The Imjin War: Japan's Sixteenth-Century Invasion of Korea and Attempt to Conquer China

by Samuel Hawley

  On a more positive note, a forty-six-year-old career soldier was promoted on Yu Song-nyong’s recommendation from relative obscurity to the command of the Left Navy of Cholla Province. His name was Yi Sun-sin. His unexpected advancement to high command would prove to be one of the more fortuitous appointments made in the months leading up to the Imjin War.

  Yi Sun-sin was born in Seoul in 1545 into a yangban family of modest means. His father, Yi Chong, possibly had been among that majority of upper-class aspirants to government office who had failed to pass the civil service exam and consequently had to settle for a quiet life in obscurity at the Yi family’s country home at Asan in Chungchong Province. He was blessed with four sons whom he named after four of the sage kings of ancient China, with the addition of the character sin, meaning “vassal.” The name of his third son, Yi Sun-sin, meant “Yi, Vassal of Shun,” implying loyal service to a wise king.

  Little is known of Yi Sun-sin’s early life. Traditional Korean accounts describe him as a brilliant young man, well built and somewhat taller than average, who passed up the opportunity for a distinguished career in government and instead set his sights on the military, much to his parents’ chagrin. It is equally possible, however, that the family simply could not afford to prepare all four sons for the civil service exam and that Sun-sin was consequently steered toward a more modest and more accessible military career. Whatever the case, after six years of arduous training at the family home in Asan, Yi Sun-sin went up to Seoul in 1572 to attempt the triennial military service examination. He failed. A fall from his mount during the test of horsemanship shattered his leg and cost him the exam, and sent him back home to Asan. Finally, in early 1576, he passed the exam on his second try and, at the relatively advanced age of thirty-one, was commissioned as an officer at the lowest rank of grade nine.

  The first fifteen years of Yi’s career might be charitably described as checkered. He was an intelligent and competent officer with more ability than most, and was not without influential friends in the government to advance his career, notably Yu Song-nyong, a childhood playmate from Yi’s early years in Seoul. What seems to have held him back was his refusal to engage in the cronyism and corruption that was then such an essential part of getting ahead in the military. He would not “play the game.” Yi’s ability and strong moral fiber in fact would make him a number of enemies over the years, particularly among corrupt and incompetent senior officers and peers who found his honesty threatening.

  Yi’s first assignment was to a remote hardship post on Korea’s northern frontier, then being increasingly infiltrated by the Jurchen tribes of Manchuria. His competence was quickly recognized by the provincial governor and led to a promotion and transfer to a military training center in Seoul. He did not last long in this new billet, quickly alienating his superior officers by refusing to reserve special treatment for their friends and relations. A move to the army of Chungchong Province followed, and then, in 1580, into the Left Navy of the southern province of Cholla-do, where he had his first taste of naval service.

  As captain of the Cholla port of Balpo, Yi Sun-sin once again ran into trouble. For some reason both the commander of the Cholla Left Navy and the provincial governor had it in for him and saw to it that he was relieved of his command. The inquiry that followed revealed the nebulous allegations against Yi to be groundless and resulted in a full exoneration and apology. But Yi was not returned to his former post. To save face for the commander and governor who had attempted to bring him down, he was demoted to grade eight and sent to the northern frontier where he had begun his career.

  Yi seems to have taken this reversal in stride, doggedly setting out to distinguish himself and climb back into the middle ranks. To strike a blow against the Jurchen, who continued to cause trouble along the border with their incessant raiding, Yi prepared an ambush and then sent out a small party of soldiers to lure the tribesmen in. The Jurchen obligingly chased the party into the trap, where the bulk of Yi’s waiting garrison proceeded to cut them to pieces. It was an impressive victory that attracted the attention of the government in Seoul and would have done wonders for Yi’s career had he accorded some undeserved credit to his jealous commanding officer. He did not. His superior consequently made sure that Yi received no recognition for his initiative and valor by accusing him of acting without proper authorization. And so Yi was left to languish on the frontier for the next several years.[147]

  In 1591 Yi Sun-sin appeared to be permanently mired in the middle ranks, a resourceful, courageous, and upstanding officer who, in the corrupt world of the Korean military, would forever be blocked from high command by more cunning but less able rivals. The emergence of the Japanese threat changed all that. When King Sonjo solicited recommendations for officers deserving of promotion to the rank of commander, Left Minister Yu Song-nyong saw the chance to rescue his childhood friend from obscurity and give him the sort of command his talents deserved. Thanks to Yu’s recommendation, on March 8 Yi was promoted to the lofty post of Left Navy commander of Cholla Province. Some, including Kim Song-il, criticized this rapid promotion as being politically motivated, a case of Yu Song-nyong looking out for his cronies and pals, but the challenges were not vigorous and the appointment held.[148]

  In 1591 Yi Sun-sin thus found himself once again in the navy, but this time in a position of great responsibility. In the coming war the Japanese would obviously arrive by sea from the south, on the coast of Kyongsang-do or Cholla-do; to land anywhere else would have entailed too great a sea voyage. The navies of these two provinces thus formed Korea’s first line of defense. Yi understood this. He knew that the enemy had to be met at sea and beaten before they could land. During the following year he therefore threw himself into making his Cholla Left Navy as prepared as it could be. One of his first tasks was to learn as much as he could about naval command, something he would have known little about after fifteen years spent almost entirely in the army, commanding landlocked garrisons along the northern frontier. Yi’s government friend in Seoul, Yu Song-nyong, helped him in this by sending Yi a book on military tactics that he himself had written “entitled Defensive Strategy of Increasing Loss to the Enemy, giving explanations on the land and sea battles with ‘fire’ attacks for sure victory.”[149] After just one year of diligent study, this former army officer would be the foremost naval tactician in Korea.

  Yi also did a great deal to prepare Yosu and the five outlying ports under his command for war. This was no easy task, for support from the government in men, money, and material was not very forthcoming. In many instances Yi had to conscript his own sailors and laborers, scrounge his own building supplies, and manufacture his own weapons. He had submerged cables laid across the harbor mouths of all his ports to protect them from seaborne attack. Port fortifications, crumbling after decades of neglect, were rebuilt. Cannons were cast and tested. Gunpowder was stockpiled. Armories were restocked.

  And men were literally whipped into shape. Like many great commanders before him such as Ming general Qi Jiguang, Yi Sun-sin was a stern disciplinarian who administered floggings for minor infractions and executions for major ones. It was a time-honored tradition going all the way back to the earliest of the Chinese military classics, the fourth-century-B.C. Book of Lord Shang: “In applying punishments, light offences should be punished heavily; if light offences do not appear, heavy offences will not come. This is said to be abolishing penalties by means of penalties.... If crimes are serious and penalties light, penalties will appear and trouble will arise. This is said to be bringing about penalties by means of penalties.”[150] It was a brutal way to ensure discipline. But it worked. Yi’s ragtag assembly of conscripted peasants, vagabonds, and career soldiers did what he ordered them to do. They trained when he ordered them to train. And they would fight when he ordered them to fight.

  The heart of Yi’s command, of course, were his ships. He had fewer than fifty of them: twenty-four large battleships known as panokson, fifteen smaller warships, an
d a scattering of fishing boats. The panokson, or board-roofed ship, was the mainstay of his fleet. It was a heavily built vessel, about twenty-five meters long, powered mainly by oars, with an additional deck to separate the oarsmen below from the fighting men above. This upper deck was enclosed by high walls to afford the fighting men some protection and had a castle-like structure built in the center from which the captain could issue commands. With a full complement of cannons and a well-trained crew, a seaworthy panokson was superior to anything in the Japanese navy, a floating fortress that Hideyoshi’s lightly built and lightly armed vessels would be unable to combat. Unfortunately for Yi, however, many of the panokson he took command of in 1591 were not seaworthy. They were old and decrepit and in desperate need of repair, and would keep his shipwrights occupied into the early days of the war.

  In addition to refurbishing his fleet of worm-eaten vessels, Yi, in cooperation with his master shipwright Na Tae-yong, set out to build a new type of battleship that would pack even more punch than the panokson and be even more indestructible. They would call it the kobukson, the “turtle ship.” It would be a startling innovation in naval warfare, a heavy, armored vessel, bristling with cannons pointing in every direction, its top deck completely enclosed under an impenetrable spiked roof resembling a turtle’s shell. Only a few of these turtle ships would be built and see service in the Imjin War. But they would be the scourge of the Japanese navy.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Final Days

  Hideyoshi was off on a hunting excursion at the start of 1592. It was a prolonged affair, perhaps intended to take him away from Kyoto and the bitter memory of his only child, Tsurumatsu, who had died at the age of two in the fall of the previous year. During the five-week sojourn, thousands of birds and animals were shot. Finally, on January 30, the great hunter returned to the capital “as though in triumph,” arriving in a European-style carriage before a gathering of nobility and then displaying his bountiful catch.[151]

  For his next adventure Hideyoshi planned to invade Korea and conquer China. He had initially intended for his armies to set sail on the first day of the third month—April 12 by the Western calendar—possibly because he considered the day lucky. He had begun his Kyushu campaign on this day in 1587, and his offensive against Hojo Ujimasa, lord of Odawara, on this day in 1590. But the first soon proved out of the question. Mustering his huge invasion force and getting it positioned at Nagoya and on the forward staging areas of Iki and Tsushima Islands was more time consuming than Hideyoshi and his planners had calculated upon. “D-Day” was thus pushed ahead to the twenty-first of April.

  Hideyoshi was also waiting to hear from Tsushima daimyo So Yoshitoshi whether the Koreans had softened their stance and would “lead the way to Ming,” thus sparing him the trouble of having to conquer their peninsula by force. So knew perfectly well that the Koreans had not. He had never been forthcoming with Hideyoshi, however, about the Choson court’s adamant opposition to any talk of conquering China; like all the taiko’s underlings, So told him what he wanted to hear and portrayed negative developments in ways that Hideyoshi would find pleasing. In the spring of 1592, therefore, Hideyoshi still harbored hopes that he could take Korea without a fight, and still believed that his vassal So Yoshitoshi was working hard to bring the Koreans to heel. But of course So was not; he knew that war was inevitable. He therefore remained on Tsushima, waiting for Hideyoshi’s patience to run out and for orders to arrive for the invasion to begin.

  A final factor contributing to the delay in launching the Korean expedition was Hideyoshi’s own health. During March and April his eyes were causing him particular trouble and prevented him from giving the requisite farewell report to the emperor before departing south for Nagoya. This problem evidently eased at least partially some time in the middle of April, and Hideyoshi finally managed to deliver his report. Then, having received no word from So Yoshitoshi of a change in the Koreans’ stance, he dispatched orders south on the twenty-fourth to proceed with the invasion.

  Hideyoshi himself remained in Kyoto for another two weeks, enjoying the company of his wife and concubines. It was not until May 7, roughly the time his orders would have arrived at Nagoya, that he set out from the capital for the long journey south. His departure, like his return from the hunt three months before, was a magnificent and festive occasion. Hideyoshi, now the conquering general, rode out of the city on a fine horse, clad in brocade armor, a sword in one hand and a bow in the other. In his train came a bodyguard of seventy-seven warriors astride horses encased in armor, bearing gold gilt swords and spears. Sixty-six banners were borne aloft, symbolizing his unification of all sixty-six provinces of Japan.[152]

  The baggage train must have been enormous. As at the siege of Odawara two years before, Hideyoshi did not intend for himself and his retinue to suffer during their time in the field. Entertainments of every variety would be provided, from music and dancing to noh theater and tea. For his tea ceremonies alone, Hideyoshi carried two portable tearooms: the quintessentially rustic Yamazato, a tiny mountain hut built from weathered beams and papered inside with old calendars, and the magnificent Kigane no zashiki, a finely crafted, three-mat chamber gilded entirely with gold, right down to the fire tongs. The two rooms perfectly represented the taiko’s two sides. The golden Kigane was for the showman, the rags-to-riches parvenu who could not resist displays of extravagance. The Yamazato was for the cultured man of refined tastes: the poet, the patron of the arts, and the skilled practitioner of chado, the way of tea.[153]

  Poetry and theater. Music and tea. Hideyoshi would always find time for these, even as he set out to conquer the world.

  * * *

  As Hideyoshi made his leisurely way south from Kyoto to Nagoya, the Koreans were still struggling with their defensive preparations. Work had been done to fortify towns, restock arsenals, and conscript men. But not that much. Certainly not enough.

  To get some idea of how this defensive work was progressing, the government dispatched Generals Sin Ip and Yi Il on separate inspection tours in the spring of 1592. Sin went north, and Yi south. They returned to the capital a month later and delivered their reports. Both proved highly uninformative, describing only the condition of the swords, spears, bows and arrows in the armories that had been visited, while saying nothing of the state of the nation’s standing armies, the existence of reservist lists, the condition of fortifications, and the general capability of each province to mount an effective defense. It might be inferred that Sin Ip was unimpressed with the defense preparations he observed, for he had people flogged and executed for negligence everywhere he went. But once back in Seoul he had little to say about it.

  Following his return to the capital, General Sin visited Yu Song-nyong at the latter’s residence where they discussed defense issues, in particular the military capabilities of the Japanese.

  “Sooner or later there will be a war,” said Yu. “Since you are responsible for military affairs, what do you think about the power of the enemy today? Is he strong or weak?”

  Sin replied that he was entirely unconcerned.

  This annoyed Yu. “That is not the right attitude,” he said. “Formerly the Japanese depended on short weapons alone, but now they are joined with muskets which are effective at a distance. We can’t treat the affair lightly.”

  “Even if they have muskets,” Sin replied, “they can’t hit anyone with them.”[154]

  It was the same sort of empty bravado that Kim Song-il had indulged in after his return from Kyoto the previous year, assuring the Korean king and government that Hideyoshi was a paper tiger and that war would never come.

  It was now May 11. The invasion was less than two weeks away.

  * * *

  On Korea’s southern coast, Cholla Left Navy Commander Yi Sun-sin was continuing to work energetically to prepare his command for war. The task required constant vigilance. Earlier in the year, for example, he had received a report from the Traveling High Commissioner stating that the
port of Sado was in fine condition and recommending rewards for the officers there. When Yi visited the port to inspect it personally, he found it to be in dreadful shape and was obliged to order floggings for its officers and men. Staff at the port of Pangtap had to be similarly punished for neglect. “Judging from their selfishness for personal gain without paying attention to public duties,” Yi confided in his diary, “I can guess at their future.” Corruption was clearly still a problem.[155]

  May twenty-second. The day dawned clear at Yi’s home port at Yosu. The commander had breakfast, then went down to the water’s edge to test fire the “earth” and “black” cannons that had just been installed aboard his recently completed turtle ship. A staff officer of the Traveling High Commissioner was on hand for the demonstration. In the afternoon Yi engaged in some archery practice, as he tried to do most days; like any good Korean officer, he firmly believed in maintaining his skill with a bow. The rest of the day passed uneventfully.[156]

  Twenty-four hours to go.

  * * *

  Hideyoshi was now nearing the southern tip of Honshu on his journey south from Kyoto, still two weeks away from his headquarters at Nagoya. His orders to proceed with the invasion had preceded him, and final preparations had already been made. Contingents one, two, and three, the spearhead of the invasion, were now in place at the forward staging area of Tsushima, the island in the strait between Japan and Korea. The remaining six contingents were encamped at Nagoya, ready to follow. Everything was set for the conquest of Korea. It was now just a question of waiting for the wind, which was blowing strongly from the wrong direction and whipping up the sea.[157]