2 Mun Yong, Hong

The Joseon government operated a decentralized minting system in which individual government bureaus and military camps — rather than a single royal mint — were authorized to produce cash coins. The Hong (洪) mint mark on this piece identifies it as struck under the authority of the Chongyungcheong, the government office responsible for managing grain stores in the Gyeonggi region. Each issuing office maintained its own furnaces and dies, which accounts for the considerable variation in weight and flan quality encountered across pieces sharing the same designation.

The 1742 authorization for expanded minting came partly in response to chronic coin shortages that had persisted since the early eighteenth century.