Authors: Samuel Hawley
The Japanese had already taken steps to achieve this end. Earlier in the year Konishi Yukinaga had sent his spy Yojiro to the Koreans with information regarding the movements of his rival Kato Kiyomasa, urging them to do both him and themselves a favor by ordering the navy out to meet and kill him. When naval commander Yi Sun-sin refused to do so for fear of sailing into a trap, Yojiro returned to report on the golden opportunity that had been missed. This clever nudge, delivered when it was, helped to turn the government in
Seoul, already wracked with doubts about Yi, entirely against him. Korea’s supreme naval commander, the man who had led the Korean navy so successfully at the start of the war, was dismissed from office on charges of refusing to obey orders and submitting false reports claiming too much glory. After suffering the ignominy of imprisonment and torture, Yi now resided in a mountain hut near the south coast, ostensibly serving as a common soldier in the army of Commander in Chief Kwon Yul, but in reality left to himself while he awaited exoneration.
It would not be long in coming. Won Kyun, Yi Sun-sin’s replace
ment as supreme naval commander, proved every bit as incompetent as Yi had claimed all along. Upon assuming office on Hansan Island, Won took up residence with his concubine in the Council Hall where Yi had formerly met with his officers and men, and then proceeded to neglect his command. As the threat of a second Japanese offensive loomed, Won whiled away the hours getting drunk, meting out punishments, and venting his anger on all who ventured near, particularly those officers whom he regarded as resentful of his leadership and still loyal to Yi. Such behavior soon resulted in a breakdown of discipline within the Korean navy. It started to be whispered among the men that Commander Won did not have what it would take to defeat the Japanese and that their only chance of surviving any coming battle would be to run away. Officers began to ignore Won’s orders and laugh at him behind his back. Others grew frustrated and either left their posts in protest or were driven away. By the middle of the summer Yi Sun-sin’s formerly formidable navy was rapidly losing its fighting spirit and increasingly in danger of falling apart.
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Yi Sun-sin remained well apprised of the situation at his place of exile in southwestern
Kyongsang Province. Several of his former officers visited him there throughout July and August to report what was happening, in some instances delivering the news with tears in their eyes. Yi, already sick with grief over the recent death of his mother, sank deeper into depression as he recorded in his diary “the evil deeds of the rascal Won Kyun.”
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.
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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.”
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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.”
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As the Korean navy was falling into disarray, the Japanese fleet gath
ering 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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, there
fore, 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 gov
ernment 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 Island, 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.”
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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.
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Kwon Yul was unsatisfied by this half-hearted and short-lived cam
paign. 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.
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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.
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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, con
fronting 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.
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Ignoring the daunt
ing 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.