ABSTRACT
The Kanghwa Treaty opened a new era of managed markets on the peninsula. A shift in exchange towards banking and finance, contract and procedure, and regional markets with grain exchanges spurred the transformation from constrained to more autonomous markets. Apart from market functions deeply affecting the price and supply of grains, the Grain Exchange at Inch’ŏn served as a nexus of business-state relations critical for both state agrarian policy and successful private enterprise at the port. In addition to regularizing and expanding trade volummes, the Jinsen Grain Exchange or “Jinto” specialized in futures trading of one to three months, as opposed to “spot” or over the counter trade at other regional exchanges. Although Korean brokers had long been accustomed to consignment sales, the advent of contracting in large lots of grains for specific dates of delivery demanded new procedures and new sources of capital. Changing ideas paralleled changing structures in the shift from subsistence to profit, barter to currency, or spot to futures.
