A History of Korea (48 page)

While the war was turning to Japan’s disadvantage, in August 1598 Toyotomi, the prime player behind the invasion, suddenly died. Under the pretext of his death, the Japanese determined to withdraw from Chos
ŏ
n. In December 1598
Japanese forces were in full-scale retreat, but attacking the retreating Japanese to the end, Yi Sun-sin was struck by a stray Japanese bullet and killed in the sea off Noryang point. The battle at Noryang point ended with a Chos
ŏ
n victory and the Japanese loss of nearly 250 of the original 500 ships. Finally, the Korean-Japanese war of 1592–1598 came to a conclusion but with grave consequences for Chos
ŏ
n, Japan, and Ming China.

For Chos
ŏ
n, the war of 1592–1598 was a tragedy, more devastating than any other event in Korean history (even the Korean War of 1950–1953). Japanese forces had ravaged and despoiled the entire nation, and today’s anti-Japanese sentiment can be traced back to this unprovoked Japanese invasion. The Chinese armies that came to Chos
ŏ
n’s aid were not much better. For the duration of the war, the administration and the economy were entirely disrupted. The Chos
ŏ
n dynasty never fully recovered from these blows.

Of all the devastation and suffering the Japanese invaders caused, the worst occurred in Ky
ŏ
ngsang province, the main theater of war. For example, 90 percent of the farmlands there had turned into wasteland. The Japanese slaughtering of the people markedly decreased the entire population of the nation. The Chinese were no better than the Japanese in the destruction they caused and the crimes they committed. Famine and disease ensued, which led to the compilation, in 1610, of a great medical treatise,
Tong
ŭ
i pogam,
or Precious Exemplar of Korean Medicine, by H
ŏ
Chun. Because land and census registers had been destroyed, the government had great difficulty collecting taxes and enforcing corvee levies. In efforts to overcome its financial difficulties, particularly the shortage of food grains, the government sold office titles and ranks in exchange for
napsok,
or grain contributions, in set amounts. The cultural treasures lost in fires set by Japanese troops included the Ky
ŏ
ngbok-kung palace and Pulguk-sa temple. The irreplaceable cultural materials rooted out of Chos
ŏ
n and taken to Japan included royal and government records, historical documents, art objects, paintings, Kory
ŏ
porcelains, tens of thousands of books, and hundreds of thousands of handmade cast-movable metal type made over two centuries. The loss of artisans and technicians caused a decline in the quality of handiwork as well as in manufactured goods such as pottery and book printing. Neo-Confucian norms and values were gradually shaken. The dynastic cycle leading to the decline of the kingdom was initiated by the factional struggle within officialdom and was accelerated by this war.

On the other hand, the Japanese greatly benefited from their contact with Korea’s higher civilization. That civilization was transmitted mostly through Japanese plunder and looting. But Japan also gained from the captives who were taken to Japan, including scholars and craftsmen who brought with them cultural and technological gains. The famous Japanese pottery of Satsuma, Karatsu, Hagi, and Raku were all made by kidnapped Korean potters. The numerous books seized and the many scholars captured by the Japanese also contributed to the development of learning in Japan, especially the study of Neo-Confucianism. Among the tens of thousands of Koreans shipped to Japan as prisoners of war, many were sold to European traders, mainly the Portuguese, as slaves at Nagasaki. The Portuguese merchants then resold them in Southeast Asia.

The war with Chos
ŏ
n caused political upheavals in Japan. After Hideyoshi’s death, his son Hideyori, then only five years old, became head of the Toyotomi clan. But the clan’s power and prestige greatly weakened. Tokugawa Ieyasu, who did not dispatch his troops to Chos
ŏ
n and thus kept his military strength intact, won the decisive battle of Sekigahara, defeating the Toyotomi forces, in October 1600, and then established himself as shogun in 1603. The Tokugawa shogunate lasted until the Meiji Restoration of 1868.

After the war Chos
ŏ
n severed diplomatic relations with Japan. But in its efforts to repatriate Korean prisoners of war and at Japan’s earnest request, Chos
ŏ
n entered into friendly relations with Japan in 1607. Soon after the Chos
ŏ
n envoy Monk Yuj
ŏ
ng brought back more than 7,000 Korean captives, both countries exchanged delegates. Between 1607 and 1811 Chos
ŏ
n dispatched its envoys to Japan 12 times, and Japan sent its emissaries to Chos
ŏ
n more than 60 times. Whenever Chos
ŏ
n envoys arrived in Japan, the Tokugawa shogunate sent welcoming parties and treated them with courtesy equal to that given to the highest-ranking daimyos, powerful feudal lords.

The war also shook the balance of power on the Asian continent. By ridding Manchuria of Ming garrisons, the war paved the way for the Nuzhen Manchus to rapidly grow in strength in Manchuria, conquer Ming, and become the masters of China proper.

In 1608 Kwanghaegun ascended the Chos
ŏ
n throne, succeeding his father, King S
ŏ
njo. The intelligent Kwanghaegun displayed uncommon capacities in directing both domestic and foreign affairs. In his reign (1608–1623), the Taebuk
faction assumed the reins of government. To reconstruct his state, which had been in a completely debilitated condition, Kwanghaegun, with the help of the Taebuk faction, executed a new land survey and reinstituted census registers. To alleviate some of the burdens on the peasantry, who had to pay the heavy tribute tax, in 1608 he enforced the Taedongp
ŏ
p, a measure for paying taxes in rice, in Ky
ŏ
nggi province. He also rebuilt the
sago,
or history archives, and printed many books, such as duplicate sets of
Chos
ŏ
n wangjo sillok.

Among Kwanghaegun’s other accomplishments, the most noteworthy was his adroit foreign policy, which kept Chos
ŏ
n from being drawn into the acutely developing conflict on the Asian continent. The rise of the Nuzhen Manchus in Manchuria had already posed a grave threat to Chos
ŏ
n. At the time the Manchus produced a great leader, Nurhachi. By 1592, when the Korean-Japanese war began, Nurhachi was in command of a considerable force. An outstanding organizer of military as well as political institutions, he organized his army under eight banners of different colors and raised his troops as a formidable force. Nurhachi formally rebelled against Ming in 1616 and named his new nation Later Jin. Ming sent a large force to put down the revolt and asked Chos
ŏ
n for assistance.

Kwanghaegun was the only person in the Chos
ŏ
n court who viewed Ming not in terms of Neo-Confucianism but realistically. He thought Ming was no longer a match for Later Jin, but bowing to pressure from his subjects, he reluctantly sent a token force of 13,000 men commanded by Kang Hong-nip. After Kang’s relief army arrived in Manchuria in 1619, Later Jin persuaded the Chos
ŏ
n forces to surrender repeatedly. On the verge of annihilation, Kang had no alternative but to surrender for survival. When the Westerners deposed Kwanghaegun in 1623, they denounced the king for not wholeheartedly helping Ming, which the Westerners perceived as the “parent country,” and made this a major pretext for their coup against him.

Before he was overthrown, Kwanghaegun had actually pursued a neutral or balanced policy toward Later Jin and Ming. For instance, he never offended Later Jin, and at the same time permitted the Ming general Mao Wenlong, who planned to recapture the Liaodong peninsula, to encamp on the Chos
ŏ
n island of Ka-do near the estuary of the Yalu River. Also, he did not neglect, but enhanced, his country’s state of military preparedness against any possible Manchu invasion.

At this perilous point, in 1623, the dethroned Kwanghaegun was succeeded by King Injo (1623–1649), and the factional strife, which had temporarily subsided
in the face of the Japanese invasion, returned with renewed intensity. The Westerners deposed Kwanghaegun on the grounds that, besides betraying Ming China, in 1613 he had deposed his stepmother, Queen Dowager Kim, and slaughtered her son, his half-brother, Prince Y
ŏ
ngch’ang, who was patronized by the Sobuk faction. After the coup, Kwanghaegun was banished to Kanghwa-do and leading members of the Taebuk faction were all executed. Like Y
ŏ
nsan’gun a century ago, Kwanghaegun was no longer called king but was named “Kwanghaegun,” or the Prince of Kwanghae.

King Injo, heavily influenced by the Westerners, including Kim Yu, Yi Kwi, and Yi Kwal, who had put him on the throne, abandoned his predecessor’s posture of watchful waiting in favor of avowedly pro-Ming and anti–Later Jin policy. This change in Chos
ŏ
n policy was taken by Manchus as a serious affront. Manchus felt it necessary to secure their flank before proceeding with their campaign to conquer China proper. At this point, in February 1624, Yi Kwal led a rebellion against the government and occupied Seoul, believing he had been inadequately rewarded for his services in bringing Injo to the throne. When he was defeated and killed by government forces in March, remnants of his troops fled to Manchuria, where they seem to have urged Manchus to invade Chos
ŏ
n to redress the immorality of Kwanghaegun’s dethronement.

Nurhachi died of battle wounds in 1626, and his son, Abahai, succeeded him. Under the pretext of righting the wrong of Kwanghaegun’s deposal, Abahai dispatched 30,000 men to Chos
ŏ
n in February 1627. Still not recovered from the war with Japan, the Chos
ŏ
n army was ill-prepared to defend against these Manchu forces, which quickly moved as far south as P’y
ŏ
ngsan, Hwanghae province. While advancing, Manchus sent envoys to the Chos
ŏ
n government demanding a negotiated settlement. Stubborn resistance of the
ŭ
iby
ŏ
ng militia slowed the invaders’ advance and forced them to make peace with Chos
ŏ
n. The Chos
ŏ
n government had also desired a peaceful settlement, and so they reached an agreement in April. In exchange for the withdrawal of the Manchu forces, Chos
ŏ
n agreed on terms with Later Jin and the two established a brotherly relationship, with the Later Jin as the older brother and Chos
ŏ
n as the younger.

In May 1636 Abahai, Emperor Taizong, renamed his state of Later Jin to Qing. After the invasion of 1627 Chos
ŏ
n continued to defy Manchus, and so the relationship between the two countries remained bleak. Chos
ŏ
n’s Neo-Confucian scholar-officials believed that it would be treachery to abandon Ming China
after its assistance during the war with Japan, and they also resented the Manchu invasion of 1627. This resentment grew deeper when Qing sent a diplomatic representative to Chos
ŏ
n demanding that the country acknowledge the sovereign-subject relationship between the two states. The Chos
ŏ
n government rejected this demand, and King Injo even refused to receive the Qing envoys and the documents they carried. In January 1637 the angry Qing emperor personally led 100,000 troops in an assault against Chos
ŏ
n, knowing that Chos
ŏ
n maintained close relations with Ming and that he could not afford to face two enemies from the west and south. The southern front had to be secured before he could invade China proper.

Qing troops were mostly cavalry who moved quickly, and they reached Seoul in a few days. King Injo sent his queen, his sons, and their wives to seek refuge on Kanghwa-do, but Manchu forces prevented Injo himself from fleeing to the island, as Korean kings traditionally did. He hurriedly escaped, with barely 14,000 soldiers, to the Namhansan-s
ŏ
ng fortress just south of Seoul. In the fortress the Chos
ŏ
n army was suffering from a scarcity of food and other supplies, as well as cold weather. Immediately upon Injo’s arrival, the fortress was besieged by Manchus. Confounding matters, Kanghwa-do fell to Manchus, its royal refugees were taken prisoner, and several attempts by Chos
ŏ
n forces from various provincial and local garrisons to break the siege were foiled. Heeding the pleas of Ch’oe My
ŏ
ng-gil and other moderate officials who advocated peace, Injo surrendered, and in February 1637, at Samj
ŏ
ndo (present-day Songp’a in Seoul), he capitulated to the Manchu emperor in a ceremony known as kowtow (
ketou
), the act of supplication (in which one kneels three times and prostrates oneself nine times). By the terms of the surrender, Chos
ŏ
n vowed to sever its ties with Ming, acknowledge the suzerainty of Qing, and delivered Injo’s two eldest sons as hostages. Subsequently Crown Prince Sohy
ŏ
n and his younger brother, Prince Pongnim, along with some hard-line Chos
ŏ
n officials, accompanied the withdrawing Manchu forces as hostages. Reportedly 100,000 women were also sent to Qing as its spoils of war. Among the hard-liners, scholar-officials Hong Ik-han, Yun Chip, and O Tal-che refused to surrender to the end and were executed in the Qing capital of Shenyang. Another high-level official, Kim Sang-h
ŏ
n, was held in harsh confinement in a Manchu prison for three long years.

The two Manchu invasions deeply injured Korean pride and earned their hatred. Although their country officially yielded in obeisance, Koreans remained defiant toward the Qing empire, although privately. They considered Manchus
uncivilized
orangk’e,
or barbarians. King Hyojong (1649–1659), who lived as a hostage for seven years in Shenyang and succeeded Injo, planned an unrealistic expedition to Qing during his ten-year reign. His death on the eve of the northern expedition ended the plan. On the other hand, because Chos
ŏ
n was forced to be a vassal state of the Qing empire, loyalty to Ming remained strong in Korean hearts for many years. Qing conquered Ming in 1644, and Manchus reigned as the masters of China until 1911. Content with degrading Chos
ŏ
n to a tributary state, the Qing empire respected the Korean kingdom’s political independence and territorial integrity.