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

by Samuel Hawley

  General Sin Ip’s situation was similar to Han Hsin’s. His force consisted for the most part of green troops and drafted peasants, poorly armed and terrified and apt to run as soon as the fighting began. And yet a victory had to be won. The alternative was unthinkable, for beyond Chungju nothing stood between the Japanese and Seoul. The coming battle would therefore have to be a do-or-die struggle, and General Sin positioned his forces to achieve that end. At Tangumdae. With a river to their backs and no avenue of retreat, they would not be able to break and run as General Yi Il had reported his own men had done from the hills behind Sangju. With the cavalry leading the way and the mass of untrained recruits forced to fight for their lives, Sin’s rabble might possibly be able to stop the Japanese advance. If not they would do the proper thing by their king and die in the attempt.

  After eight days and nights of forced marches along the eastern route to Seoul, Kato Kiyomasa’s first contingent caught up to Konishi Yukinaga’s second at Mungyong, north of Sangju, where the eastern route to Seoul merges with the central route to cross the Sobaek mountain range. Kato, greatly angered at what he viewed as Konishi’s duplicity in racing ahead from Pusan, insisted that his second contingent now take the lead for the final push to Seoul. Konishi refused. The two contingents, a total of something less than forty thousand men (both Konishi and Kato would have left garrisons at the principal towns they had taken), thus began the stiff climb into the mountains toward Choryong Pass in a spirit of mutual hostility. They traversed the pass without encountering any resistance and were down the other side late in the evening of June 5. The city of Chungju lay straight ahead, and with it, according to a captured Korean, a substantial army consisting of “many generals of valour, six or seven thousand troops, and many archery experts.”[192]

  It was at Chungju that Kato intended to exact his revenge. If Konishi insisted on leading the way to Seoul, so be it, let him lead. Kato accordingly halted his forces and camped well south of the town, letting his rival forge ahead alone to meet the waiting Koreans. He fully expected that Konishi would get himself into trouble by trying to take on Sin Ip’s army single-handed and would require rescuing, making himself look foolish and incompetent while at the same time handing Kato the chance to earn glory by rushing to his aid. That, anyway, was the plan.[193]

  Konishi was very obliging. He took the opportunity Kato handed him and rushed ahead toward Chungju. His forces approached the city along a valley from the southeast. As at Sangju, they separated into two groups a few kilometers short of the town, So and Konishi breaking left and the others to the right. As they neared Tangumdae they fanned out farther, until they were arrayed in a vast arc facing General Sin and his force of eight thousand.

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon of June 6. Konishi divided his force into three main units, 10,000 men under himself and Matsuura forming the vanguard in the center, So Yoshitoshi’s 5,000-man contingent swinging around to the left, and 3,700 men under Arima, Omura, and Goto branching to the right. Then, with musketeers at the front and swordsmen and spearmen bringing up the rear, they advanced on the Koreans crowded in a mass at Tangumdae. General Sin’s forces were soon being torn to pieces by flying lead, men falling everywhere in extraordinary numbers. The Japanese attack was so unexpectedly ferocious that a wave of panic spread through the jostling ranks of the Koreans, driving men to turn and run and leading to a general rout. General Sin managed to lead his cavalry forward in a single desperate charge, but musket fire stopped his mounted warriors before they could break the enemy lines. Soon the ground of Tangumdae was littered with bloodied Koreans, writhing horses, and discarded spears and flails and swords, and the future of warfare was made clear to Sin Ip. Like Yi Il at Sangju, he and several of his commanders spurred their horses away from the scene of the disaster and escaped with their lives. The rest of the Korean army scattered in every direction, thrashing through the waters at the back of Tangumdae, floundering through the rice paddies on either side in a desperate bid to get away. Most did not get far. They were methodically run down and cut to pieces by the Japanese sword and spear corps, which had moved to the fore as soon as the enemy was in full retreat and reduced to an easy target.[194]

  When the day was done General Sin Ip and his army of eight thousand had ceased to exist, and the strategy of “fighting with a river to one’s back” had been proven invalid in the face of technological change. Had the battle been fought at close quarters with traditional weapons, like Han Hsin’s second-century B.C. stand against the Chao, Sin and his men might have had a chance with their swords and flails and arrows and spears. But against muskets they had no chance.[195] According to Japanese accounts, more than three thousand of Sin’s men were beheaded that day and several hundred taken prisoner. The severed heads were lined up for the customary post-battle viewing, and then the noses were cut off and packed in salt for shipment back to Japan. Under normal circumstances the heads themselves would have been kept, but in the Korean campaign there were simply too many. Henceforth noses would become the generally accepted trophies of war. They were much more portable.

  General Sin Ip himself did not long survive the battle. Prior to his departure from Seoul he had pledged to stop the enemy advance in the south or die in the attempt, and he intended to remain true to his word. Halting at a spring a short distance from Chungju, he gathered his commanders about him and explained that after suffering such a terrible defeat he would be unable to face the king. He then threw himself into the water and let his heavy armor drag him down. Two of his officers followed suit.[196]

  The first and second contingents of the Japanese invasion force camped that night at Chungju. Some time in the evening second contingent leaders Kato Kiyomasa and Nabeshima Naoshige arrived at Konishi Yukinaga’s camp to discuss the final advance to Seoul. Kato, chagrined at Konishi’s success that day, came spoiling for a fight. The meeting opened with So Yoshitoshi spreading out two large maps before the assembled daimyo, one depicting the routes to Seoul and the other a detailed map of the capital itself. After examining the Seoul map, Kato pointed to one of the labeled streets. “Why don’t you attack this road?” he suggested to Konishi. The street he was indicating was noted for its many drugstores and was labeled as such on the map with a Chinese character for “pharmacy.”

  It was a not-too-subtle jibe against Konishi, whose family had long been engaged in the business of selling medicines. “For warriors,” he replied to Kato coldly, “family background is of little importance.”

  Kato then complained that Konishi had so far been hogging the lead in the advance to Seoul and that henceforth they should take turns at the fore. This was only proper, he added, for according to the rules of conduct laid down by Hideyoshi, advancing contingents should take turns in the lead. (This was true, but only when contingents were advancing along the same road, which Kato and Konishi were not.)

  “We are already very close to Seoul,” said Konishi, “so there is no point in talking about who should take the lead. It would make more sense for us to split up again and advance along separate roads, and see who reaches Seoul first.”

  “How shall we decide who takes which road?”

  “We could draw lots.”

  “Ah, yes,” replied Kato. “That’s how things are decided among tradesmen, isn’t it?”

  For Konishi this was too much. “You deliberately try to insult me!” he roared, reaching for his sword. It was only thanks to the timely intervention of Nabeshima Naoshige and Konishi’s colleague Matsuura Shigenobu that the two men were kept from fighting. Once a degree of calm had been restored, Konishi offered Kato his choice of routes north. There were two. One proceeded to the capital in a direct northwest line, but crossed the Han River just south of Seoul, where it was at its widest. The other followed a more roundabout course, first north and then west, but crossed the Han at its headwaters, where it was narrow and not as much of an obstacle. Kato immediately choose the direct route. They would leave, it was decided, first thing in
the morning. The two daimyo commanders then parted company, outwardly calm but burning with anger inside.

  Kato Kiyomasa did not wait until morning to depart. He left that same night. When Konishi heard of this he immediately set out too.[197]

  * * *

  The Korean court and government were in the meantime anxiously waiting for the good news to arrive that General Sin Ip had halted the Japanese at Chungju. As everyone in the capital knew, from King Sonjo down to the beggars in the streets, Sin’s army was the last force of any size that stood between them and the approaching hordes of “robbers.” Anything less than victory was therefore unthinkable.

  The news finally came on June 7, not long after Kato and Konishi had parted ways at Chungju. According to one account it came in the form of an exhausted soldier, bloodied and half naked, arriving at a run at Seoul’s South Gate. General Sin’s army, he said, had been destroyed; he himself was one of the few to escape. The Japanese were at that moment marching on Seoul. “Flight is your only hope!”[198]

  Panic spread through the city like wildfire. Throughout the day masses of people gathered up their possessions and pressed through the gates and into the countryside beyond, fleeing in every direction in search of safety. Sunset came, the time when the gates were normally closed and locked for the night. But still the crush continued. The guards had fled, leaving the ironclad doors unattended. Night fell, but the great bell at Chongno did not sound the end of the day. The bell ringer too was gone.

  During the evening an emotional meeting between King Sonjo and a number of his top ministers was held at Kyongbok Palace to decide what to do. Most of the officials present spoke out strongly in favor of remaining in Seoul. “The royal tombs are here,” they said. “The tablets of your ancestors are here. Where could you go? We have to remain in the capital and hold out until relief arrives.” Prime Minister Yi San-hae alone ventured to point out that there were precedents for the king evacuating the capital when danger threatened, but he was quickly silenced by the others. They would not countenance any talk of flight, and urged King Sonjo to dismiss Yi for having even made the suggestion.

  But of course Yi San-hae was right: staying and fighting were out of the question. Only seven thousand ill-trained, ill-equipped soldiers were stationed in Seoul, not nearly enough to defend the twenty-seven kilometers of wall that encircled the city, a visually impressive string of stone that had been constructed in the 1440s more to express the king’s power with its vastness than as an actual line of defense. The capital was certain to fall to the superior power of the Japanese, and the king, if he insisted on remaining behind, would be captured when it did. King Sonjo saw this clearly, even if his ministers other than Yi San-hae did not. And so he was left to make the painful but necessary decision largely on his own: he would evacuate Seoul and move farther north, across the Imjin River to the walled city of Pyongyang, former capital of the ancient kingdom of Koguryo.[199]

  It was at this same time that the question of royal succession was settled once and for all. This had been a point of contention since the previous year, when the Eastern faction had employed it with some skill to end the Westerners’ two years of political ascendancy and reestablish themselves in power. It was such a contested issue, however, that it had resulted in the Easterners splitting into two sub-cliques, the Southerners and the Northerners, one side supporting the king’s temperamental and lazy eldest son, eighteen-year-old Prince Imhae, as the rightful heir, and the other Prince Kwanghae, one year Imhae’s junior but generally perceived as more studious and upstanding. On June 8, with no time left for discussion or debate, the matter was hastily decided: Imhae was passed over and Kwanghae officially installed as crown prince.[200]

  Throughout the night between June 8 and 9 frantic preparations were made by the royal household for the evacuation of Seoul. Piles of straw sandals were collected to shod the tender feet of the king and court for the long journey ahead. Horses were secured and saddled. The king’s ancestral tablets were ordered packed up and shipped north. But that was all. Everything else was left behind: ancient books, paintings, treasure chests, silk gowns, porcelain, gold, silver, buildings filled with centuries of government documents. Even food for the trip.

  The sky was just beginning to lighten the next morning when King Sonjo and newly installed Crown Prince Kwanghae (Bright Sea) mounted their horses and led a procession of family members, courtiers, and government officials out of the capital’s New Gate, bound for the Imjin River and the safety of the north beyond. Princes Imhae and Sunhwa departed separately with an entourage of their own. They were to head into the remote mountain fastness of the northeastern province of Hamgyong, where they could hopefully rouse the local people into resisting the Japanese. Wails of despair and shouts of anger went up from those citizens still remaining in Seoul at the sight of their departing king. There could no longer be any hope; the capital, the heart and soul of the kingdom, was being abandoned to the invaders.

  Seoul now descended into anarchy. Frantic citizens continued to flee for their lives through the city’s gates, carrying bundles and babies, clutching family treasures, pushing carts, shepherding frightened children, crying in anguish at the ending of their world. Others began to loot. There were hundreds of empty homes, palaces, and government buildings left wide open across the capital, full of abandoned riches just waiting to be claimed.

  Then the fires started. Citizens angry at what they felt was the desertion of their king torched Kyongbok-gung (Palace of Shining Happiness), Changdok-gung (Palace of Illustrious Virtue), and Changgyong-gung (Palace of Glorious Blessings). The king’s private treasure house went up in flames, then the royal granary. Government buildings housing the deeds of ownership for the capital’s slaves were also set ablaze, very likely by the slaves themselves. It was an orgy of rage and greed and terror that continued unabated throughout the morning hours, consuming the city before the Japanese had even arrived at the gates.

  The king and court, meanwhile, were pressing on northward, the men on horses, the queen and concubines in palanquins. They had not gone far when it started to rain, so heavily that some of the unwieldy palanquins had to be abandoned and the lower-ranking concubines mounted on horses. Soon individuals started to lag behind, then drop out. Still the royal party pressed on, for everyone feared that the Japanese might be hot on their heels, about to appear at any moment over the crest of the last hill. A stop was made in the afternoon at the Pyokje way station to give the tired travelers a chance to eat and rest. Sonjo sillok, the annals of King Sonjo, makes a point of mentioning here that the side dishes served to the king and queen had to be thrown together to haste and that there were no side dishes at all to serve to the crown prince. He had to settle for rice and soup alone. After this additional indignity the royals were on their way again, wallowing through the mud in a torrential downpour, tired and miserable in their sodden silk robes.

  It was well after dark when the royal party arrived at the ferry crossing on the south bank of the Imjin River. They had covered fifty kilometers in fourteen hours, and were wet and hungry and utterly exhausted. For many, accustomed as they were to a life of luxury and ease, the day’s journey would have been the hardest physical exertion they had ever had to endure, leaving them distraught and in tears. In the pitch darkness the ferryman was summoned, and King Sonjo together with half his entourage crowded into his small craft. The rest were left behind. It was now, seated in the ferry at mid stream, that Sonjo himself at last broke down. The sight of their king sobbing uncontrollably on the deck was so upsetting that soon everyone present was reduced to tears as well.

  When they reached the north bank, the ferry was sunk and the rope spanning the river cut to slow any Japanese who might be close behind. The weary travelers then continued on a little farther to the Tongpa way station, where food and shelter could be had. They arrived some time after midnight, tired and famished, only to find that the food was all gone: the porters who had preceded them with the royal hous
ehold’s few possessions had wolfed everything down, leaving the king and his party to go to bed hungry. In the morning the porters themselves were gone. The situation was looking grim, when the governor of Hwanghae Province arrived with an escort of several hundred soldiers and fresh horses. He led the royal entourage north to the next way station and sat them down to their first proper meal in two days. They then pushed on to Kaesong, capital of the Koryo dynasty (918–1392), arriving inside the stout city walls sometime after nightfall.

  Once again inside the safety of the walled city and with lookouts posted to give warning of an enemy approach, it was decided to have a day of rest before pushing on to Pyongyang.[201]

  * * *

  The vanguard of the Japanese army left Chungju in a downpour in the early hours of June 8 to continue its advance on Seoul. Konishi Yukinaga led his first contingent due north and crossed the south branch of the Han River, swollen now from the heavy rains, then started looping west toward the capital’s East Gate, staying close to the river’s north bank. Kato Kiyomasa’s second contingent was meanwhile racing in a straight northeast line toward Seoul’s southern side. It was a more direct route, but would necessitate crossing the Han within sight of Seoul, where it was very wide and more apt to be heavily defended.

  The Han was no mere stream. In its passage just south of Seoul it was a kilometer and more across. It was spanned by no bridges, and seemingly would have presented a formidable obstacle to even the best-trained and best-equipped armies. Some accounts state that the Koreans now took the judicious step of destroying all craft along the river’s south bank to impede Kato’s advance.[202] Others claim that Konishi himself sent men ahead in disguise to destroy the boats and thus slow his rival.[203] It is possible that both accounts are true, with the Koreans destroying boats at one point along the river and Konishi’s men at another. In any case Kato arrived at the Han within sight of Seoul to find no boats available with which to effect a crossing.