The Imjin War (45 page)

The day was not without setbacks for the Koreans. At one point two of Yi’s battleships, their captains overeager to win honors, broke formation and darted forward to attack only to collide with each other, capsizing one, seriously damaging the other, and causing several deaths. For Yi, accustomed to inflicting heavy enemy losses at little or no cost to himself, the episode was mortifying. The captains of these two ships, Yi wrote in his dispatch to the throne, had forgotten one of the cardinal rules of battle: that too much disdain for the enemy can bring defeat just as surely as too much fear. But the fault, he concluded, was his own; it was due to his own lack of control.
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The day also brought yet another example of Kyongsang com
mander Won Kyun’s unwillingness to fight. In his diary Yi wrote that when a Korean battleship came to be surrounded and attacked by Japanese vessels, Won Kyun and his nearby Kyongsang contingent made no attempt to help. “[He] looked the other way as if [he] did not notice the scene.” Yi had words with Won after the battle about his “disgusting cowardice,” but his colleague seemed to think nothing of it, and “showed no sense of disgrace.”
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On April 5 Commanders Yi Sun-sin, Yi Ok-ki, and Won Kyun received word from the north that Commander in Chief Li Rusong had retreated back to
Pyongyang, and that the southward push by the Chinese army would not be materializing as soon as they had expected.
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This was disappointing news, for it meant that the Japanese would not take to their boats any time soon and attempt to return to
Japan. The hoped-for decisive battle would therefore have to wait.

For the next month naval activity along
Korea’s southern coast virtually ceased. The Korean navy maintained its vigilance in the waters west of Pusan and ran down the occasional boat that unwittingly crossed its path. But no further attacks were launched against the Japanese holed up on shore and the ships they had secreted in sheltered coves and narrow inlets. To continue to target Japanese craft, Yi decided, would only deprive the enemy of a means of escape when the big Ming push finally came, and the Koreans in turn of the chance to send them all to the bottom of the sea.

On April 23 a small fishing boat was stopped in nearby waters and the two Japanese on board, a twenty-seven-year-old calling himself Sogoro who “could read and write a little,” and a forty-four-year-old illiterate named Yosayemon, were arrested on suspicion of being spies. The two were brought before Yi Sun-sin, who interrogated them through an inter
preter. This is what they said:

We are natives of Izumo, Japan. On the 18th of this month [April 19] we put out to sea in a small boat for fishing and were caught while adrift before a storm. We don’t know very much about the daily activity or the way of espionage of the Japanese soldiery, but we heard that an order arrived from the homeland for evacuation of the Japanese armed forces from Korea before Third Moon [April] regardless of victory or defeat, because during two years’ stay in a foreign land the Japanese army suffered so many casualties. Therefore, the Japanese army here will go home as soon as its friendly battalions from the north will come to join it.

Commander Yi, finding their words “cunning and vague,” had them tortured, but no additional information could be extracted. He then ordered their arms and legs torn from their bodies. Finally they were put out of their misery by having their heads chopped off.
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These long weeks of campaigning necessarily brought the three commanders of the Korean navy into close and constant contact. Yi Sun-sin welcomed this opportunity to spend time with his respected younger colleague and friend, Cholla Right Commander Yi Ok-ki. The two men met often on ship and shore to talk, eat, play chess, and compete at archery. Being around Kyongsang Right Commander Won Kyun, on the other hand, was for Yi Sun-sin a trial and aggravation. In his war diary he wrote witheringly of Won’s incompetence as a com
mander, of his cowardice in the face of the enemy, of his “viciousness and malice,” and of the constant drinking that made everything worse.
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There was no one that Yi despised more who was not Japanese.

For Won, writhing in insecurity in the shadow of the more competent Yi, the feeling was mutual. The fact that his ranking superior had fewer years of military service than Won himself only heightened his resentment. It appears that he was not shy about venting his frustrations to those around him; this may have been what Yi was referring to in writing of Won’s “viciousness and malice.” Nor was the Kyongsang commander’s pen idle. In his own dispatches to the throne he hinted that Yi was a coward, that he refused to follow orders and did not revere the king. In the factionalized Korean government there were plenty of officials willing to believe these accusations and file them away, for Yi Sun-sin owed his position to his childhood friend Yu Song-nyong, a leader of the ascendant Easterner faction. He was thus himself an Easterner if only by default, and in turn an enemy to every Westerner who walked the halls of power. Yi for the moment was relatively safe, for with a war on, factional strife had been for the most part subsumed by more immediate concerns for national survival. The Japanese, however, were now on the defensive, and it was beginning to look like peace would be restored within the next several months. When that happened the eclipsed Westerners would surely return to the offensive against the Easterners in the never-ending fight for power. They would not attack Yu Song-nyong directly; that would be too dangerous. They would proceed in the tried and true manner of targeting the appointees and supporters of the man at the top, thereby undermining his power—men like Cholla Left Navy Commander Yi Sun-sin.

By the beginning of May Yi Sun-sin and Yi Ok-ki decided that it would be pointless and even dangerous to remain any longer in the waters off
Pusan. The anticipated southward push by the Ming army, and in turn the putting to sea of the Japanese fleet, was coming no time soon, so there was little they could accomplish there. Some sort of contagion, possibly typhoid, had also begun to sweep through the ranks and was threatening to carry off the entire Korean navy if the fleet did not soon disperse.

There was also the practical matter of the season to consider. With the time for planting already well upon them, it was imperative that the men of the Korean navy, mostly farmers, be allowed to return to their fields to sow the year’s crops. Otherwise there would be no harvest in the fall. The two Yis accordingly agreed to give their men leave in turns, and to put their vacated warships on “maintenance status” until the Chinese resumed their drive to the south and the time finally came for the decisive battle at sea.

On May 3 Yi Sun-sin returned to his home port of Yosu and Yi Ok-ki to Usuyong farther west, and the bulk of the Korean navy headed off to the fields.
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On May 7, 159
3, Commander in Chief Li Rusong arrived back in Kaesong with Shen Weijing. Li was undoubtedly glad he had spared Shen’s life earlier in the year, for the negotiator was now going to prove his worth in achieving the removal of the Japanese from Seoul without the loss of a single life. Not everyone supported Li’s intention to negotiate a quick settlement so that he and his army could return home. Li’s own superior, Song Yingchang, the government official charged with overseeing military operations in Korea from his headquarters in Liaodong, had reprimanded him for retreating to Pyongyang following the debacle at Pyokje and now urged him to resume the offensive. The Minister of War in Beijing, however, who was in turn Song’s superior, supported the idea of a peace settlement. From his perspective on the home front there was simply not enough money left in the imperial treasury to pay for further fighting. Commander Li was thus able to ignore Song’s instructions, and proceeded with his plan to bring the war to an end.
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The Koreans, meanwhile, were fuming over Li’s unwillingness to fight. They were also becoming fed up with his condescending attitude and his obvious desire to keep them in the dark as to his true intentions, telling them whatever he thought they wanted to hear just to keep them quiet. In early May, for example, in response to a plea from National High Commissioner Yu Song-nyong to attack the Japanese in Seoul, Li penned some soothing words about how he too wanted nothing more than to wipe the enemy out, when in fact he was at that very moment preparing to send Shen Weijing south to negotiate a truce.
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Tensions inevitably arose within the allied camp. Relations between Ming commander Li Rusong and Yu Song-nyong became particularly strained, so much so that Li at one point ordered the Korean official seized and beaten. Matters came to a head just prior to nego
tiator Shen’s departure for Seoul on May 8. Yu Song-nyong rode ahead into Kwon Yul’s camp at Paju, between the Imjin River and Seoul.
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A unit of Chinese soldiers was already there, with the Wanli emperor’s banner prominently displayed. Beside the banner, Yu observed a poster announc
ing that negotiations would soon be commencing and that Koreans henceforth were not allowed to attack the Japanese. Yu was furious. The Chinese commander on the scene, possibly in response to the Korean official’s evident displeasure, ordered him to bow to the emperor’s banner to show proper respect. Yu refused. This banner will be carried into Seoul by the negotiators, he said, and I will bow to nothing that the Japanese bow to. The Chinese commander thundered twice more that Yu must bow. Twice more Yu refused. Then he got on his horse and rode away.

By the following morning Yu Song-nyong’s temper had cooled enough for him to realize that he would have to go to Li Rusong and apologize. He rode to
Kaesong where the Ming commander was residing and presented himself outside the city walls. A guard peered out at him, but would not open the gate—Commander in Chief Li had clearly heard the story of the previous day’s disturbance. Yu turned to the official who was accompanying him. “The commander is angry and is testing us,” he said. “Let’s wait here for a while.”

It started to rain lightly. Someone inside came periodically to the gate to peek out and see whether the two Koreans had left. They had not. Finally, after several hours of patient waiting, the gate was opened and a damp Yu Song-nyong was ushered into the presence of Li Rusong. The apology was duly delivered and the tension eased, at least for that day.

It quickly returned. After leaving Kaesong, Yu headed south again, back toward the Korean army’s forward camp north of Seoul. He had not gone far when he came upon a unit of Chinese cavalry. One of the horsemen blocked his way with whip in hand. “Are you the National High Commissioner?” he barked. When Yu replied that he was, the officer grabbed his horse by the reins, yanked the animal around, and started lashing it on the flanks and shouting, “Get out of here! Go back to the north!”

There was nothing for the perplexed Yu to do but return to
Kaesong. It was only the next day that he learned what had been the cause of this strange episode: one of Li’s commanders had accused Yu of removing all the boats from the crossing at the Imjin River to prevent negotiator Shen Weijing from proceeding to Seoul to meet with the Japanese. It was a false charge, but it resulted only hours later in Yu’s arrest and his admittance for a second time into the presence of Li Rusong. This time he found Li pacing back and forth in a towering rage. The Ming commander ordered Yu stripped to the waist and tied to a plank to be given forty strokes with the paddle on his bare back.

It was only thanks to the timely arrival of one of Li’s officers that
Korea’s National High Commissioner was spared a serious beating. When Li attempted to confirm Yu’s treason with the man by inquiring about the state of the Imjin crossing, he was told that nothing had happened to the boats there and that the river could be crossed with ease. Li, realizing that Yu Song-nyong had been falsely accused, had him immediately released and apologized profusely. The order then went out for the arrest of Yu’s accuser. The man was duly arrested for making a false report and flogged into unconsciousness on the plank intended for Yu.
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In
Seoul, Konishi Yukinaga and his fellow daimyo had just received orders from Hideyoshi to evacuate the capital and pull back toward Pusan. The timing was fortuitous, the order arriving just days before Ming negotiator Shen Weijing. The Japanese could thus use the dire necessity of retreat as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the Ming Chinese.
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On May 8 Shen and an entourage of Ming generals proceeded south from
Kaesong to Seoul. They stopped along the way at the Korean army camp at Paju. Shen was accosted here by Korea’s commander in chief (
dowonsu
), Kim Myong-won, who expressed to him the universal disapproval among the Koreans of any talk of negotiation and compromise. “The Japanese tricked us before at Pyongyang,” Kim said, “and we let them slip away. What makes you think they won’t do it again?” But of course that was precisely what Shen intended: to talk the Japanese into marching south without a fight.

The next day Shen and the Chinese generals continued on by boat along the Han River to
Seoul with the Wanli emperor’s imperial banner prominently displayed. They arrived outside the city walls at Yongsan, the site of the recently destroyed food depot, and were met by Konishi Yukinaga, Kato Kiyomasa, and other daimyo. The two sides then sat down to talk. The Chinese by this point had received intelligence that the Japanese within the capital were in desperate straits and anxious to withdraw, so in the parlay Shen was forceful. “China will strike you from every side with an army 400,000 strong,” he warned. “Stay here in Seoul and you will be slaughtered. Or release the two Korean princes and all captured officials and retreat with your armies to the south, and you may live. Which do you choose?” Konishi and his compatriots were eager to choose the latter; they were sick of the fight and wanted to go home. Even gung-ho commanders like Kato Kiyomasa, who had captured the two princes during his foray into the northeast, and Kobayakawa Takakage, architect of the win at Pyokje and a self-proclaimed expert at snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, could not help but see the wisdom of falling back to the south before all their troops starved. They knew, however, that the Chinese were also eager to avoid further bloodshed and that there was thus room for negotiation. Konishi accordingly replied that, while they were not unwilling to entertain the notion of withdrawing from the capital and reaching some sort of amicable settlement with the Chinese, they would first have to receive from China proof of the sincerity of its desire for peace. What sort of proof do you need? asked Shen. Bring us an envoy with authority to negotiate directly on your emperor’s behalf, Konishi replied. Then we will see what can be worked out.
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