Chosŏn Dynasty has always been a Confucian state as well as an agricultural society. It is only natural that its leaders placed utmost importance on agriculture while restricting commerce, and implemented economic policies in line with these ideas from the founding of the dynasty in 1392. Given that this Confucian state was primarily agrarian, scholars have long understood that the Chosŏn government believed commerce and handicraft manufacturing to be a target of strict restraint and prohibition, specifically referring to them as the “branch occupations(末業),” a concept in which ‘branch 末’ is in direct contrast with the primary ‘root 本’, namely agriculture. This anti-commerce policy-making inclination was also thought to be at its height out from the beginning of the state until halfway through the dynasty. The consequences were damaging. In the context of Korean premodern history, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are generally considered a period of stagnation concerning commerce of all sorts, either domestic or international. The alleged commercial condition of this period gives an impression that is highly incongruous with the economic

中文翻译：

---

一个儒家国家及其商业：重新审视早期 Chosŏn 的商业

Chosŏn王朝一直是一个儒家国家和一个农业社会。从 1392 年建朝开始，其领导人以农业为重，限制商业，并实施符合这些思想的经济政策，这是很自然的。鉴于这个儒家国家主要是农业国家，学者们早就明白 Chosŏn政府认为商业和手工业是严格限制和禁止的对象，具体将其称为“分业（末业）”，“分业”与“根本”形成鲜明对比。 ，即农业。这种反商业决策倾向也被认为从建国初期到朝中中期都达到了顶峰。后果是破坏性的。在韩国前现代历史的背景下，15 和 16 世纪通常被认为是国内或国际各种商业停滞的时期。这一时期所谓的商业状况给人的印象与经济高度不一致。