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

by Samuel Hawley

  Commander in Chief Kim Myong-won was ordered to stay behind and oversee the defenses of the city, together with government ministers Yun Tu-su and Yi Won-ik. The three men had a large number of soldiers at their disposal, reportedly about ten thousand, certainly more than had been present in Seoul in the days before its fall. But holding an entire city required citizens as well, people fighting for their homes, bodies enough to protect every foot of the wall.[292] But of these very few remained. Kim, Yun, and Yi thus decided that rather than wait for the Japanese to attack and surely overwhelm them, they would instead go on the offensive and strike the enemy in their camps, sapping them of their strength and resolve and perhaps even driving them back.

  The plan was to quietly transport a body of men across the river on boats in the middle of the night and then to rush into the Japanese camps under the cover of darkness, slaughtering as many as they could before the Japanese had a chance to react. It was a good plan. The defenders of Pyongyang had observed that the Japanese seemed relaxed and unwary in their string of camps along the banks of the Taedong and correctly surmised that they would be susceptible to a surprise night attack. When the designated night came, however, it took the Korean commanders longer than anticipated to get their men across the river in the darkness, and thus it was nearly sunup when they stormed into the first of the enemy camps. The raid began as intended, with several hundred of Konishi’s men killed and many horses captured. But then the sun rose and the tables turned. Perceiving what was going on in the hazy light of dawn, the Japanese in the other camps, mainly Kuroda’s men, rose up in a counterattack that soon put the Koreans in flight back to the river’s edge.

  When they got there, their boats were gone. The oarsmen, frightened by the turn the battle had taken, had sculled out to midstream, leaving their comrades stranded. Many of the Koreans ultimately managed to save themselves by retreating some distance upstream to a spot where, with the level of the river unseasonably low, they were able to wade across and race back to Pyongyang. But in doing so they gave away a vital piece of intelligence, something the Japanese had been looking for over the past ten days: a way to cross the Taedong. The ecstatic pursuers returned to their camps to report their discovery. After seeing to their dead and wounded, Konishi’s and Kuroda’s men began breaking camp and preparing to resume their march north. Next stop: Pyongyang.[293]

  With the knowledge that the Japanese would soon be across the Taedong and outside the city walls, any lingering thoughts of defending Pyongyang were cast aside. As the day wore on the last remaining inhabitants streamed out of the gates and into the hills. By dusk Yun Tu-su and Kim Myong-won were frantically having their men sink cannons and arms into a nearby pond so they would not fall into enemy hands. Then they fled too. Kim Myong-won fell back north twenty kilometers to Sunan to regroup his forces, while Yun Tu-su rushed on ahead to report to the king. As the highest-ranking government official present at Pyongyang, he took full responsibility for its fall, and offered to accept whatever punishment was due. King Sonjo declined, and absolved him of any blame. “Our country is already ruined,” he replied, evidently feeling that all hope was lost. “Any talk of punishment now is useless.”[294]

  The Japanese crossed the Taedong and approached Pyongyang to find the gates of the city wide open, beckoning them to enter. Sensing a trap, Konishi and Kuroda climbed a nearby hill from where they were able to look over the walls and see if there was an army waiting within. There was not. The city was deserted; not a man, woman, or child remained. Reassured, the two daimyo led their men into Pyongyang. It was yet another prize on the road to the north, and a fat prize too, for within the city’s warehouses they found more than seven thousand metric tons of rice, enough to feed their army for the next several months.[295]

  * * *

  As the Japanese were helping themselves to Korean rice in Pyongyang, Yu Song-nyong was rushing from town to town in the northwest, stockpiling grain to feed the Chinese troops that the Ming government had promised to send. It was no easy task, for the local people, desperate and unruly with the Japanese approaching and their king on the run, were in revolt in many places, breaking into government warehouses and looting all the grain and supplies. Despite these difficulties, Yu managed to amass a sufficient store of provisions and had it transported to the small town of Chongju, near the Yellow Sea coast some eighty kilometers south of the Chinese border (not to be confused with the larger town of Chongju farther to the south). Here again an armed mob of locals gathered with the intention of carting everything away. Yu had eight of the ringleaders seized and beheaded on the spot, and succeeded in frightening the crowd off and securing his supplies. He then proceeded to build similar stockpiles in other towns, ready to feed the Chinese whenever they should appear—and in turn giving them no excuse to pillage the countryside, as Yu rightly feared they might.[296]

  * * *

  Following their departure from Pyongyang on July 19, King Sonjo and his entourage of government officials made their way north to Yongbyon, within 150 kilometers of the Chinese border. It was here that the first confused reports caught up to them of fighting in the vicinity of Pyongyang, leaving everyone in low spirits and expecting the worst, and anxious to continue their retreat. The king in his despair now spoke of crossing the Yalu River and seeking asylum in the neighboring Chinese province of Liaodong. The idea had been suggested once before, at Tongpa, after the first day’s flight north following the evacuation of Seoul, and had been opposed by Yu Song-nyong on the grounds that it amounted to abdication. Now other officials in Sonjo’s entourage tried to dissuade him. The people of Liaodong, they warned, were a savage lot; the Chinese might deny the royal party entry; and what would the king’s subjects, already alienated by his abandonment of Seoul, think of him if he abandoned the very kingdom of Choson itself? “Then tell me where I should go!” Sonjo retorted, clearly upset. “I can accept dying in China, but I do not wish to be killed by the Japanese.” The meeting came to an end with the issue unresolved. The royal retreat would continue, but its final destination remained unknown.[297]

  From Yongbyon the road to China that King Sonjo and his retinue were following turned west toward Uiju on the banks of the Yalu River. They had not gone far when they ran into the first bit of good news in a very long time: the Chinese had arrived! It was a small army, a token advance force of a thousand men under the command of General Tai Zhaobian and Attacking Commander Shi Ru. But it was a start. And more important, it was evidence that Ming truly was a big brother and a loyal friend to the Koreans and could be counted on to save them in their hour of need. With a show of humble gratitude, Sonjo greeted General Tai with these heartfelt words: “While I have failed to protect my kingdom, the sight of you and your troops here today, having traveled so far from your esteemed land, fills us with confidence and awe, and will surely strike boundless fear into the heart of our mutual foe.”[298]

  With General Tai’s force leading the way as his personal bodyguard, King Sonjo resumed his journey toward the Yalu, arriving at Uiju on the river’s southern bank on July 30, 1592. He had now retreated to the farthest reaches of his kingdom. Proceeding any further would take him into China, a step that the king’s officials, particularly Yu Song-nyong, had strongly advised against. With the presence of General Tai’s soldiers providing a measure of safety, Sonjo was now willing to follow this advice. He would remain in Uiju for his kingdom to be restored to him.[299]

  It was during his sojourn at Uiju that King Sonjo wrote a poem expressing his anguish over the crisis that had befallen the nation, and placing the blame for it squarely on the factional strife that had dominated Korean politics in the years leading up to the war. If only the Easterners and the Westerners had attended to the nation’s business more conscientiously; if only they had not allowed their disagreements to cloud their better judgment. Perhaps then the Japanese invasion could have been averted, and King Sonjo himself, the monarch forever caught in the middle, spared the unbearable shame of having t
o abandon his capital and flee north to the Yalu River.

  As I wail to the moon over the border mountain,

  The winds of the Amnok [Yalu] wave pierce my bowels for aye;

  O, my courtiers, do not say again

  East or West from today! [300]

  CHAPTER 12

  The Battle for the Yellow Sea

  The Japanese invasion of Korea was now in its third month. The three vanguard contingents of Hideyoshi’s army had advanced 685 kilometers up the peninsula from their Pusan beachhead, undeterred by mountainous terrain, swift rivers, walled towns, and hastily mustered local armies. They had taken the capital of Seoul on June 12 and were across the Imjin River by July 7. Konishi Yukinaga’s first contingent and Kuroda’s third were now three-quarters of the way up the peninsula in the city of Pyongyang, resting their men, repairing their gear, and preparing for the next stage in the invasion, the push to the Yalu River. All they needed before continuing their advance were supplies and reinforcements.

  The need for supplies and reinforcements had in fact grown acute. A tremendous amount of rice had fallen to the Japanese upon their capture of Pyongyang on July 24. But rice was just one of many items needed to keep an army on the move. They needed new muskets and lances to replace those that had been damaged or lost. They needed lead bullets and gunpowder to replenish depleted stocks. They needed new shoes and clothing. They needed additional iron and leather plates to repair damaged armor.

  The Japanese also needed men. While the first and third contingents under Konishi and Kuroda had disembarked at Pusan with a total of nearly thirty thousand, they had nowhere near that number by the time they reached Pyongyang, probably less than twenty thousand all told. What had happened to the rest? To begin with there had been attrition. Minor losses suffered in battles and skirmishes with the Koreans from Tongnae Castle to the Taedong River were by now beginning to add up, putting a significant dent in the fixed number of men Konishi and Kuroda had started out with. Other troops had fallen sick along the way or were otherwise unable to make the long march north. Still others had been left behind to garrison strategic points along their line of march, which for the time being remained their only supply route.

  The farther the Japanese had advanced, therefore, the weaker they had become. Their diminished strength was perhaps enough to sweep aside any lingering Korean resistance that still lay between Pyongyang and the Yalu River. But what about the Chinese? The closer Konishi and Kuroda advanced to the Chinese border—it was now only 250 kilometers away—the likelier it became that they would run up against an army from the Ming, an army that, if the Koreans were to be believed, would be huge. Hideyoshi’s daimyo generals, having so far enjoyed nothing but success, had no reason to suddenly doubt their ability to challenge and beat the Chinese. But they knew it would take a great deal of manpower to do so, more than they currently possessed.

  And here lay the problem. The only supply line Konishi and Kuroda had available to them was the 685-kilometer-long land route from Pusan, totally inadequate for the tens of thousands of men and the heaps of supplies that had to be moved north prior to taking on the Ming. The only practical method of transportation was by ship, around the southwestern tip of the Korean Peninsula, north through the Yellow Sea, then inland via the Taedong River to Pyongyang. This of course had been Hideyoshi’s plan all along. He anticipated no complications in opening such a seaborne supply route. Nor did his naval commanders. It was a complaisance that if anything increased following the start of the invasion, for the only evidence the Japanese saw of a Korean navy in southern waters was the wreckage of the Kyongsang Left Navy, destroyed by its own commander, Pak Hong. After completing the task of ferrying Hideyoshi’s 158,800-man invasion force to Pusan, therefore, top Japanese naval commanders like Wakizaka Yasuharu, Kuki Yoshitaka, and Kato Yoshiaki made no effort to secure a supply route around the southwestern end of Korea and into the Yellow Sea. As far as they were concerned the route was wide open. Instead they left their ships and journeyed inland to help with the land invasion, for they assumed they would not be needed until Konishi, Kuroda, and Kato advanced to Seoul and points beyond and called upon them to begin the work of ferrying men and materiel north.

  Yi Sun-sin’s “Slaughter Operation” in June awoke the Japanese to the fact that the Korean navy still posed a threat and that the essential supply route north via the Yellow Sea was not open after all. Upon receiving word at his headquarters in Nagoya of this setback, Hideyoshi sent a letter to Wakizaka Yasuharu, dated July 31, ordering him to form a united fleet with Kuki Yoshitaka and Kato Yoshiaki and neutralize the Korean navy once and for all.[301] By this time, however, Wakizaka, Kuki, and Kato had already swung into action. Initial reports of serious losses off the southern coast had sent the three commanders hurrying south from Seoul on July 15, back to Pusan to assemble their fleets.

  Wakizaka was the first to be ready to sail. In the second week of August, not waiting for Kato and Kuki to finish getting their own fleets in order, he sailed west out of Pusan harbor, toward an enemy he was confident he could defeat on his own.

  * * *

  In Pyongyang, meanwhile, Konishi Yukinaga remained upbeat about the supply situation. Yes, they had underestimated the strength of the Korean navy and had lost a significant number of ships as a result. But the threat had now been perceived, and steps were being taken to deal with it. It was thus only a matter of time before the supply route through the Yellow Sea was secured and reinforcements started flowing north. With the knowledge that his force of less than twenty thousand would soon swell to titanic proportions, Konishi sent a taunting letter north after the retreating Korean king. “The Japanese navy will soon be arriving with reinforcements of one hundred thousand men,” it said. “Where will your majesty flee to then?”[302]

  * * *

  Konishi’s crowing was premature. While his message was still on its way north after the retreating Korean court, events were unfolding in the south that would ensure that he would never receive those much-anticipated reinforcements. Indeed, over the next few days the momentum of the entire Japanese invasion would be lost, thanks to the efforts of Cholla Left Navy Commander Yi Sun-sin.

  It was the Korean navy under Yi’s command, it will be recalled, that had foiled the casual first attempts of the Japanese navy to reach the Yellow Sea in the first half of July. In a string of victories at Sachon, Tangpo, Okpo, and Tanghangpo, he and his colleagues Yi Ok-ki and Won Kyun had destroyed more than one hundred ships while suffering few losses of their own. Seeing that they had driven the Japanese all the way back to their base at Pusan, the three commanders decided to separate and return to their respective bases to rest their men, repair and rearm their vessels, and wait for the enemy to make the next move.

  This quiet interlude came to an end in the second week of August, when intelligence reached Yi Sun-sin at his home port of Yosu that small groups of Japanese ships were beginning once again to probe westward out of Pusan. This time the Korean commanders went immediately into action. On August 10 Yi Ok-ki, the thirty-two-year-old commander of the Cholla Right Navy, arrived at Yosu to form a combined fleet with the older Yi Sun-sin. They spent all the next day in a joint training exercise to practice a new battle array Yi Sun-sin wished to employ: the “crane-wing formation.”

  In their campaign of the previous month, the two Yis had either met the enemy in a straight battle line when conditions permitted, or when space was limited had adopted a circular method of attack, with their ships taking turns sweeping in upon the enemy to loose their fusillades of cannonballs and fire arrows. Such tactics served them well, leading them to victory in every engagement. But still Yi Sun-sin was not satisfied, for on several occasions a significant number of Japanese had managed to swim to shore and escape. The crane-wing formation was designed to prevent this from happening. It consisted of a large, forward-facing semicircle of vessels, heavy battleships in the center and lighter craft out on the “wings,” with a smaller, wedge-shaped array of
ships positioned directly behind the battleships in the center. Its purpose was simple: to surround the enemy with two enveloping wings, forcing their ships into the center of the semicircle toward the overwhelming firepower concentrated there. If Yi could draw the Japanese fleet into this vortex, no ship would escape destruction, and few if any men would remain alive to make that desperate swim to shore. His victories would then be just as he wanted them: the total annihilation of the Japanese at sea.

  Following their day of joint maneuvers, the united Korean fleet under the overall command of Yi Sun-sin sailed east to Noryang to rendezvous with Won Kyun’s Kyongsang Right Navy. The seven recently repaired vessels under Won’s command brought the total strength of the combined Korean fleet to fifty-five warships. Two or possibly three of these were kobukson, the spiked-back, dragon-headed “turtle ships” that Yi Sun-sin and shipwright Na Tae-yong had recently constructed.[303] The rest were panokson, “board-roofed ships,” a more traditional type of battleship with a protective fortress built upon the deck, and the mainstay of the Korean fleet. This force then continued on to the port of Tangpo, where they had scored such a decisive victory the month before. Here they received intelligence from a local farmer that a large Japanese fleet was making its way west from the direction of Pusan, and was at that moment riding at anchor just a few hour’s sail to the north at Kyonnaeryang, a narrow strait between Koje Island and the mainland.

  The Koreans set sail north early the next morning, August 14. They had covered only half the distance when they encountered two Japanese patrol boats, which immediately turned around upon spotting them and fled north into Kyonnaeryang Strait. Yi initially gave chase, but broke it off upon sighting a large body of enemy ships in the strait, waiting in battle formation. This was the fleet under the command of Wakizaka Yasuharu. It consisted of thirty-six large ships, twenty-four medium-sized vessels, and thirteen small boats: seventy-three ships all told.