The Imjin War (23 page)

When the day was done General Sin Ip and his army of eight thousand had ceased to exist, and the strategy of “fighting with a river to one’s back” had been proven invalid in the face of technological change. Had the battle been fought at close quarters with traditional weapons, like Han Hsin’s second-century
B.C.
stand against the Chao, Sin and his men might have had a chance with their swords and flails and arrows and spears. But against muskets they had no chance.
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According to Japanese accounts, more than three thousand of Sin’s men were beheaded that day and several hundred taken prisoner. The severed heads were lined up for the customary post-battle viewing, and then the noses were cut off and packed in salt for shipment back to
Japan. Under normal circumstances the heads themselves would have been kept, but in the Korean campaign there were simply too many. Henceforth noses would become the generally accepted trophies of war. They were much more portable.

General Sin Ip himself did not long survive the battle. Prior to his departure from
Seoul he had pledged to stop the enemy advance in the south or die in the attempt, and he intended to remain true to his word. Halting at a spring a short distance from Chungju, he gathered his commanders about him and explained that after suffering such a terrible defeat he would be unable to face the king. He then threw himself into the water and let his heavy armor drag him down. Two of his officers followed suit.
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The first and second contingents of the Japanese invasion force camped that night at Chungju. Some time in the evening second contin
gent leaders Kato Kiyomasa and Nabeshima Naoshige arrived at Konishi Yukinaga’s camp to discuss the final advance to Seoul. Kato, chagrined at Konishi’s success that day, came spoiling for a fight. The meeting opened with So Yoshitoshi spreading out two large maps before the assembled daimyo, one depicting the routes to Seoul and the other a detailed map of the capital itself. After examining the Seoul map, Kato pointed to one of the labeled streets. “Why don’t you attack this road?” he suggested to Konishi. The street he was indicating was noted for its many drugstores and was labeled as such on the map with a Chinese character for “pharmacy.”

It was a not-too-subtle jibe against Konishi, whose family had long been engaged in the business of selling medicines. “For warriors,” he replied to Kato coldly, “family background is of little importance.”

Kato then complained that Konishi had so far been hogging the lead in the advance to Seoul and that henceforth they should take turns at the fore. This was only proper, he added, for according to the rules of conduct laid down by Hideyoshi, advancing contingents should take turns in the lead. (This was true, but only when contingents were advancing along the same road, which Kato and Konishi were not.)

“We are already very close to
Seoul,” said Konishi, “so there is no point in talking about who should take the lead. It would make more sense for us to split up again and advance along separate roads, and see who reaches Seoul first.”

“How shall we decide who takes which road?”

“We could draw lots.”

“Ah, yes,” replied Kato. “That’s how things are decided among tradesmen, isn’t it?”

For Konishi this was too much. “You deliberately try to insult me!” he roared, reaching for his sword. It was only thanks to the timely intervention of Nabeshima Naoshige and Konishi’s colleague Matsuura Shigenobu that the two men were kept from fighting. Once a degree of calm had been restored, Konishi offered Kato his choice of routes north. There were two. One proceeded to the capital in a direct northwest line, but crossed the Han River just south of Seoul, where it was at its widest. The other followed a more roundabout course, first north and then west, but crossed the Han at its headwaters, where it was narrow and not as much of an obstacle. Kato immediately choose the direct route. They would leave, it was decided, first thing in the morning. The two daimyo commanders then parted company, outwardly calm but burning with anger inside.

Kato Kiyomasa did not wait until morning to depart. He left that same night. When Konishi heard of this he immediately set out too.
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The Korean court and government were in the meantime anxiously waiting for the good news to arrive that General Sin Ip had halted the Japanese at Chungju. As everyone in the capital knew, from King Sonjo down to the beggars in the streets, Sin’s army was the last force of any size that stood between them and the approaching hordes of “robbers.” Anything less than victory was therefore unthinkable.

The news finally came on June 7, not long after Kato and Konishi had parted ways at Chungju. According to one account it came in the form of an exhausted soldier, bloodied and half naked, arriving at a run at Seoul’s South Gate. General Sin’s army, he said, had been destroyed; he himself was one of the few to escape. The Japanese were at that moment marching on Seoul. “Flight is your only hope!”
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Panic spread through the city like wildfire. Throughout the day masses of people gathered up their possessions and pressed through the gates and into the countryside beyond, fleeing in every direction in search of safety. Sunset came, the time when the gates were normally closed and locked for the night. But still the crush continued. The guards had fled, leaving the ironclad doors unattended. Night fell, but the great bell at Chongno did not sound the end of the day. The bell ringer too was gone.

During the evening an emotional meeting between King Sonjo and a number of his top ministers was held at Kyongbok Palace to decide what to do. Most of the officials present spoke out strongly in favor of remaining in Seoul. “The royal tombs are here,” they said. “The tablets of your ancestors are here. Where could you go? We have to remain in the capital and hold out until relief arrives.” Prime Minister Yi San-hae alone ventured to point out that there were precedents for the king evacuating the capital when danger threatened, but he was quickly silenced by the others. They would not countenance any talk of flight, and urged King Sonjo to dismiss Yi for having even made the suggestion.

But of course Yi San-hae was right: staying and fighting were out of the question. Only seven thousand ill-trained, ill-equipped soldiers were stationed in Seoul, not nearly enough to defend the twenty-seven kilometers of wall that encircled the city, a visually impressive string of stone that had been constructed in the 1440s more to express the king’s power with its vastness than as an actual line of defense. The capital was certain to fall to the superior power of the Japanese, and the king, if he insisted on remaining behind, would be captured when it did. King Sonjo saw this clearly, even if his ministers other than Yi San-hae did not. And so he was left to make the painful but necessary decision largely on his own: he would evacuate
Seoul and move farther north, across the Imjin River to the walled city of Pyongyang, former capital of the ancient kingdom of Koguryo.
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It was at this same time that the question of royal succession was settled once and for all. This had been a point of contention since the previous year, when the Eastern faction had employed it with some skill to end the Westerners’ two years of political ascendancy and reestablish themselves in power. It was such a contested issue, however, that it had resulted in the Easterners splitting into two sub-cliques, the Southerners and the Northerners, one side supporting the king’s temperamental and lazy eldest son, eighteen-year-old Prince Imhae, as the rightful heir, and the other Prince Kwanghae, one year Imhae’s junior but generally perceived as more studious and upstanding. On June 8, with no time left for discussion or debate, the matter was hastily decided: Imhae was passed over and Kwanghae officially installed as crown prince.
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Throughout the night between June 8 and 9 frantic preparations were made by the royal household for the evacuation of
Seoul. Piles of straw sandals were collected to shod the tender feet of the king and court for the long journey ahead. Horses were secured and saddled. The king’s ancestral tablets were ordered packed up and shipped north. But that was all. Everything else was left behind: ancient books, paintings, treasure chests, silk gowns, porcelain, gold, silver, buildings filled with centuries of government documents. Even food for the trip.

The sky was just beginning to lighten the next morning when King Sonjo and newly installed Crown Prince Kwanghae (
Bright Sea) mounted their horses and led a procession of family members, courtiers, and government officials out of the capital’s New Gate, bound for the Imjin River and the safety of the north beyond. Princes Imhae and Sunhwa departed separately with an entourage of their own. They were to head into the remote mountain fastness of the northeastern province of Hamgyong, where they could hopefully rouse the local people into resisting the Japanese. Wails of despair and shouts of anger went up from those citizens still remaining in Seoul at the sight of their departing king. There could no longer be any hope; the capital, the heart and soul of the kingdom, was being abandoned to the invaders.

Seoul
now descended into anarchy. Frantic citizens continued to flee for their lives through the city’s gates, carrying bundles and babies, clutching family treasures, pushing carts, shepherding frightened children, crying in anguish at the ending of their world. Others began to loot. There were hundreds of empty homes, palaces, and government buildings left wide open across the capital, full of abandoned riches just waiting to be claimed.

Then the fires started. Citizens angry at what they felt was the desertion of their king torched Kyongbok-gung (
Palace of Shining Happiness), Changdok-gung (Palace of Illustrious Virtue), and Changgyong-gung (Palace of Glorious Blessings). The king’s private treasure house went up in flames, then the royal granary. Government buildings housing the deeds of ownership for the capital’s slaves were also set ablaze, very likely by the slaves themselves. It was an orgy of rage and greed and terror that continued unabated throughout the morning hours, consuming the city before the Japanese had even arrived at the gates.

The king and court, meanwhile, were pressing on northward, the men on horses, the queen and concubines in palanquins. They had not gone far when it started to rain, so heavily that some of the unwieldy palanquins had to be abandoned and the lower-ranking concubines mounted on horses. Soon individuals started to lag behind, then drop out. Still the royal party pressed on, for everyone feared that the Japanese might be hot on their heels, about to appear at any moment over the crest of the last hill. A stop was made in the afternoon at the Pyokje way station to give the tired travelers a chance to eat and rest.
Sonjo sillok
, the annals of King Sonjo, makes a point of mentioning here that the side dishes served to the king and queen had to be thrown together to haste and that there were no side dishes at all to serve to the crown prince. He had to settle for rice and soup alone. After this additional indignity the royals were on their way again, wallowing through the mud in a torrential downpour, tired and miserable in their sodden silk robes.

It was well after dark when the royal party arrived at the ferry crossing on the south bank of the
Imjin River. They had covered fifty kilometers in fourteen hours, and were wet and hungry and utterly exhausted. For many, accustomed as they were to a life of luxury and ease, the day’s journey would have been the hardest physical exertion they had ever had to endure, leaving them distraught and in tears. In the pitch darkness the ferryman was summoned, and King Sonjo together with half his entourage crowded into his small craft. The rest were left behind. It was now, seated in the ferry at mid stream, that Sonjo himself at last broke down. The sight of their king sobbing uncontrollably on the deck was so upsetting that soon everyone present was reduced to tears as well.

When they reached the north bank, the ferry was sunk and the rope spanning the river cut to slow any Japanese who might be close behind. The weary travelers then continued on a little farther to the Tongpa way station, where food and shelter could be had. They arrived some time after midnight, tired and famished, only to find that the food was all gone: the porters who had preceded them with the royal household’s few possessions had wolfed everything down, leaving the king and his party to go to bed hungry. In the morning the porters themselves were gone. The situation was looking grim, when the governor of
Hwanghae Province arrived with an escort of several hundred soldiers and fresh horses. He led the royal entourage north to the next way station and sat them down to their first proper meal in two days. They then pushed on to Kaesong, capital of the Koryo dynasty (918–1392), arriving inside the stout city walls sometime after nightfall.

Once again inside the safety of the walled city and with lookouts posted to give warning of an enemy approach, it was decided to have a day of rest before pushing on to
Pyongyang.
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The vanguard of the Japanese army left Chungju in a down
pour in the early hours of June 8 to continue its advance on Seoul. Konishi Yukinaga led his first contingent due north and crossed the south branch of the Han River, swollen now from the heavy rains, then started looping west toward the capital’s East Gate, staying close to the river’s north bank. Kato Kiyomasa’s second contingent was meanwhile racing in a straight northeast line toward Seoul’s southern side. It was a more direct route, but would necessitate crossing the Han within sight of Seoul, where it was very wide and more apt to be heavily defended.