The Imjin War (16 page)

This, then, was Hideyoshi’s navy. It consisted of a large number of vessels, probably in the neighborhood of one thousand all told, but many were small, light transport ships with little or no fighting capabil
ity.
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Even the warships were not particularly strong or well armed, and were commanded by daimyo with little or no naval experience, men who regarded naval warfare as land warfare afloat. Whether any of this concerned Hideyoshi is not known. We may surmise from his unsuccessful attempt to secure Portuguese ships that he considered his homegrown fleet less than invincible. On the other hand, he had not encountered significant naval resistance during his unification of
Japan and probably did not expect to encounter any now, at least none that his ships could not handle.

When the Kuki completed construction at Ise of the warships they had been required to build, Hideyoshi ordered them to move the fleet forward to his invasion headquarters at
Nagoya, a journey of six hundred kilometers. From there it would accompany the taiko’s troop-laden transports across the strait to Pusan, lashing any Korean warship that ventured too close with a withering barrage of musket fire. That, anyway, was the plan.

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Some sort of Japanese aggression was by this time widely anticipated in
Korea. Ambassador Hwang Yun-gil, who had led the “goodwill mission” to Kyoto in 1590, had warned the court in Seoul that Hideyoshi posed a real threat, and many believed him. Even Vice-Ambassador Kim Song-il, who officially contradicted everything Hwang said and sparked the dispute between the Eastern and Western factions over whether or not there would be a war, confided to fellow Easterner Yu Song-nyong, now Minister of the Left,
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that he had not really meant what he said. “I also feel that there is no alternative, as in the end the Japanese will unleash war,” he said. “But Hwang’s words were too pessimistic, and those inside and outside the court will become bewildered and lose their self-control. That is the reason why I said what I did.”
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A fight was clearly coming with
Japan. Hwang and the Westerners knew it. Kim and the Easterners knew it. A full-blown invasion that would devastate the country and permanently cripple the dynasty was not expected. But something resembling a large wako pirate raid was. The Koreans had faced Japanese pirates on many occasions before, most recently in the 1550s. The official histories of the Choson dynasty and preceding Koryo dynasty made it clear that when Korea was unprepared, these marauders were capable of doing tremendous harm, but that with preparation they could be dealt with. So clearly preparation was required. But what sort of preparation? And how much? And where to start?

And what, in the meantime, should they tell Ming China?

The China issue arose upon the return of the Korean mission from Kyoto in the spring of 1591, bearing the letter from Hideyoshi that left no doubt as to his intentions: he wanted to invade the Middle Kingdom and usurp the Celestial Throne. To the Koreans, Hideyoshi’s conceit was not only shocking, it was distasteful and obscene, and they were sorry they had ever exchanged envoys with him. Some members of the government now began to worry that China might think Korea had stepped beyond the bounds of the vassal–sovereign relationship by establishing relations with this Japanese barbarian without prior Ming approval, and feared that Beijing would be angry if it found out. “I am afraid,” said Prime Minister Yi San-hae, “that unless we conceal the fact, the Imperial Court will consider it was a criminal act for us to have carried out an exchange of envoys with Japan on our own volition.”

Minister of the Left Yu Song-nyong did not agree. He argued that, as a loyal vassal of
China, Korea was duty-bound to inform the Ming court of these latest developments and to warn it of the looming threat posed by Japan. “Indeed,” he added, “if those robbers really plan to invade China, others may inform the Emperor. Then the Celestial Court will unjustly suspect that we have concealed this business because we are in accord with the Japanese.”

That was in fact exactly what was going on. By early 1591 word had already reached
Beijing from elsewhere of Hideyoshi’s plans for conquest, first from envoys dispatched by King Shonei of the Ryukyu Islands, then from separate messages sent by two Chinese men residing in Japan. Beijing awaited corroborative reports from Seoul, but the months passed and no word arrived, leading some to question the loyalty of Little China, and even to suspect that it might be somehow in league with Japan. Only Prime Minister Xu Guo, a former ambassador to the Choson court, stood up for Korea. “Korea has remained loyal to
sadae
[serving the great],” he said. “It cannot be in agreement with the rebellious spirit of the Japanese. Just wait awhile.”
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Beijing
waited. And the Koreans continued to talk. In the meantime, Inspector-General Yun Tu-su, who agreed with Yu Song-nyong about the need to inform the Ming of the threat posed by Japan, privately wrote a report of his own and gave it to Kim Ung-nam, the ambassador of a tribute mission then about to depart for Beijing, with orders to deliver it as soon as he arrived, a breach of protocol that would subsequently earn Yun a stint in exile in the countryside.
This vague document, which made no mention of the envoys that had been exchanged between Korea and Japan but only of “rumors” the Koreans had heard, reached the Ming capital not long after the Ryukyuan envoy sent by King Shonei and thus eased some of the suspicion the Chinese were starting to feel. Mistrust would linger, however, for it would not be until early 1592 that an official embassy finally arrived from Korea with what was purported to be a full account of Hideyoshi’s threats and demands and the events that had transpired over the past four years. And even then the Koreans felt it necessary to gloss over many of the details, particularly concerning the envoy exchanges, for they continued to fear that these would be misinterpreted as evidence of their truckling with Japan.
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While the question of whether to inform
China was being debated in the halls of power in Seoul, attention was also being directed to the state of the nation’s defenses. They were not in good shape. Something had to be done to shake up the military if an invasion was to be met.

Korea
’s military in 1592 was based upon an organizational framework that had existed since the beginning of the Choson dynasty two centuries before. It had been modeled to a great extent upon the defense structure of the preceding Koryo dynasty, which in turn had followed the general pattern of the military of Tang-dynasty China.
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The nation’s army consisted of five “guards”: a Forward Guard for Cholla Province in the southwest; a Rear Guard for Hamgyong Province in the northeast; Left Guard for Kyongsang Province in the southeast; Right Guard for Pyongan Province in the northwest; and Middle Guard for the central provinces of Hwanghae, Kyonggi, Kangwon, and Chung
chong. Each of these five guards maintained army garrisons and naval bases in their respective regions of the peninsula, plus an auxiliary force in Seoul to defend the capital and to serve as a national army in time of crisis.
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Overall command of
Korea’s armed forces was in the hands of the General Headquarters of the Five Guards in Seoul. Beneath this body were the nation’s top generals. These generals did not actually command armies. It was the practice in Choson Korea to keep them all based in Seoul, under the controlling hand of the government and well removed from the armies they were ostensibly responsible for. This was done to protect the nation from the threat of insurrection. The Koryo dynasty had fallen in this very manner back in 1388, when General Yi Song-gye marched his army on the capital, usurped the king, and subsequently founded the Choson dynasty with himself as monarch. Once he was secure in power, Yi initiated the practice of separating generals from their armies to ensure that no one henceforth would be able to do what he had done and overthrow his own dynasty. Generals would be placed at the head of armies only when national security was threatened and a military response required. Otherwise they would be kept in Seoul.

The measure had its intended effect. Throughout its six hundred years of existence the Choson dynasty would never be seriously threatened by its own armed forces. But such internal security came at a price: it deprived the nation’s top military leaders of hands-on com
mand experience and left them to a great extent in the dark as to the state of the armies they would be expected to lead if and when war came. How many men did they have? Were they well armed? Were they being trained on a regular basis? Were they prepared to go to war at a moment’s notice? For the generals of Choson Korea these were questions that would remain unanswered until a crisis was upon them and the time to prepare long past.

In terms of actual leadership in the field, the highest military rank in
Korea was the commander. Each of Korea’s eight provinces was assigned between one and three army commanders and navy commanders, with one of these posts being held concurrently by the province’s civilian governor. No real distinction was made between army and navy; commanders and officers serving below them could be assigned to one as well as the other. Provinces of greater strategic importance, namely those in the south nearest the wako pirates of Japan and in the north bordering Manchuria, were assigned more commanders, while provinces of lesser importance were assigned fewer. The provinces of Kyongsang-do in the far southeast and Hamgyong-do in the far northeast, for example, were regarded as the first line of defense against foreign aggression and consequently were assigned a total of six commanders. This meant that, aside from the largely meaningless concurrent postings held by the provincial governor, a civil official with no military background, each province consisted of four tangible commands led by four professional commanders: a Right Army, a Left Army, a Right Navy, and a Left Navy. The southwestern province of Cholla-do was also regarded as key, primarily against seaborne invasion, and consequently it had three commands in addition to the governor’s insubstantial posts: a Right Navy, a Left Navy, and one Army.
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Chungchong Province bordering the Yellow Sea had two: an Army and a Navy. The provinces of Hwanghae-do and Kangwon-do, on the other hand, had little military command structure of any substance. These central regions were far removed from Korea’s vulnerable southern coast and northern frontier, and consequently had only one army and one navy command post each, with both falling to the provincial governor.
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The officer corps for
Korea’s military was recruited by means of a periodic examination. It examined men on their knowledge of military science through the classical works of Sun Tsu and others, and tested their skill in the military arts of horseback riding and firing a bow, the quintessential weapon in Korean warfare. The quality of officers this system produced was often quite low. To begin with, it promoted the concept of “officer as prima donna.” The ideal Korean commander was expected to be an expert horseman, a skilled archer, and a fearless warrior, the sort of man who could ride straight into an enemy line, firing arrows and slashing with sword, with the men under his command following close behind. He was not expected to be well versed in the more mundane arts of training men to fight as a unit. According to Minister of the Left Yu Song-nyong, who was greatly concerned about the state of the military, “not one in a hundred [officers] knew the methods of drilling soldiers.”
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A second reason for the low quality of
Korea’s officer corps was lack of prestige: in Korea, as in China, a career in the military was not highly regarded. It was a distant second choice for those unable to pass the civil service exam and scale the lofty heights of government service; a suitable calling for the sweaty and not-too-bright, perhaps, but certainly not for a man of real intelligence. Once in the military, moreover, officers were constantly reminded of their inferior status by their haughty civil service counterparts, who freely second-guessed their military decisions and even took over their commands, secure in the belief that a civilian official’s education in the classics qualified him for any task, including the command of troops. During the century preceding the Imjin War it had in fact become increasingly common for civil officials to be appointed provincial army and navy commanders. Such appointments were regarded as appropriate. For a province’s civilian governor to hold the concurrent posts of army and navy commander was also considered a valid and useful assignment. Such men would have had absolutely no military experience to bring to the job. But they possessed the wisdom of the classics, and that was enough.
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The Korean army and navy were manned through conscription. All able-bodied males were subject to military service with the exception of the sons of the yangban upper class. This system was supposed to maintain a standing army and navy totaling 200,000 men, with an addi
tional 400,000 reservists who could be called up in an emergency. These numbers may have been accurate early on in the dynasty, when military rosters were updated every six years. By the sixteenth century, however, the entire system was in disarray. Military rosters were no longer kept up to date, and all sorts of methods had arisen whereby families managed to keep their men out of the military, for example by hiring someone else to serve in their place, or by paying a fee in lieu of service. This latter method became especially prevalent, and led to rampant corruption in the armed forces, with officers bypassing the military examination and buying their commissions so they could then get rich by selling service exemptions. On the eve of Hideyoshi’s invasion, therefore, the actual size of Korea’s military was anybody’s guess.
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