, under the name Seonhyebeop, at 16 mal of rice per gyeol of land, collected by a new office, the Seonhyecheong. Expansion was slow and contested by landowners: Gangwon followed in 1623, Chungcheong in 1651 after Kim Yuk and others revised the rules, coastal Jeolla in 1658 and its mountain districts in 1662, Hamgyeong in 1666, Gyeongsang in 1678 and finally Hwanghae in 1708. Jeju and Pyeongan were never included, and the standard rate settled at 12 mal per gyeol.

With the rice, the state paid licensed merchants called gongin to buy and deliver what the court needed, which stimulated markets and commerce (see traditional markets). The reform did not abolish jinsang. Some tribute was converted into the rice tax, but many items continued to be sent in kind, and the system survived in name until the Gabo Reforms of 1894 overhauled Joseon's taxes. For the cookbooks and court records that preserve these foods, see Joseon cookbooks.