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

by Samuel Hawley

  Yi Kyong-sin, arriving from Hansan, talked a lot about the wicked Won (Kyun), saying that after having ordered out one of his clerks...to the mainland to purchase food grains, he attempted to seduce the wife, but instead of submitting herself to his desire, the woman jumped out of his embraces with wild shrieks. Won employs all means to entrap me. This also is one of my ill-fortunes. The cargoes of his bribes in transit continue their procession on the roads leading to Seoul. In this way he has been pulling me down to the abyss deeper and deeper as in the days gone by. [639]

  During these months Yi continued to search for signs of what the future held, both for the nation and himself. On June 22 he had a dream in which “I killed a ferocious tiger by striking it with my fist, then skinned it and waved it in the air.”[640] Did this slaying of a tiger possibly symbolize Yi’s wish to strike at the Japanese who had returned to Korea? Or was it perhaps an embodiment of a desire to destroy Won Kyun, the man he considered most responsible for his troubles? It is tempting to lean toward the latter interpretation, for judging from Yi’s diary Won Kyun was in his thoughts more often during this period than were the Japanese.

  Four days later, on June 26, Yi summoned an aide to read Won’s fortune by consulting the Book of Divination. “The first sign,” Yi recorded later that day, “came out as ‘water, thunder, and great disaster.’ This means that the Heavenly wind will corrupt and destroy the original body. It is a very bad omen.”[641]

  * * *

  As the Korean navy was falling into disarray, the Japanese fleet gathering at Pusan had been made stronger than anything the Koreans had faced back in 1592. It was composed of roughly the same number of ships as in the first invasion fleet, a force of some one thousand vessels all told, and was led by many of the same commanders, among them Kato Yoshiaki, Todo Takatora, and Wakizaka Yasuharu. This time, however, a number of heavy war galleys armed with cannons had been added to what was otherwise a mass of lightly built and lightly armed transports. These were still not as formidable as the Koreans’ panokson (board-roofed ships) and kobukson (turtle ships), but they nevertheless represented an improvement. Also improved were discipline and leadership. The rivalries and attendant lack of coordination among Japanese naval commanders—many of whom hailed from wako pirate stock—had been a liability in the first invasion made glaringly apparent by Yi Sun-sin’s own highly coordinated and disciplined fleet. In 1597 the Japanese navy was less prone to such counterproductive behavior. Hideyoshi, realizing the importance of a strong, unified navy, had for the second invasion appointed Konishi Yukinaga to high naval command, where his forceful leadership would serve to better galvanize former pirate barons like Todo and Wakizaka into a more effective fighting force.[642] The commanders themselves also undoubtedly began the campaign with a greater willingness to work together, for they knew this time the challenge they faced. The Japanese navy in 1597 was therefore somewhat stronger, better led, and better disciplined than it had been in 1592, all qualities that would stand it in good stead in the great sea battle to come.

  * * *

  The Japanese did not make a move in force against the Korean navy at Hansan-do. Instead they sought to lure it to Pusan. On July 19 the Japanese spy Yojiro appeared once again at the camp of Kyongsang Army Commander Kim Ung-so. He informed Kim that the Japanese were planning to begin their offensive into Cholla Province in six weeks’ time, on the first day of the eighth month (September 11). Konishi’s forces would enter the province via Uiryong and Chonju; Kato’s group would follow a route farther to the north, through either Kyongju or Miryang and Taegu. Yojiro wanted the Koreans to know this, he said, so that they could block the advance and quickly bring the war to an end. Otherwise the fighting could drag on for another ten years. Yojiro then inquired about the state of the Korean navy. He wondered because 150,000 more Japanese troops were soon expected to arrive from Tsushima to reinforce the 30,000 to 40,000 soldiers already on Korean soil. If the Korean navy was in good shape and ready to fight, and if it was ordered to sail east toward Pusan, it could attack and destroy this main force when it attempted to land and thus halt the second invasion before it could even begin.[643]

  In his report of this meeting, Kim Ung-so stated that Yojiro could have been sent by the Japanese to plant false information and that he perhaps should not be believed. On the other hand, Kim added, a good deal of the information made sense. It therefore should not be ignored.

  It wasn’t. Yojiro’s intelligence was accepted with credulity by many within the Korean government, particularly by Commander in Chief Kwon Yul. Kwon felt that an opportunity had been handed to them to deal the Japanese a blow that would halt their invasion in its tracks. He thus issued a directive to newly appointed Supreme Naval Commander Won Kyun: lead your fleet east to patrol the waters off Pusan, and attack the Japanese navy when it attempts to land.[644]

  Won, comfortable with his wine and his concubine on Hansan Island, now found himself in the same position his predecessor Yi Sun-sin had been in four and a half months before. If he obeyed the order to attack, he risked sailing into a trap and seeing his fleet destroyed. If he did not, he could be accused of timidity and refusing a command, the same accusations Won himself had leveled at Yi. At first Won delayed for as long as he could. He responded to Kwon Yul’s orders by suggesting that it would make more sense for the army to attack Angolpo first, the main enemy coastal fortification on the way to Pusan, and for the navy then to move in once the Japanese defenses were in disarray. Kwon Yul angrily brushed the suggestion aside. He felt that Won Kyun had made it only as an excuse to do nothing. The Border Defense Council (bibyonsa) in Seoul agreed. Since Angolpo was located on a peninsula, the bibyonsa observed, a land assault there would put the army in danger of being cut off by Japanese units stationed in neighboring camps. No, Kwon felt, the only reasonable course of action was for the Korean navy to attack first. Apparently moderating his objectives, the commander in chief ordered Won to patrol the waters off Kadok-do, half the distance to Pusan, cutting off the enemy forces stationed on that island and preventing the Japanese from advancing farther west.[645]

  There is no Korean commander from the Imjin War who has come to be more reviled than Won Kyun. It is thus easy to think the worst of him, and to accept without question Kwon Yul’s accusation that Won was delaying attacking the Japanese simply because he did not want to fight. There is probably a good deal of truth in this. In Won’s defense, however, it should be pointed out that a coordinated attack by land and sea forces such as he suggested was something that Yi Sun-sin himself had frequently recommended, but had rarely been able to carry out for want of cooperation from the army. Won’s recommendation of it, therefore, may not have been entirely a ruse. It is also worth noting that the Koreans had come to expect a great deal more of their navy than of their army since Yi Sun-sin’s victories in the early days of the war, a tendency that Kwon Yul was now perpetuating by placing the entire responsibility of resisting the Japanese on Won Kyun’s shoulders alone. It is thus easy to imagine that Won felt unreasonably put upon, so much so that he ignored orders from above. Kwon, after all, was directing him to accomplish something that Kwon himself was unwilling—or more likely unable—to do.

  By the end of July Won Kyun’s questionable conduct as supreme naval commander, and specifically his unwillingness to move against the Japanese, had cost him a good deal of support from both the government and the army. On July 4 Overseer of Military Affairs (dochechalsa) Yi Won-ik met with Yi Sun-sin at the latter’s mountain hut and spoke of his longstanding concerns about Won. He also intimated that King Sonjo had come to regret replacing Yi with Won. (“However,” commented a still-bitter Sun-sin in his diary, “the heart of his majesty is doubtful!”) In his own meeting with Yi Sun-sin at the end of the month, Commander in Chief Kwon Yul spoke even more strongly against Won. Won’s repeated assurances that he would soon sail out to fight the Japanese, Kwon said, were nothing but bluster. All he did was idle his days away in the Council Hall on Hansan Isl
and, ignoring the advice of his captains and commanders, the disaffection of his men, and the disarray around him. “It is clear,” said Kwon, “that he will ruin our naval forces.”[646]

  * * *

  On July 31 Won Kyun bowed to the mounting pressure to act from his superior Kwon Yul and made a cautious foray east from his Hansan Island base. He never made it past neighboring Koje-do. While cautiously advancing along the coast of that island, the fleet ran into a small squadron of Japanese ships probing west from Pusan. After a brief and inconclusive skirmish, Won ordered his ships about and promptly returned to Hansan-do.[647]

  Kwon Yul was unsatisfied by this half-hearted and short-lived campaign. He continued to press Won to go boldly into action to destroy the Japanese fleet. Won finally caved in on August 17. Gathering the entire Korean fleet in the south, a force of more than two hundred ships, the reluctant naval commander sailed eastward again, with Pusan as his goal.

  Japanese spies stationed in the hills overlooking Hansan Island watched his ships depart. The enemy fleet anchored in the vicinity of Pusan thus had warning that the Korean navy was on its way. They let it come. Won Kyun in the meantime led his fleet around Koje Island and north along the coast past Angolpo. Here they surprised and destroyed a small group of Japanese ships, then continued on toward Cholyong-do, an uninhabited island in the waters off Pusan.[648]

  It was now August 20, 1597. As the Koreans neared Cholyong-do, they ran into the main of the Japanese fleet, an estimated five hundred to one thousand ships arrayed in a vast battle line.[649] Conditions did not favor the Koreans. They were tired, hungry, and thirsty after a long day at sea, and were further crippled by a serious lack of confidence in their commander. The wind had picked up and was blowing with alarming force, whipping the water into high waves and forcing the Koreans’ formation to drift apart. The day was also almost done, confronting Won’s men with the prospect of fighting in the dark and further adding to their sense of foreboding. Won Kyun now displayed more of the erratic behavior that Yi Sun-sin and certain members of the government had earlier expressed concern about.[650] Ignoring the daunting odds against him, and more significantly the fact that the time and place of battle was not of his choosing, Won gave the command for a general attack, an ill-coordinated charge into the heart of the enemy armada. The Japanese responded with a display of tactical savvy worthy of Yi Sun-sin himself. Instead of meeting the Koreans head on, they fell back, forcing Won’s ships to pursue. After a brief retreat, they then turned and drove them back. A series of further retreats and advances followed, the Japanese commanders using the freshness of their own men to wear down the already fatigued Koreans until they scarcely had the strength to row.

  Finally, when Won’s men were thoroughly exhausted, the Japanese fleet turned one last time and attacked in earnest. In the ferocious charge that followed, thirty Korean ships were boarded and burned or otherwise lost. Those vessels surviving the assault were soon scattered across the water in a disorganized rout, their terrified crews sculling through the darkness on adrenaline alone.

  For the Koreans the disaster was only beginning to unfold. Upon reaching Kadok Island, Won’s captains put in to allow their parched crews to run ashore and fetch water. The Koreans knew that a large Japanese garrison was on this island. Won’s men evidently assumed they could drink and get away before the enemy had time to respond. They were mistaken. They leaped off their ships and rushed ashore in search of water, and ran straight into an attack by three thousand of Shimazu Yoshihiro’s men. An additional four hundred of Won’s men were killed in this engagement and several more vessels destroyed.

  From Kadok-do the by now demoralized remnants of the Korean navy continued to retreat west, around the north end of Koje Island and south into Chilchonnyang, the strait between Koje and the small island of Chilchon. It was not a safe place to stop. The channel was too narrow to allow the heavy Korean battleships room to maneuver should the Japanese attack. Commander Won nevertheless would remain immobile here with his fleet for an entire week, incapacitated by feelings of depression and rage. Upon reaching Koje-do, Won received a severe dressing-down from his superior Kwon Yul, who had come out to meet him from his nearby headquarters at Kosong. The commander in chief was so livid over news of the defeat and losses Won had suffered at Pusan and Kadok-do that at one point in the encounter he struck the commander—common enough in the Korean military when reprimanding a soldier, but a rare insult when inflicted upon an officer of Won’s high rank. Won was so incensed by the blow that he retired to his flagship, took out his bottle, and refused to see anyone, even his own captains. The Korean navy thus sat idle in Chilchon Strait until August 27, deprived of its leader, waiting for the end.

  The Japanese navy, meanwhile, was not resting on its laurels. Shortly after the first clash in the waters off Pusan, squadrons of Japanese ships began moving west in pursuit of the Koreans. These units, under naval commanders Todo Takatora, Wakizaka Yasuharu, Shimazu Toyohisa, Kato Yoshiaki, and Konishi Yukinaga, met on August 22 at the port of Angolpo to plan joint action against the remainder of the Korean fleet, which they had ascertained was now holed up in Chilchon Strait fifteen kilometers southwest. At the same time Shimazu Yoshihiro was ferrying two thousand of his men from their base on Kadok-do to the neighboring island of Koje. Once ashore he marched them across the neck of the island and arrayed them along the northwest coast, overlooking the Korean navy at anchor in the channel below. The Koreans would now be hemmed in when the final attack came, by Japanese ships before them and a Japanese army behind.

  In the strait of Chilchonnyang Won Kyun and his commanders knew nothing of this. Won, his confidence shaken by the Japanese and his pride deeply wounded by the blow from Kwon Yul, remained in seclusion aboard his flagship, lost in a stupor of anger and drink. As the days passed he made little attempt to draw up a plan or rally his men. He also neglected to gather intelligence on enemy movements from the farmers and fishermen residing along the coast. As the hours ticked by the Korean navy sat placidly at anchor, paralyzed, leaderless, blind to the gathering storm.

  That storm broke in the early hours of August 28. The Japanese fleet at Angolpo under Konishi, Todo, Wakizaka, Kato Yoshiaki, and Shimazu Toyohisa, numbering as many as five hundred ships, sculled under a full moon the short distance to the north end of Chilchonnyang where the Korean navy lay. Shortly after midnight three guns were fired to signal the attack. With that the lead ships of the armada moved into the strait. The Koreans, unaccustomed to night warfare and badly demoralized from their earlier mauling, were soon overwhelmed. One ship after another was closed with and boarded, the terrified men aboard being shot with muskets and arrows or cut down by sword and the vessel set alight. Those ships that escaped destruction by beaching on Koje Island were similarly destroyed by the Japanese troops lying in ambush there, as were the hundreds of survivors who managed to leap into the water and swim to shore. Only a few vessels made it to the south end of the strait and the open water beyond, but even these were soon chased down and destroyed. Nabeshima Naoshige’s son Katsushige would later describe the sight of all these burning Korean ships as even finer than the view of cherry blossoms at Yoshino.[651]

  By dawn almost the entire Korean fleet had been burned or sunk, and Commander Won Kyun was dead. After a desperate struggle, he retreated south down Chilchon Strait and then west toward the mainland with the Japanese in pursuit. When they reached land Won’s crew beached his flagship and raced into the hills to save their lives. According to one of his men who survived to make a report, Won was too old to keep up to the rest of his fleeing crew and soon sat down to rest under a pine tree, sword in hand. When this witness last looked back, five or six Japanese soldiers were nearing the commander, their swords drawn. It is assumed that Won Kyun’s head was cut off—although his body was never recovered so just how he was killed remains unknown. Also killed in action was Cholla Right Navy Commander Yi Ok-ki, Yi Sun-sin’s stalwart right hand from the first days of the war. He had
hung on in Chilchon Strait to the bitter end. Then, with the annihilation of the fleet certain, he is said to have jumped into the sea and drowned himself rather than allow the Japanese to take his head. Chungchong Naval Commander Choi Ho met a similar end. [652]

  The only senior officer to escape the battle was Kyongsang Right Navy Commander Bae Sol. During the week of idleness leading up to the end, Bae had approached his superior Won Kyun and urged him to move the fleet to a safer location. When Won refused, Bae quietly shifted the twelve ships under his command to a secluded inlet farther down the strait, and when the Japanese attacked he fled.[653] This act of cowardice would earn Bae the enmity of many, including Yi Sun-sin. It would also serve as a counterpoint in subsequent appraisals of Won Kyun, it being pointed out by at least one chronicler that while Won was of course responsible for the defeat at Chilchonnyang, he at least had died in battle, unlike others who ran away.[654]

  After fleeing Chilchonnyang, Bae Sol raced south to the Korean navy’s home port on Hansan Island to burn the camps, destroy weapons and supplies, and move everyone left there off the island before the Japanese arrived. He then shepherded his small squadron of vessels further west to safety. This tiny force, a total of just twelve ships, was nearly all that was left of the Korean navy—all that was left to block the Japanese armada from entering the Yellow Sea.

  * * *

  News of the destruction of the Korean navy was greeted with enthusiasm back in Japan. In the letters of congratulation he wrote to the commanders involved, Toyotomi Hideyoshi thanked them for “doing the nation a great service.”[655] Todo Takatoro was singled out as deserving particular praise, his squadron having reportedly destroyed some sixty enemy vessels. Shimazu Toyohisa claimed to have bagged an additional one hundred and sixty smaller craft, a figure he probably achieved by including small civilian junks and fishing boats that had been rounded up and burned.[656]