The Imjin War (65 page)

The Koreans were now backed up into the
Yellow Sea itself. There was nowhere left for them to retreat. They either had to stop the Japanese at this very point or die in the attempt. Later that night Yi Sun-sin summoned his captains to issue orders for what he knew would be the decisive clash the following day. “According to the principles of strategy,” he said, “‘He who seeks his death shall live, he who seeks his life shall die.’ Again, the strategy says, ‘If one defender stands on watch at a strong gateway he may drive terror deep into the heart of the enemy coming by the ten thousand.’ These are golden sayings for us. You captains are expected to strictly obey my orders. If you do not, even the least error shall not be pardoned, but shall be severely punished by martial law.”
[695]

Yi was quoting to his men from the ancient Chinese military classics, possibly the fourth-century B.C. treatise
Wu Tzu Ping Fa
(Master Wu’s Art of War). In a series of discussions with his lord on how to govern his kingdom and conduct his wars, the renowned military commander turned scholar Wu Qi observed, “If the soldiers are committed to fight to the death they will live, whereas if they seek to stay alive they will die.”
[696]
The idea was that by casting off all fear of death, a soldier would transcend the normal limits of courage and fight with an almost inhuman degree of ferocity, taking five, ten, twenty of the enemy with him before he himself was killed. The Chinese called a force of such men a “death army” and considered it a fearsome thing.
[697]
With regard to fighting an enemy whose numbers are great when yours are few, Master Wu advised, “Avoid them on easy terrain, attack them in narrow quarters. Thus it is said, for one to attack ten, nothing is better than a narrow defile. For ten to attack one hundred, nothing is better than a deep ravine. For one thousand to attack ten thousand, nothing is better than a dangerous pass.”
[698]

Yi Sun-sin had chosen Myongnyang Channel as his “dangerous pass.” And to make the most of his few hundred men, he intended to transform them into a “death army.” By forcing them into a situation where they believed there was no chance of survival, Yi hoped they would acquire the necessary courage and ferocity to take on the enemy’s vastly superior numbers, and maybe even win.

The main body of the Japanese fleet arrived at the southern end of Myongnyang Channel the next morning, October 26, from the direction of Oranpo. In his diary Yi Sun-sin states that these enemy forces numbered approximately two hundred ships. Yi’s nephew gives a higher estimate in his own account of the battle, stating that refugees with a better view of the situation atop nearby hills counted three hundred Japanese ships, “then lost count of those sailing behind, because there were so many of them that they filled the sea.”
[699]
In either case the odds were appalling against the Koreans’ own thirteen ships. As Yi had foreseen, however, the vast Japanese fleet was unable to advance through Myongnyang in a mass. Dividing into four or five groups, the first squadron ven
tured tentatively into the channel, moving easily with the current, followed by a second, then a third. They had not yet seen Yi Sun-sin’s battleships waiting in ambush just beyond the channel’s mouth, only a long line of vessels in the far distance, well beyond Myongnyang. Was their intelligence mistaken? Did the Koreans still have a sizable fleet?

When the first of the Japanese ships reached the end of the channel and entered the calmer waters beyond, Yi Sun-sin ordered his fleet to move to the attack from the shelter of their hidden bay. Yi himself led the way in his flagship. “Have no fear!” he cried to his terrified crew. “Even if the enemy has one thousand warships, they will not dare come near us!” With that Yi’s turtle ship dashed ahead, blasting away with cannons and fire arrows at the startled Japanese. The other ships in the Korean fleet initially followed his lead, but then began to lag behind as their captains and crews caught sight of the enemy armada crowding Myongnyang Channel, heading their way. When Yi glanced back and saw this, he was tempted to turn around and cut off the head of one of the captains to hang from the mast as a warning to all. But he was already in the thick of the battle and could scarcely turn back now. Instead he waved a signal flag at the laggards and sounded a shell trumpet, ordering them to join the fight. When the first of these ships drew near, the vessel captained by
Koje Island magistrate An Wi, Yi roared across the water: “An Wi! Do you want to die by court martial! Do you think you’ll survive if you run away!” With that An Wi and the other captains charged ahead and were soon enveloped like Yi by one hundred and thirty-odd Japanese ships.

The battle that ensured was unlike anything the Korean navy had experienced before. They had faced frightening odds in 1592, but nothing so frightening as this, thirteen against one hundred and thirty, with still more Japanese warships waiting to the rear. Never before had Yi placed them in such a desperate situation. They responded, however, as Yi had hoped. On that fall morning, with their backs to the
Yellow Sea, Yi Sun-sin’s diminutive force conquered their fear and became a “death army.” They charged at the Japanese fleet with wild abandon, ramming their stout prows into the enemy’s weaker hulls, blasting at them with cannons from point-blank range, setting them alight with fire arrows, flailing with clubs and spears and stones when parties of enemy warriors as thick as “black ants” attempted to climb aboard.

The Japanese flagship, identifiable by its soaring superstructure and profusion of banners and flags, was singled out by the Koreans for par
ticularly heavy fire, and was soon in flames and sinking. Shortly thereafter a surrendered Japanese who had previously defected to the Korean side and who was now serving aboard Yi’s flagship caught sight of a familiar figure bobbing in the water, clad in a red brocade uniform such as would be worn by a high-ranking Japanese commander. “Is that Matashi,” he cried out, “the Japanese commander from Angolpo?” Yi Sun-sin had the corpse hooked and dragged on deck. The Japanese soldier examined the body closely and confirmed his earlier identification. “I am positive. It is he—Matashi!” According to the Koreans this “Matashi” was none other than Japanese naval commander Kurushima Michifusa. He had been sent to Korea to lead the naval forces previously commanded by his brother Michiyuki, who had been killed in the Tangpo battle in 1592. Now it was Michifusa’s turn to meet a glorious end. Upon learning that he had an important enemy commander on board, Yi Sun-sin ordered the body cut into pieces and hung from the mast for the enemy to see.
[700]

The Japanese made repeated attempts that morning to force the Koreans from the mouth of Myongnyang Channel. Each time they were driven back. Eventually the waters were awash with the wreckage of their warships and the bodies of their dead. And still the Koreans stood firm, Yi’s flagship steady “like a castle in the middle of the sea.” Thirteen stood against one hundred and thirty, and stopped them in their tracks.

Then the tide began to turn, and with it the second phase of Yi Sun-sin’s plan began to unfold. Backed up by the attacking Koreans into the mouth of Myongnyang Channel, the Japanese were unable to withstand the strength of the reversing current and were forced back in the direction from which they had come. The Koreans, inspired by their initial success and moving easily now with the tide, attacked with renewed vigor, inflicting further damage as the battle continued back down the neck of the strait. By the time the Japanese reached open water and the exhausted Koreans gave up their pursuit, thirty-one ships of Hideyoshi’s navy had been destroyed, while Yi’s fleet remained intact. With that the Japanese navy began to fall back toward the border of Kyongsang Province, then farther still toward Angolpo and Pusan. It would give up all thought of gaining access to the Yellow Sea, and would not venture west again.
[701]

Most Korean accounts of the Battle of Myongnyang assert that Yi Sun-sin had suspended a chain or cable across the channel prior to the battle, one end secured to the mainland, the other to a point on
Chin Island. This chain, the story goes, was left slack while the Japanese fleet advanced up the channel, allowing them to pass over it without notice. Then the tide turned, forcing the Japanese back. As they neared the spot where the cable lay, it was winched taut by men stationed at either end, thus capsizing several Japanese ships and blocking the others from retreat while Yi’s ships continued to pick them apart. There is little evidence to support this account. Yi Sun-sin himself makes no reference to a chain in his war diary, and it is hard to believe he would have neglected to do so had he in fact used one, for it surly would have been a noteworthy thing. Yi’s nephew Yi Pun does not mention it either in his biography of his famous uncle, written not long after the war by someone who knew the commander well. Nor does Yi’s friend and mentor Yu Song-nyong in his account of the war. It is likely that the story of the chain was an embellishment or misinterpretation of the facts that entered into the oral tradition of the Imjin War sometime in the seventeenth century, and from there came to be accepted as fact.
[702]

Yi Sun-sin’s success in the Battle of Myongnyang, with or without a chain, is perhaps the finest example of his tactical brilliance, the point where his leadership during seven years of war rose from the extraordi
nary to the sublime and from there entered into legend. In modern times Western writers have been effusive in their praise of him, comparing Yi to such great men as his English contemporary Sir Francis Drake, and to Lord Horatio Nelson, who defeated Napoleon’s navy at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. But ironically, it was among Yi’s former adversaries that some of his greatest admirers arose. During the Meiji era officers in Japan’s newly minted modern navy came to regard the Korean commander as the epitome of the spirit of
bushido
, “the way of the warrior,” as practiced at sea. Prior to doing battle with Russia’s Baltic fleet in the Russo-Japanese war in 1905, for example, Lieutenant Commander Kawada Isao recalled in his memoirs that “naturally we could not help but remind ourselves of Korea’s Yi Sun-sin, the world’s first sea commander, whose superlative personality, strategy, invention, commanding ability, intelligence, and courage were all worthy of our admiration.”
[703]
Following the battle, which was a tremendous victory for the Japanese, Admiral Togo Heihachiro himself took up this praise of Yi. At a party that was held in his honor,
Togo took exception to one eulogy comparing him to Lord Nelson and Yi Sun-sin. “It may be proper to compare me with Nelson,” said the admiral, “but not with Korea’s Yi Sun-sin. He is too great to be compared to anyone.”
[704]

*              *              *

On November 22, 1597, one month after the Battle of Myongnyang, Yi Sun-sin awoke at dawn with a curious dream still clear in his mind. He had been riding across a hillock when his horse stumbled and threw him into a stream. His youngest son, Myon, then somehow appeared, picked him up, and embraced him tightly. Yi, ever a firm believer in the portents in dreams, could not determine what this one meant. Later that same day he found out. Toward evening he received a letter from his family home in Asan, which he had just learned had been burned to the ground by the Japanese during their march of destruction back toward the south. At the very sight of it, Yi wrote in his diary, “my bones and flesh shuddered and my head became dizzy.” He tore open the envelope to find a letter inside from his second son, Yol, with the characters “With Weeping” brushed on the front. The admiral knew at once that Myon was dead, struck down by the Japanese when he attempted to defend his home. Pouring his broken heart into his diary late into the night, he wrote these words to his departed son: “I should die and you should live. That is the natural order! Now you are dead and I am alive!...My son, where have you gone, leaving me behind?...I wish to follow you to the grave, to stay and weep together, but if I do, your brothers and sisters and your mother will have no one to support them. Thus I endure, with live body but a dead soul.”
[705]

Yi fell into a deep depression after that. His health also began to suffer, dragged down no doubt by his emotional state and the meager diet he imposed upon himself for the duration of his mourning. Some time later he had a dream in which Myon beseeched him in tears to avenge his death. “Father,” Myon cried, “kill the Japanese who killed me!” Upon waking, Yi asked his staff officers what the dream might mean. Someone suggested that the spirit of his son was perhaps dis
turbed by a recently captured Japanese soldier who was in custody aboard Yi’s own ship. Yi ordered the man interrogated under torture, and not surprisingly extracted a confession that he was the very one who had killed his son, some three hundred kilometers to the north.
[706]

It is written in the Chinese military classics: “If you flog a person’s back, brand his ribs, or compress his fingers in order to question him about the nature of his offense, even a state hero could not withstand this cruelty and would falsely implicate himself.”
[707]
If Yi Sun-sin was not specifically aware of this passage, his common sense surly told him as much. The fact that he went ahead and acted as he did is an apt reminder that, despite his many achievements,
Korea’s supreme naval commander was not an infallible superhero, but a flesh-and-blood man. Succumbing to his need to find someone to punish for his son’s death to ease his troubled mind, Yi accepted as true the confession that had been forcibly extracted from the Japanese prisoner, even though it was unlikely he was guilty of the offense.