Authors: Samuel Hawley
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.
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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.
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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 objec
tive, 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 sanc
tioned, 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.
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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.
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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.
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The Battle of Yangju was a minor engagement as far as the Japan
ese 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.
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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.
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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.
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There are five dangerous faults which may affect a general:
Sun Tsu Ping Fa
(Master Sun’s Art of War)
4th century B.C.
The Koreans did indeed have the Japanese checked. Commander in Chief Kim Myong-won had succeeded in amassing a sizable force on the far bank of the
Imjin River, together with all the boats for miles in either direction. He was soon joined by Han Ung-in, the government minister who had been sent to Beijing earlier that year to deliver the first full report on the Japanese threat. Upon his return Han was given command of three thousand experienced soldiers from the northern province of Pyongan and sent south to join Kim Myong-won in the defense of the Imjin, bringing the total Korean force assembled there to ten thousand men, the largest army so far to be placed in the way of the enemy advance. The Koreans’ position was ideal, for there was no way for the Japanese to cross the river en masse to take them on. Even if they managed to acquire some boats, the best they could do would be to ferry across their soldiers in small groups, easy prey for the Koreans when they attempted to land. All the Koreans had to do to hold the Japanese at bay, therefore, was stand their ground and wait.
But it was not to be. While the Korean army holding the north bank was numerically and visually impressive, its effec
tiveness was greatly hampered by the lack of a clear chain of command. It was a situation inadvertently aggravated by the Korean government itself. When Han Ung-in was sent south to join the defense of the Imjin, the government, chagrined by the recent Sin Kak affair, had informed him that he was not subject to orders from Kim Myong-won. This was undoubtedly intended to prevent another vice-commander from being accused of disobeying orders and facing execution. But of course it also served to further undercut Kim’s authority and divide the Korean army. Against the experienced and determined Japanese, this lack of unity would prove fatal.
Konishi, Kuroda, and Kato waited for ten days on the Imjin’s south bank, until it became clear that the Koreans were not going to give way without a fight as they had at the Han. Then they decided to try a ploy: they pretended to retreat. The feigned retreat had already become a favorite tactic of Korean sea hero Yi Sun-sin, an effective way to draw inexperienced and overconfident Japanese naval commanders into open water where he could then finish them off. But it had a much longer pedigree than that. Among the seven military classics of ancient
China, the fourth-century
B.C.
work
Sun Tzu Ping Fa
(Master Sun’s Art of War) makes the general observation that “All warfare is based on deception.... Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.... Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.”
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The
Ssu-ma Fa
(The Marshal’s Art of War), written a few decades later, recommends specifically that “If you are contending for a strategic position, abandon your flags [as if in flight, and when the enemy attacks] turn around to mount a counterattack.”
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This is precisely what the Japanese did. After ten days of sitting idly on the south bank of the Imjin, Konishi, Kato, and Kuroda doused their fires, packed up their gear, and made a show of beginning to march dejectedly back toward Seoul. For many of the Koreans watching from the river’s north bank it was a beautiful sight. The tide was turning! The enemy was retreating! One inexperienced young commander who had just come down from the north, Sin Kil, immediately set up a call to cross the river to pursue the routed robbers and cut off their heads. The older and more experienced commander Yu Kuk-ryang stepped forward and tried to calm him down, pointing out that the wisest course would be to wait and see what developed before rushing to the attack. This outraged Sin Kil. He called Yu a coward and drew his sword as if to cut him down. Yu escaped physical injury, but the accusation of cowardice dealt a serious blow to his honor, a soft spot for many Korean military leaders that, when touched, all too often drove them into ill-advised, knee-jerk displays of martial valor usually ending in defeat. Yu, unfortunately, was no exception. “Since I was a young man,” he replied indignantly, “I have been a soldier, following the flag and fighting battles wherever duty has taken me. How can you now accuse me of being afraid to die? The only reason I have urged you to be cautious is that I fear your impetuosity and inexperience will lead us all to destruction.” Then, to prove his courage beyond question, Yu abandoned his better judgment and insisted on leading the attack across the river himself. Sin Kil agreed.