Talk:Korean mun

Pre-Joseon content

@Bamnamu:, I noticed that you removed the pre-Joseon content both from this article and the template, this is probably because the term "mun" was used during the Joseon period. But I thought that the direction of this article was largely about Korean cash coins in general? Or should this article better be renamed to either "Korean cash", "Korean cash coin", or "Cash (Korean coin)"? The term "mun" was primarily a unit of account to number copper-alloy cash coins and wouldn't be a currency unit until the late 19th century. --Donald Trung (talk) 11:42, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

@Donald Trung:

Hi, Donald. I see what you mean. I don't mind reverting my edits to Korean currency, Korean mun, and Template:Historical currencies of Korea. However, I think the "Earliest coinages" section in Korean mun would be more appropriate in Korean currency. As for renaming "Korean mun", I'll leave that up to you. Personally, I'm fine with the current name. Oh, and if you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

Bamnamu (talk) 12:28, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

@Bamnamu: Let me clarify the blurry lines between “mun (文), as a currency unit” and “mun (文), as a unit of account”. Firstly, let's look at the usage of wén, văn, mon in other countries. In China the term wén (文) dates back for a long time, the first bills of exchange from the Tang Dynasty might have used this as a unit of account, later Song Dynasty banknotes used it too. During the Yuan and Ming Dynasties banknotes wén (文) was used alongside “strings”. In Vietnam the Trần dynasty in the 14th century used the term văn (文) on banknotes, but as actual cash coins were abolished so in this case văn (文) only referred to a currency unit. The term văn (文) didn't actually appear on Vietnamese until the 1870’s when they appeared on copper-alloy cash coins to denote their official (government-set) value in zinc cash coins. While zinc cash coins in all likelihood disappeared around the 1900’s, the văn (文) unit of account / currency unit appeared on Vietnamese cash coins until the 1940’s. In China the term wén never truly appeared on cash coins until the 1850’s and only briefly. In Japan the term “mon” never appeared on cash coins itself but was frequently used on privately and local government minted banknotes. Cash coins themselves were produced in China until 1912 but circulated until the 1950’s and the term wén was used on privately produced Chinese banknotes until the 1920’s or 1930’s, on Bali they circulated a form of currency until the 1970’s. It’s quote vague when the term mun (文) is a currency unit and a unit of account. As the term was already used in China at the time of the Kaiyuan Tongbao cash coins it might have been already been used as a unit of account in Korea, but I don't have the literature to confirm or debunk this. The term “mun” itself never appeared on Korean cash coins, in fact larger denominations used “當五” and “當百” (also used in China, Japan, and the Ryukyu Kingdom). This meant that cash coins were now a currency unit, but the actual term mun (文) was only used on a small number of machine-struck round coins with no hole during the late 19th century. A major difference being between Korea and the other Chinese cultural countries being that the others frequently changed government, so a Ming Dynasty wén was only ½ (half) a Qing Dynasty wén, and the Nguyễn Dynasty did not recognise the currency of the Tây Sơn Dynasty as it was “an illegitimate rebel Dynasty” while it did recognise all previous Vietnamese cash coins as valid cash coins. In these instances “mun” might denote a currency unit as opposed to one of account. In contrast Korea only had two governments as a unified country when cash coins were produced and centuries of barter existed between its issues.

When it concerns banknotes you will notice that the banknotes were all issued long after the Korean mun was already abolished, this might indicate that cash coins continued to circulate in Korea long after their official abolition (as was also the case in China, Indonesia, Japan, the Ryukyu islands (Okinawa Prefecture), and Northern Vietnam), in almost all of these instances term mun (文) denotes a single cash coin as a unit of account and not as a currency unit or a currency itself. Unfortunately not much literature explores the currency units of Chinese cultural countries like Korea in depth (at least none I have access to), so I can’t really clearly state when the term was first used in Korea. Again, in Vietnam the gap is over half a millenium between the times when the government officially used the term, this was mostly because cash coins were essentially “valueless” and the government itself used strings of cash coins (“Kwan”) as its main unit when things concerned them. Maybe you can clarify the usage of the term in Korea better if you have access to Korean language sources, but in most English language sources I usually notice that the cash coins of Goryeo are grouped in with the cash coins of Joseon. --Donald Trung (talk) 12:49, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: Well noted, and thank you for the good information!

Bamnamu (talk) 13:07, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I personally think that this article should largely be about cash coins and coins and banknotes "that were denominated in cash coins" (mun), I personally wouldn't want to rename this article as in the above reply I noted that the term mun was used in China for over a thousand years and that it's not easy to find out when it was first used anywhere. I think that the templates might say "cash coins", but from what I can tell not much is known about the designs of early Korean banknotes so I can't easily find English language sources that can accurately date the term. I think that the amount of information on Goryeo should probably stay to its level here, but that more details should be added to "Goryeo coinage", which also covers non-cash coins. Thank for all your hard work researching this content and improving it. --Donald Trung (talk) 12:54, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

@Bamnamu: I do not object to the earlier coinages being at the "Korean currency" article, as they are not native cash coins but often imported Chinese cash coins. The same is already the case at "Japanese currency", so it would be consistent. --Donald Trung (talk) 14:16, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Grammar check and clarification

Hi, if anyone has the time, this page would greatly benefit a read-thru for grammar and punctuation errors. I appreciate that this page is likely a translation of the Korean page, but it needs at least a once-over. Some clarification wouldn’t hurt either, ex: stating that private minting was OK, but then next section talking about ‘illegal currency’. This is incredibly confusing- when was the line drawn? What *was* the line? This could use some explanation. Things like that. 2603:7000:8240:EC00:C9A4:AAAB:F10C:5235 (talk) 22:06, 23 May 2022 (UTC)