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

by Samuel Hawley

  Konishi’s diplomacy had its intended affect; by December 13 Chen Lin had expressed a willingness to comply. Winning over Chen, however, solved only part of the problem. There was also Yi Sun-sin to consider. Chen himself first tried to talk Yi into allowing the Japanese to withdraw without a fight. The Korean commander refused. “I cannot talk peace,” he said, “nor can I let a single enemy seed go home in peace.” When word of this reached Konishi, he sent a representative directly to Yi with the same gifts and entreaties he had given to Chen Lin—possibly on the assumption that the Korean commander resented being ordered about by Chen and would be more amenable if approached directly. If so he was mistaken. Yi sent the man packing.

  Chen Lin now stepped in and attempted to resolve the situation by taking action of his own. He informed Yi that he was going to pull his ships out of the blockade and move east to Namhae Island, to clear away the last remnants of enemy forces he said were still there. For Yi this was the last straw. Already angered by Chen’s truckling with Konishi, he now made it clear that he expected the Ming admiral to do his part in maintaining the blockade. Besides, Yi pointed out, the bulk of the Japanese garrison had already left Namhae. Most of the people still there were Koreans who had been taken prisoner and forced to work for the Japanese. Chen brushed this aside. They collaborated with the enemy, he said, and as such should be regarded as enemies themselves. He therefore would go to Namhae and cut off their heads.

  Yi, angry now: “Your emperor commanded you to annihilate the enemy in order to save the lives of our countrymen. Now you intend to kill them instead of rescuing them. That is not the august wish of the emperor!”

  “The emperor gave me a long sword!” Chen roared back, reaching for his weapon in a threatening way.[820]

  Yi refused to budge, and Chen did not press the matter further. The blockade of Waegyo remained in place, at least for one more day.

  Konishi Yukinaga sent a final representative to Chen Lin on December 14, this time to request that a single boat be allowed to pass to carry a message to the Japanese garrisons to the east that they should go ahead with their plans to withdraw. Chen agreed. The vessel was allowed through the blockade—and promptly made its way to Shimazu Yoshihiro’s neighboring fortress at Sachon to summon help for Konishi’s beleaguered men. When Yi Sun-sin learned of the boat’s passage later that day, he rightly suspected that enemy reinforcements would not be long in coming. When they arrive, he explained to his subcommanders, our ships will be vulnerable to a pincers attack, a combined assault by Konishi’s fleet from the north and enemy reinforcements from the east. Considering this risk, the best course of action would be to lift the blockade and move east across Kwangyang Bay to meet the approaching enemy fleet before it could join forces with Konishi.

  Korean sources say that Chen Lin felt guilty when he realized what he had done in letting that one boat pass through the blockade. But it is likely that the cagey admiral knew exactly what he was doing. He had wanted Yi Sun-sin to lift his blockade of Waegyo. And now it was being lifted.

  The men of the allied Korean-Ming navy were served a hearty meal before setting out from Waegyo on December 14. With a battle in the offing it might be the last hot food they would see for days. The fleet then raised anchor and moved east under the cover of darkness to Noryang Strait, a narrow passage between the island of Namhae and the mainland at the east end of Kwangyang Bay. If reinforcements were coming to aid Konishi, they would have to pass this way.[821]

  On the evening of December 15, some three hundred Japanese ships began congregating at Noryang, just as Yi Sun-sin had suspected they would. Most were from Shimazu Yoshihiro’s fortress at Sachon, which lay beyond the strait and across Chinju Bay twenty-five kilometers to the east.[822] Tsushima daimyo So Yoshitoshi is also reported to have been present with a force of his own. They intended to join forces with Konishi’s besieged troops at Waegyo to drive off the allied navy, then put to sea together for the return voyage to Japan. It would not work out that way. Shortly after midnight the combined allied navy appeared at the far end of the strait, blocking the entrance into Kwangyang Bay.

  The Japanese passed through Noryang Strait shortly before dawn the next morning to find the allied navy waiting for them in the open water beyond. The bulk of the fleet comprised eighty-five heavy Korean vessels, board-roofed warships with presumably a few turtle ships as well. Interspersed between these were two types of Chinese craft: six large war junks equipped with sails and oars, and fifty-seven smaller oar-propelled galleys, both well-armed with a variety of cannons, the heaviest of them weighing nearly three hundred kilograms and firing two-kilogram iron balls. The entire force was divided into three squadrons, Yi Sun-sin in command on the right (with 2,600 Ming fighters on board his ships to fight alongside his own men), Chen Lin at the center, and Ming commander Deng Zilong on the left.[823] Shimazu Yoshihiro for his part commanded a larger fleet, but a significant portion of his vessels were lightly built transports—good for ferrying men back to Japan, but no match for a cannon or the ramming prow of a Korean battleship. He was therefore in for a serious fight.[824]

  Chen Lin at the center of the formation was one of the first to engage. Soon his flagship was surrounded by Japanese vessels pouring out of the strait, and the old Ming admiral, who had been willing at Waegyo to let the Japanese go in peace, was forced to fight for his life in the decisive battle Yi Sun-sin had wanted all along. The musket fire grew so intense that Chen’s men were forced to take cover, giving the Japanese the opportunity to close with his vessel and send boarding parties scrambling onto the deck. In the hand-to-hand fighting that ensued Chen’s own son was injured when he blocked a sword thrust directed at his father. One of Chen’s commanders managed to skewer the attacker with a trident and cast him overboard before he could finish the young man off.

  Seeing that Chen’s flagship was surrounded and in trouble, left wing commander Deng Zilong and two hundred of his Zhejiang fighters transferred to a Korean warship so that they could go to his aid. One of the other vessels in the allied fleet, mistaking the commander and his men for an enemy boarding party, came up behind them and opened fire, causing many casualties and disabling the ship. The stricken vessel was soon set upon by the Japanese and Deng and all his men were killed.[825]

  Yi Sun-sin’s squadron had in the meantime raced in from the right and was now rampaging through the enemy ranks, leveling mortar broadsides into their hulls and spewing flames across the decks with hwapo fire cannons. Much of the fighting occurred at such close range that the Koreans are said to have been able to hurl burning pieces of wood across the way and onto the Japanese ships.[826] Yi’s heavily built turtle ships and board-roofed ships were as usual largely impervious to the musket fire that the Japanese threw back, the light balls unable to penetrate the thick wooden hulls and roofing. Yi’s own warship reportedly destroyed a total of ten enemy vessels, including what appeared to be a flagship, judging from the high platform with red awning erected on its deck. Yi personally fired the arrow that felled one of the commanders seated there. The sight of this attack forced the Japanese vessels surrounding Chen Lin’s command ship to break off their attack and rush to protect their leader, thereby easing the pressure on the Ming admiral. Yi’s men managed to fight off the assault, and destroyed the Japanese flagship with hojunpo mortars and fire.

  The combined strength of the Korean and Chinese navy eventually proved too much for Shimazu Yoshihiro’s larger but less powerful fleet. One by one his ships were set on fire and sunk, clogging the icy water at the entrance of Noryang Strait with blazing wreckage, abandoned armor and weapons, and burned men struggling to stay afloat. It is said that Shimazu’s own flagship capsized when it ran onto a rock, and the daimyo commander himself nearly gaffed and hauled aboard by allied sailors before being saved by Japanese ships that rushed to his aid.[827] The Japanese nevertheless had a good deal of fight left in them still. Desperate now to break through the enemy fleet and get away home to Japan, they continued to fir
e back with their muskets with considerable effect, filling the air with a curtain of lead that caused many casualties aboard the Korean and Chinese ships. At one point Korean captain Song Hui-rip, a close friend of Yi Sun-sin, was struck in the helmet by a musket ball and fell unconscious to the deck. He eventually came to his senses, bound up his head and continued to fight.[828] Others were not so lucky. The list of Korean dead would include many rank-and-file fighting men, several captains, and even top commanders.

  With the battle now going against them, the Japanese began fighting a rearguard action south along the coast of Namhae Island and toward the open sea. Yi Sun-sin remained in close pursuit, determined not to let a single “enemy seed” escape. He stood at the bow of his ship, shouting encouragement to his men and beating on the war drum to urge on the other vessels in the fleet. At his side stood his eldest son, Yi Hoe, and his nephew, Yi Wan, son of an elder brother who had died many years before.

  Suddenly the Korean commander clutched his chest and slumped to the deck. A stray bullet had struck him high on the left side, near the armpit, entering his chest and possibly piercing his heart. It was at least the third time Yi had been wounded during his twenty-two years of military service. This time the wound was fatal. Knowing that the sight of their fallen leader would adversely affect the morale of his men, Yi gasped out to Hoe and Wan, “Don’t let the men know....” And then he died. Struggling to maintain their composure, the two men carried the commander’s body into his cabin before the calamity could be noticed. For the remainder of the battle Yi Sun-sin’s personal banner was kept flying from the topmast as Yi Wan continued to beat the war drum, sending reassurance to the squadron that his uncle was still in the fight and victory therefore assured. It would only be later, after the battle was won, that word of the commander’s death was allowed to spread through the fleet. Chen Lin himself is said to have been greatly shocked by the news, slumping down and beating his chest in grief as cries of mourning arose from the Korean ships gathered nearby.[829]

  By the time the smoke had cleared toward the end of the day, the Japanese fleet was gone. It had been a clear victory for the allies. According to the report on the battle that government minister Yi Dok-hyong sent to Seoul, about two hundred of Shimazu’s ships had been destroyed and an “uncountable number” of his men either killed or drowned.[830] Chen Lin would put the numbers at two hundred Japanese ships destroyed, one hundred ships captured, and five hundred heads taken, adding that “we don’t know how many of their men drowned as their bodies have not yet risen to the surface.”[831]

  * * *

  While the Battle of Noryang was being waged at the eastern end of Kwangyang Bay, Konishi Yukinaga’s forces were evacuating their fortress at Waegyo to the west and boarding their ships to return to Japan. No allied vessels were in the vicinity to stop them. When he received intelligence of this, General Liu Ting advanced from his headquarters at Sunchon and took possession of Waegyo without a fight. General Dong Yiyuan did the same at the abandoned Japanese stronghold at Sachon. Konishi’s fleet in the meantime made its way east to Pusan, the hundred surviving ships of Shimazu Yoshihiro following behind. They reached Pusan on December 21 and immediately began organizing the final evacuation.[832]

  At the opposite end of the Japanese fortress chain, Kato Kiyomasa was calmly evacuating his Tosan fortress, free from any pressure from nearby armies or enemy fleets. He set fire to his camps and the last of his stores on December 15, on the eve of the Battle of Noryang, then boarded his ships and put out to sea. When General Ma Gui received word of this, he raced down from his headquarters near Kyongju to pick off any stragglers and take possession of the fort. All he found was a message left behind by Kato. The Koreans and Chinese, it said, should not think that he had evacuated his fortress out of weakness; if Kato had chosen to do so he could have stayed and held Tosan for as long as he liked. Nor should they assume that Japan had been weakened by the death of Hideyoshi. The government remained stable, and the nation remained strong. Japan could in fact return and attack Korea any time it wished. It would therefore be in Korea’s best interests to approach Japan to arrange a lasting peace. Kato, consistently one of the most loyal and unrelenting of Hideyoshi’s daimyo commanders, thus left Korea conceding nothing to the allies. Japan remained an indomitable force, he in effect warned. Make an effort to appease us, or you might suffer more of the same. [833]

  With the Japanese now gone from Waegyo, Sachon, and Tosan, there was talk among the Chinese of marching on the exposed heart of the enemy perimeter at Pusan. By the time any serious movement was made in this direction, however, the Japanese there had evacuated as well. The last of their ships set sail for home on December 24, 1598, bringing to an end the Imjin War.[834]

  * * *

  For the rest of December Chen Lin and Yi Si-on, former Chungchong Army commander and now Yi Sun-sin’s replacement as head of the Korean fleet, roamed the waters off the southeast coast of Korea, running down the odd Japanese ship that had been left behind, routing stragglers out of caves, and laying claim to abandoned stores. Chen would return to China to receive the highest military honors to be bestowed on any Ming commander who served in the Korean campaign. He died in June of 1607.[835]

  The body of Yi Sun-sin, meanwhile, was transported back to the Korean navy’s base on Kogum Island, then carried in procession to the Yi family home at Asan to be buried on a hill near the tomb of the commander’s father, Yi Chong. As the coffin slowly proceeded along the icy roads on its journey north, weeping people gathered along the route to bow their heads and walk behind. The Korean government, which had remained suspicious of Yi until the very end, only now became generous with its recognition and rewards, bestowing on him the posthumous rank of Minister of the Right and ordering a shrine built at his former base at Yosu on the south coast, with sacrifices to be offered to the commander’s spirit in the spring and autumn of every year. Additional honors would follow as the years passed and Yi’s reputation grew, notably the bestowal in 1643 of the title Chungmugong, “Minister of Loyal Valor,” an honorific that is now commonly used by Koreans to refer to the revered commander. Numerous other shrines and monuments would also be erected at places like Hansan-do, Kogum-do, Koje-do, and Asan, mostly by local authorities and grateful citizens who felt that Yi Sun-sin had saved their land.[836]

  * * *

  Prime Minister Yu Song-nyong in the meantime was out of a job, the victim of the factional strife that came to be waged with renewed intensity as the war was winding down. The contending factions had been on the scene all along. The Japanese invasion had simply forced them to paper over their rifts and set aside their grudges while they dealt with the bigger issue of national survival. At the start of the war Yu’s Eastern faction held the preponderance of power. The opposing Westerners bided their time for the next six years, working with the Easterners for the good of the nation as they quietly secured for themselves the lofty posts of Minister of the Left (Yi Won-ik) and Minister of the Right (Yi Dok-hyong).[837] Finally, in November of 1598, with the Japanese on the verge of withdrawing from Korea, they made a move to unseat Yu Song-nyong. After a barrage of criticisms leveled at the elder statesman by anti-Eastern censors, an attack that King Sonjo tried to fend off, Yu was dismissed from office, and Yi Won-ik took his place.[838]

  It was during his retirement that Yu Song-nyong penned his important work Chingbirok, “A Record of Reprimands and Admonitions,” an account of the war coupled with a warning to future generations of what had gone wrong. In the preface he used a quote from the Shih-ching, the Chinese “Book of Odes,” to explain his reason for writing the book: “I have been chastised, and I will guard against future calamities.”[839] Yu lived in quiet retirement until his death in 1607 at the age of sixty-five.

  * * *

  Antiwar investigator Ding Yingtai, who had caused King Sonjo and his government such anguish with his charges of disloyalty to the Son of Heaven, remained in Korea throughout the winter of 1598–99, roaming about i
n search of improprieties to support his sagging case. He was a spent force, with no supporters in either Seoul or Beijing now that the war was won. He was finally recalled to China on March 16, 1599 to face charges of fabricating lies to attack innocent people. According to one Korean account, evidently based more on wishful thinking than fact, he was subsequently executed by having his body cut in two at the waist.[840] Chinese sources state merely that Ding was ordered to return to his hometown in central China, where he spent the rest of his life in obscurity, working as a teacher.[841]

  Two months after Ding’s departure, the long-awaited edict from the Wanli emperor arrived in Seoul, exonerating King Sonjo of the despised official’s charges. The weight of false accusation that had so oppressed Sonjo for more than a year was thus finally removed, and his relationship with Beijing restored to its former cordial balance. Sonjo would remain on the throne until his death in 1608.

  * * *

  Ming general “Big Sword” Liu Ting returned to China in early 1599 to resume his command in Sichuan Province, keeping the tribes there under control and the western borders of the empire safe. In the bestowal of military honors later that year he received second honors after Admiral Chen Lin for his service in Korea. Liu continued to serve his country into his late sixties. He died in combat fighting the Manchus in 1619. The details of his death remain obscure. Chinese sources recorded that Liu was killed in action, the Manchus claimed that he was captured and put to death, while the Koreans asserted that he committed suicide by blowing himself up with a charge of gunpowder.[842]