Authors: Samuel Hawley
Whether or not the people will survive, whether or not the land will remain, depends on this battle. It behooves everyone with the sacred blood of Tan’gun flowing in their veins to defend the country with their lives. When even the trees and grass rise as warriors, how much more should red-blooded people?
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More than eight thousand monk-soldiers
(sungbyong)
answered Hyujong’s call to arms. They were rallied by regional Buddhist leaders like Choyong, abbot of Taehung Monastery in Cholla Province; Yujong, abbot of Kangwon’s Naejang Monastery; Yonggyu, abbot of Chongyon Monastery in Chungchong; and Yongjong, abbot of Kyonggi Province’s Chongyong Monastery. They did not amount to a large force, particularly when compared to the tens of thousands of government soldiers now sitting idle in camps to the north. In the coming months, however, they would more than prove their worth. They saw their first serious combat alongside Cho Hon’s civilian volunteers at the Battle of Chongju. The date was September 6, 1592.
Chongju occupied a strategic location on the main north–south transportation artery running up the middle of the
Korean Peninsula. It also served as the economic center for the entire central region and housed a large government granary. Its loss to the Japanese had thus been a heavy blow. The city had been taken on June 4 by the third contingent under Kuroda Nagamasa during their march north from Angolpo to Seoul. After securing this prize and its wealth of grain, Kuroda had continued on to the capital, leaving behind a small unit to hold the city until reinforcements arrived. These additional forces, contingents four through nine, crossed over to Korea during the next several weeks and subsequently fanned out across the southern half of the peninsula, extending Japanese control outward from the vanguard contingents’ main line of march. A force of seventy-two hundred men under Hachisuka Iemasa of the fifth contingent eventually arrived at Chongju to relieve the garrison Kuroda had left behind and then settled down to an uneventful three months’ wait.
It was essential to the Koreans that Chongju be retaken. With this strategically placed city back in their hands, guerrilla armies and monk-soldiers could work to sever the main Japanese supply line and in turn cut off the enemy forces that were now far to the north in Seoul and beyond. Chongju was also the key to protecting
Cholla Province, for it would have to be taken before an advance could be made on the border town of Kumsan, where enemy forces were amassing for an intended thrust into the southwest.
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Government official turned guerrilla commander Cho Hon took the lead in the move to retake Chongju. He had already recruited eleven hundred civilian volunteers in
Chungchong Province, but feeling this was not enough manpower, he solicited government troops from the provincial governor, Yun Son-gak, who still had a number of regular troops under his command. Yun had been responsible for the initial loss of Chongju and was thus eager to see it retaken. He was not interested in taking joint action, however, but rather sought to requisition Cho’s own forces so that he could lead them himself in an attack on Chongju and thereby redeem his honor. Cho declined. He instead formed an alliance with the monk commander Yonggyu, who in answer to Buddhist master Hyujong’s call to arms had raised a force of a thousand warrior-monks. Yonggyu had initially intended to lead his men only in independent actions, but came to see the wisdom of joining forces with Cho Hon’s civilian volunteers for a concerted attack on Chongju.
The Koreans converged on Chongju on September 6. Cho’s eleven hundred civilian volunteers approached from the north and east, while Yong
gyu’s warrior-monks, backed by five hundred regular troops grudgingly provided by Chungchong governor Yun, gathered outside the west gate. Many of the men did not have proper weapons, but carried axes and farm tools, anything that could be used to chop or hack or impale. The number of Japanese within the walls of the town is unknown, but was probably fairly small. Hachisuka Iemasa had not expected to encounter any strong resistance and thus earlier in the summer had sent a portion of his force northeast to garrison the nearby town of Chungju. When the Koreans arrived, moreover, some of his men were away foraging for food and the city’s defenses were lax.
The battle began when a unit of Japanese musketeers, stripped to their loincloths in the heat of late summer, came out from the fortress to attack Cho’s massed volunteers while they were still some distance from the town. The Koreans fell back to the cover of the trees, then fanned out to the left and right until they had the exposed enemy sur
rounded. The musketeers were then put on the defensive with a hail of arrows, and in a rush forward were finished off. Many of their muskets were captured, but the Koreans did not know how to fire them, and so for the time being could only use them as clubs. With this advance party of Japanese out of the way, the Koreans advanced on the walls of Chongju itself, intent on launching an attack. Before they could do so, however, the sky blackened and a heavy rain began to fall, drenching Cho Hon and his men. It was decided to fall back to a hill overlooking the town and resume the attack the next day.
Some hours later a Korean woman slipped out of Chongju and brought Cho Hon and his volunteers word that the Japanese within had given up and were preparing to leave. Cho, suspecting that she might be a spy sent to lure them into the city, sent a few men to peer over the walls and report what was going on. They discovered that the woman was right: the Japanese were indeed withdrawing. Before sunrise the next morning the jubilant Koreans broke through the gates and took the town without a fight.
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With Chongju back in Korean hands, the way was now clear to attack Kumsan farther to the south, where guerrilla leader Ko Kyong-myong had met his end the month before, and where Japanese forces were still poised for an intended move into
Cholla Province. By this point more than twenty thousand regular troops had been mustered in Cholla-do to protect the province. Had these government soldiers been combined with Yonggyu’s monk-soldiers and Cho Hon’s civilian volunteers for a coordinated attack against Kumsan, the Japanese might very well have been routed. Unfortunately for the Koreans, mutual jealousies and feelings of ill will prevented this from happening. In his official report on the Battle of Chongju, Chungchong governor Yun Son-gak falsely gave all the credit for the victory to his government troops and praised Yonggyu and his monk-soldiers, but scarcely acknowledged the presence of Cho Hon and his civilian volunteers. This slight angered Cho, and he submitted his own report highlighting the cowardice of the government troops. By September relations between the civilian volunteers, monk-soldiers, and government troops had become strained, with each side distrustful of the other.
In that same month the government ordered its troops in Cholla Province to begin preparing for an attack on Kumsan in cooperation with the monk-soldiers and Cho Hon’s volunteers. Cho, still smarting from the shabby treatment he had received in the wake of the retaking of Chongju, was reluctant to participate. He would attack Kumsan alone, he said. His unwillingness to cooperate with government troops and monk-soldiers was met with disapproval from all quarters, even by some within his own ranks. Cho, however, remained adamant, and when the planned joint attack on Kumsan was repeatedly delayed he insisted on proceeding alone. Monk commander Yonggyu tried to stop him, pointing out that the only way to take Kumsan would be through joint action with government troops. Cho would not listen. “When the king is humiliated,” he replied with great emotion, “we subjects must not be afraid to die. The time for that is now!” With that he set out with his seven hundred men. They arrived at Kumsan on September 22 and set up camp three kilometers outside the town.
Many thousands of Japanese troops were by this time gathered within the town under sixth contingent leader Kobayakawa Takakage, plus reinforcements that had arrived during the previous month. Kobayakawa had received word that the enemy force encamped outside his stronghold was only a small one, and was unsupported by other units. He thus decided to take the offensive. During the night a body of troops slipped out of the town and swung around behind the Korean camp. Then the gates of Kumsan were thrown open, and the Japanese struck Cho’s army simultaneously from the front and the rear. “You can only die once!” Cho reportedly shouted to his men. “So do it bravely!” They did. Cho Hon’s volunteers fought and died to a man during the course of that night, all seven hundred of them. When Cho’s brother visited the battlefield the next day to collect his remains, he found the commander lying under the unit’s banner, surrounded by the bloody bodies of his many faithful men. Among the dead was Cho Hon’s own son, Cho Wan-gi, clad in a general’s uniform, it was said, because he had wanted the Japanese to direct their fire toward him and not at his father. All seven hundred bodies eventually would be interred in a grave mound that would come to be known as the Tomb of the Seven Hundred Martyrs.
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News of the disaster at Kumsan could not have come as much of a surprise to monk commander Yonggyu and his monk-soldiers; they had considered Cho Hon’s intention to attack the Japanese stronghold alone foolhardy from the start. But they nevertheless did not condemn him. As they saw it, the real villain in the affair was Yun Son-gak, the self-serving governor of
Chungchong Province who had hogged the glory for the earlier victory at Chongju, frustrating Cho and driving him to take the precipitous action he did. These considerations, coupled with the example Cho had set with his own courageous death, stirred Yonggyu and his monks to do the same. Not waiting for the arrival of government troops, they marched on Kumsan and spent three days trying to storm its walls, until heavy losses, including the death of Yonggyu himself, forced them to retire.
The disaster at Kumsan illustrated once again how distrust and jeal
ousy often worked to sabotage Korean efforts to resist the Japanese. The Koreans had now attacked the walls of that town three times, under Ko Kyong-myong, Cho Hon, and the monk Yonggyu, but still the Japanese remained ensconced within. If anything can be said to have been accomplished by this terrible loss of life, it was that it made the Japanese reluctant to proceed with their plan to enter Cholla Province and bought the government time to organize its own troops and prepare some sort of defense.
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Elsewhere in the country civilian resistance was meeting with consid
erably more success. One such place was the ancient walled town of Yonan in Hwanghae Province near the Yellow Sea coast. It was here that third contingent leader Kuroda Nagamasa had encountered the only stubborn knot of resistance during his sweep through Hwanghae in July while en route to the north. Eager to catch up to his colleague Konishi for the taking of Pyongyang, Kuroda had not bothered to stop and clear out this relatively isolated and insignificant town, but resolved to return and deal with it later, after Pyongyang had been taken. This he did on October 3, 1592.
The defenders of Yonan, numbering no more than eight hundred, were under the command of Yi Chong-am, a former magistrate of the town and a man commanding deep respect. Yi had overseen prepara
tions for the defense of the town during the preceding weeks and had kept with him his brother and his family, an indication to the townspeople that he was prepared to commit all to the coming fight and expected them to do the same. As it turned out they did.
The Japanese began their siege by constructing an attack tower from which they could fire muskets and fire arrows over the walls. This terri
fied the Koreans, for most of the buildings of Yonan had thatched roofs and would burn like kindling at the first touch of flame. But luck was with them: the wind shifted as the Japanese went on the attack, blowing the smoke and fire back into their faces and setting their own camp alight. Kuroda’s troops then made a direct attack against the walls of the town. But each time they were driven back by a hail of arrows and showers of boiling water. After this first inconclusive contest Kuroda withdrew for a time, but only to get more troops. When he appeared again on October 6, this time with three thousand men, the defenders of Yonan realized the situation was probably hopeless. Inspired by Yi Chong-am, the leaders swore to die fighting, and sealed their vow with a drink of blood. Then they gathered their rocks and arrows and spears and prepared to meet their end as best they could.
The second battle of Yonan was fought with terrible ferocity. The Japanese threw everything they had against the walls, and the Koreans, men and women, the children and the aged, all raged back with desper
ate fury. Wood was thrown over the walls into piles along the base, then set alight to prevent the Japanese from approaching with their scaling ladders. This kept them at bay for a time, but they eventually found a way through the flames and were once again on the walls, swarming up “like ants.” With the Korean defenses seemingly on the verge of collapse, Yi Chong-am climbed atop a pile of kindling and ordered his son to set it alight if the Japanese cleared the top of the wall, shouting that he would rather burn than be taken alive. His exhausted followers, stirred by this display of determination, held their ground and fought like cornered beasts with anything that came to hand: stones, sharpened sticks, handfuls of eye-scorching soap powder. Finally the Japanese fell back, and they did not attack again. With his losses reaching alarming proportions—certainly more than he could afford on one insignificant town—Kuroda was forced to withdraw and the town of Yonan was saved.
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