A Study on the Fisheries Financing of the Late Yi Dynasty

한말의 수산금융에 관한 연구

Though modern banking organs were established in Korea with the Kanghwa Treaty as a momentum, the benefit of financing at that time, which was mainly given to merchants and industrialists and traders, was extremely limited to the fishermen. The fishermen who were out of favor with the benefit of financing of modern banking organs were forced to rely on high interest loans, a category of usury capital, issued by the middlemen (the Kaekju) who lent them the deficit of their necessary funds. The fact was that in the field of fisheries the middlemen who issued usury capital played the leading part in fisheries financing of the Late Yi Dynasty. The middlemen, however, sqeezed a part or all of surplus products and on occasion even necessary products out of the fishermen by means of outward compulsion of economy. Moreover they put the fishermen further in trouble by putting-out system. In order to keep on with the production of aquatic products, the fishermen with little capital and no property established the antinomic rotations with the middlemen whose disadvantageous terms they were inevitably to accept. Thus the middlemen who did business with the fishermen exercised their authority over them, securing a strong activity foundation in the field of fisheries. But the traditional form of the Kaekiu was transformed and gradually declined in the field of fisheries according as the market rules were proclaimed in 1914.