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

by Samuel Hawley

  King Sonjo, Crown Prince Kwanghae, and their retinue resumed their flight north on June 13, this time not stopping until they reached Pyongyang. They arrived on the sixteenth and were led through the gates to safety by an escort of three thousand troops. Finally, for the first time since abandoning Seoul a week earlier, the king and government in exile of Korea were able to settle down in a degree of comfort and take stock of the situation. It was, in a word, desperate. The Japanese had already taken the southern half of the peninsula including Seoul, and judging from the speed of their advance would be across the Imjin River in fairly short order and on their way to Pyongyang. It thus seemed inescapable that Korea would cease to exist, probably before the end of the year, unless China intervened.

  During the first days of the invasion the Korean government debated long and hard over whether to request military aid from China. Those ministers opposed to doing so were primarily worried about the negative repercussions that this would have on Korea. First it would mean relinquishing control of the situation to Beijing, something that no government official was eager to do. Korea, after all, was a sovereign nation, albeit a vassal of China, and did not want to take a back seat in dealing with matters on its own territory. There was also the burden to consider of having to feed Ming soldiers once they arrived on Korean soil, a drain on government resources that would leave that much less for the maintenance of the nation’s own troops, further hampering Korea’s ability to defend itself and manage its own affairs. Newly appointed Minister of the Left Yun Tu-su additionally pointed out that any military aid that Beijing might send would probably be in the form of troops from the neighboring Ming province of Liaodong—rapacious, undisciplined louts who might conceivably do more harm than good to the Koreans they would be ostensibly coming to help. Such concerns were foremost in Seoul during the opening days of the war, and so the first dispatches sent to Beijing merely informed the Wanli emperor of the fact of the invasion without asking for assistance.

  As the Japanese continued their advance on Seoul, however, the tide of opinion within the government began to turn in favor of requesting aid from China. The first and most obvious reason for this change was the awful realization that Korea might be swallowed up entirely if the Ming did not soon intervene. But it was not just fear of the Japanese that drove King Sonjo and his ministers to turn to China. They were also growing apprehensive of the Korean people themselves. Since the beginning of the war, long-simmering public resentment over excessive taxation, rampant factionalism, and incompetent, abusive officials had exploded into full-blown anger against the rulers of the nation. The public blamed the government for the present calamity and was now dangerously estranged. The decision to request military assistance from China was therefore made not only in the interests of protecting the kingdom from the invading Japanese, but also to prop up the now-disgraced ruling elite, for it was from the Ming that King Sonjo and in turn his ministers derived their own legitimacy.[273] After the fall of the capital and the retreat to Kaesong and then Pyongyang, the Korean government thus sent a second envoy to Beijing, this time carrying a plea for help. When this did not elicit an immediate response, a third message was sent. Then a fourth.[274]

  In China, meanwhile, confusion abounded and suspicions brewed. To begin with, it was not immediately clear what was occurring in Korea. Had a large-scale invasion actually taken place as the Korean government was reporting? Or was Seoul merely overreacting to a somewhat larger than usual wako pirate raid, the sort that had intermittently plagued both countries for centuries past? This issue was eventually cleared up, and Beijing acknowledged that something very big and very serious was taking place in Korea. But then the question arose about Hideyoshi’s true intentions. Did he really want to conquer China as the Koreans claimed? Or was he only after their tributary state Korea, with the Koreans inflating his intentions to attract Chinese aid? And if he really was aiming for China, were the Koreans in fact being swept aside? Or were they secretly helping him along?

  Suspicions about Korea’s playing a secret role in Hideyoshi’s planned conquest began to appear in China upon receipt of the first reports of the war. These suspicions were sparked mainly by the incredible speed with which the Japanese were marching up the peninsula: from Pusan to Seoul, a distance of 450 kilometers, in just twenty days. Suspecting that the Japanese could not be advancing toward China as quickly as they were without active support from the Koreans, the governor of Liaodong, the Chinese province bordering Korea, sent an agent to Pyongyang to investigate. The equally suspicious central government in Beijing also dispatched an official of its own across the Willow Palisade.[275] These representatives eventually returned to report that the Koreans were fighting desperately to resist the Japanese advance, that tens of thousands of their soldiers had already been killed, and that they had done nothing that could be regarded as treasonous toward the Celestial Throne. Trust in Little China was thus restored, leading to a deeper commitment to help in Beijing and in turn throwing the ponderous wheels of the Chinese military machine fully into motion. By then, however, it was already well into August, three months after the first Japanese soldiers had stepped ashore at Pusan.

  This initial confusion and suspicion over what was happening in Korea explains in part why the Ming government was slow in responding to King Sonjo’s plea for help and why this response when it came was initially rather small. But it was not the whole story. Throughout the summer of 1592 Beijing had other concerns on its plate that were very preoccupying indeed. By far the biggest of these was the so-called Ordos Campaign. Earlier that year in March, two months before the start of the Japanese invasion of Korea, an officer assigned to a garrison along China’s northwestern frontier led his troops in mutiny, forcing their commander in chief to commit suicide. Their grievance was a common one in the Chinese army: they weren’t being paid. This was a problem that had arisen early in the Ming dynasty, as the self-supporting garrisons established by the Hongwu emperor slowly gave way to a reliance on paid mercenaries whose salaries the Ming treasury was increasingly unable to afford. It had led to dissention before, but this time the matter got completely out of hand. A local Mongol chieftain named Pubei, who had previously been co-opted by the Ming and rewarded with a high military rank, joined the rebellion and was then pushed to the fore as its leader. What had started as an isolated mutiny within the army thus flared into a full-blown Mongol uprising that soon had all of Shenxi Province in an uproar, and the Ordos Mongols on the steppes beyond the Great Wall poised to enter the fray.

  The episode was embarrassing for local officials, for it could easily be said that the mutiny that had sparked it all was a symptom of their own mismanagement of regional affairs. In their reports to Beijing they therefore tried to downplay the role of the army, painting Pubei and his Ordos Mongols as the source of all the trouble. It was a believable fiction; border clashes with the Mongols were a common and genuinely worrisome occurrence. The Ming government of course were not fooled by it, but they nevertheless accepted it as the official version of what had happened; to have openly admitted the truth that its own army had mutinied and that one of its own provinces was in chaos would have revealed a dangerous weakness in the empire. Beijing then moved to restore order, dispatching troops to the northwest at the very time when the king of Korea was requesting that help be sent to the east. The Chinese, not nearly as strong as their outdated military rosters implied, did not have enough manpower in the summer of 1592 to deal simultaneously and in force with its own internal troubles as well as Hideyoshi. It could deal with only one emergency at a time, and the mutiny-cum-rebellion within its own borders seemed the most pressing. It would in fact not be until the Ordos Campaign had been concluded in October of 1592 that Beijing was finally able to turn its full attention to the threat posed by the Japanese and muster an army of respectable size.[276]

  With the bulk of its armies tied up in the Ordos Campaign, and with the picture of what was happening in Korea still somewhat mu
rky, China’s initial response to King Sonjo’s request for military aid was necessarily limited. The best it could do was raise an army of one thousand men to protect the retreating king. This expeditionary force, under the command of General Tai Zhaobian and “Attacking Commander” Shi Ru, began marching toward the beleaguered peninsula in July of 1592.

  * * *

  On the far side of the Yellow Sea, the vanguard of the Japanese invasion was nearing the end of two weeks’ rest in Seoul. On June 25, two days before resuming their march toward China, first contingent leaders Konishi Yukinaga and So Yoshitoshi dispatched a letter north to King Sonjo, expressing a desire to restore peace between their two countries.

  It is true that Toyotomi Hideyoshi wants to attack Great Ming by way of your country. However, we Japanese generals do not wish to travel thousands of leagues to go as far as China, although we have been ordered to come here. For this reason, we are desirous of making peace with your country first, so that we may be able to make peace with Great Ming also through the good offices of your country.

  If your country advises China to accept our proposal for resumption of peace between China and Japan, the three countries would be able to enjoy peace. We cannot think of any more ideal measure than this. Moreover, we Japanese generals would be saved further trouble, and the people would be greatly relieved. This is the unanimous opinion of us Japanese generals.[277]

  It was not the first such message that Konishi and So had attempted to send to the Korean court since the start of the war. At the outset of the invasion they had given a similar letter to the governor of Ulsan whom they had captured at Tongnae, instructing him to carry it north to the government in Seoul. The governor, afraid that his reputation would be tainted if it were known that he had been captured and then released, made up a tale of having escaped from Japanese custody and never delivered the letter. Upon reaching Sangju, roughly halfway to the capital, the two Japanese commanders tried again to send a message north to Seoul, entrusting it to a captured Korean in the same manner as before. This second letter read in part, “The Governor of Ulsan when made prisoner at Tongnae was released and entrusted with a letter to which no answer has been returned. If you wish for peace, then send Yi Dok-hyong to meet us at Chungju on the 28th [June 7th].” (Yi Dok-hyong had been the official in charge of entertaining Hideyoshi’s envoy, So Yoshitoshi, during So’s prewar mission to Seoul, and therefore was well known to the Japanese.) This letter did find its way to Seoul, undoubtedly to the great embarrassment of the governor of Ulsan. The situation was so desperate by then that the Koreans were prepared to try anything, and so Yi Dok-hyong was dispatched south to Chungju to see what the Japanese wanted. Before he got there, however, news reached him of the fall of that city and of the defeat of General Sin Ip’s army, and so he turned around and returned to Seoul.[278]

  This talk of peace appears at first glance unnecessary, considering that Konishi and So had already swept through half the country in less than a month and seemed set to take the rest before the summer was out. Nor did it accurately express their master Hideyoshi’s true objective, namely the conquest of Korea and China and the creation of a pan-Asian empire. In expressing a desire for peace, what were these two daimyo commanders up to? To begin with, they were taking a page from Hideyoshi’s own book. The taiko himself was a great believer in winning battles without a fight, in bending adversaries to his will by co-opting rather than crushing. With their talk of peace, Konishi and So were attempting to win over the Koreans in a similar manner. As Hideyoshi had conquered Kyushu by co-opting the Shimazu clan, and Shikoku the Chosokabe, so they hoped to conquer Korea by co-opting the dominant lord of the land, namely King Sonjo and his governing elite.

  In attempting to win over the Koreans, however, Konishi and So were prepared to go beyond anything Hideyoshi would have sanctioned, for they knew better than he the resistance they had to overcome. Ever since his first visit to Seoul in 1589, So Yoshitoshi understood that bringing the Koreans to heel would be far more difficult than dealing with Chosokabe Motochika or the Shimazu. He saw that these foreign people lived in a different world from the Japanese, one that they regarded as superior, and that they would resist conquest far more bitterly than Hideyoshi seemed able to imagine. During his prewar negotiations with the Koreans So therefore found it necessary to take great liberties in his diplomatic dealings, on the one hand softening Hideyoshi’s demands so as not to offend the Koreans, on the other blunting the Koreans’ rebuffs so as not to enrage Hideyoshi, and ultimately confusing both sides as to the true intentions of the other.

  The situation So and Konishi faced in the summer of 1592 was not so very different. Hideyoshi had assumed that cutting a swath up the peninsula and capturing Seoul would be tantamount to conquering Korea. But he was mistaken. His invasion forces had now cut their swath, and with amazing speed too, but all they had really taken was the swath itself, a long supply line that could be easily severed, leaving them stranded 450 kilometers inside enemy territory. A further advance to Pyongyang would take them 650 kilometers out on this limb and place them in even more danger. In this light Konishi’s and So’s talk of peace makes sense. They were anxious to achieve a quick settlement with the Koreans while the initiative was still theirs, something that would consolidate their gains and relieve the pressure on their flanks. Then they could turn their attention to selling the settlement to Hideyoshi.

  * * *

  When Wu Ch’i engaged Ch’in in battle, before the armies clashed one man—unable to overcome his courage—went forth to slay two of the enemy and return with their heads. Wu Ch’i immediately ordered his decapitation. An army commander remonstrated with him, saying: “This is a skilled warrior. You cannot execute him.” Wu Ch’i said: “There is no question that he is a skilled warrior. But it is not what I ordered.” He had him executed. [279]

  Wei Liao-tzu (Master Wei Liao)

  4th century B.C.

  It was at this time that the Koreans won their first victory on land, a small but heartening exception in a seemingly endless stream of bad news. Following the abandonment of the Han River defenses and the subsequent fall of Seoul, Commander in Chief Kim Myong-won ordered the scattered units under his authority to regroup at the next line of defense, the Imjin River. This was not an easy task, for the respect that Kim commanded had suffered a blow with his precipitous retreat from the Han, an action that some took as a sign not just of a lack of military experience, but also of personal courage. It was possibly for this reason that one of Kim’s deputy commanders, Sin Kak, did not obey his order to fall back and regroup at the Imjin. Instead he remained with his men in the vicinity of Seoul, sending word to Kim that he intended to join forces with another commander. Commander in Chief Kim was angered by this and immediately sent a dispatch north to the government in exile accusing Sin of refusing to obey orders and recommending that he be punished. The government agreed. An official was sent south to Sin Kak’s camp with an order for his execution.

  Soon after this official set out, the Korean government received word that Sin Kak’s forces had achieved a victory over the Japanese at Yangju, a small town between Seoul and the Imjin River. They had evidently attacked a party of men from Ukita Hideie’s eighth contingent who had ventured north from the capital and were pillaging the place, and had beaten them decisively and cut off sixty heads. This news caused the government to have a sudden change of heart about Sin, and a second official was hastily dispatched south to halt his execution. But it was too late. By the time the official arrived at Sin Kak’s camp the commander had already been killed.[280]

  The Battle of Yangju was a minor engagement as far as the Japanese were concerned. But for the Koreans it was an important victory, a sign that the hated “robbers” could be beaten after all. Sin Kak thus was raised up as a hero and Kim Myong-won painted as the villainous instigator of his death.[281] In fairness to Kim it should be pointed out that, for all his shortcomings, he was the commander in chief of Korea’s armed forces
and as such had to ensure that his orders were obeyed. Whatever the merits of Sin’s victory at Yangju, the fact remained that he had disobeyed a direct order to fall back to the Imjin River and join the forces that were being gathered there. In the harsh system of military justice employed in pre-modern armies, the punishment for that was death.

  * * *

  The Japanese advance resumed on June 27, after two weeks’ rest in Seoul. Leading the way was the first contingent under Konishi Yukinaga and Tsushima daimyo So Yoshitoshi; Kato Kiyomasa’s second and Kuroda Nagamasa’s third followed shortly thereafter. As they had done all the way from Pusan, these three contingents would continue to serve as the vanguard for the coming push into northern Korea, toward the Chinese border.

  The going was easy until they reached the Imjin River, the point that today marks the western border between North and South Korea. Here they ran into trouble. The road to the north had led them onto a bluff that dropped down sharply to the river, with the only way to the water being a narrow and rather treacherous gully. This they could manage. But then there was the river to cross, no easy feat without boats. And on the opposite side, arrayed on a flat and easily defensible expanse of sand, were thousands of Korean soldiers and cavalry, armed with arrows and spears and swords and flails, waiting to cut them down as soon as they attempted to step ashore. It appeared that the hitherto helpless Koreans had finally managed to mount an effective defense. With the route to the north now blocked, the joint forces of Konishi, Kato, and Kuroda set up camp, sat down, and started to wait.