Imjin War (Japanese Invasions of Korea)
Japan invaded Korea in 1592 with some 158,000 men and was fought to a standstill over six years by Korean admirals, Chinese armies and its own supply lines. Hideyoshi had unified Japan and had a very large army of veterans with nothing to do, and his stated object was the conquest of Ming China with Korea as the road. The Korean court had spent a century in factional politics with a neglected army, and the Japanese, with matchlock muskets acquired from the Portuguese, took Seoul in three weeks and Pyongyang in two months. Two things stopped them. The first was Yi Sun-sin, who commanded the southern fleet and destroyed Japanese shipping repeatedly — at Hansan Island in 1592 with a crescent formation, and later at Myeongnyang in 1597, where he held a strait with thirteen ships against a far larger force. His panokseon ships and the armoured turtle ship outgunned the Japanese, who fought at sea by boarding. Cutting the sea route left the armies in Korea living off a countryside that had risen against them in righteous armies of monks and peasants. The second was China, which sent tens of thousands of troops on the reasoning that Korea was the buffer. Negotiations collapsed over mutually incomprehensible terms, and a second invasion in 1597 was contained in the south. Hideyoshi died in 1598 and the armies withdrew. Yi was killed in the last battle. Korea lost perhaps a million people, and Japanese armies carried off potters whose descendants founded the ceramic industry there.
- Year: 1592 CE
- Category: Military
