Yi Sun-sin

Yi Sun-sin never lost a naval engagement and won at least one of them with thirteen ships against more than a hundred. Born in Seoul in 1545 into a family of impoverished scholar-officials, he took the military examination at twenty-eight, having failed once after breaking his leg falling from a horse and reportedly continuing the test with a splint of willow. He was demoted and imprisoned repeatedly for refusing to accommodate superiors, and was a junior commander on the southern coast when Japan invaded in 1592 with some 160,000 men. The Korean army collapsed and Seoul fell in three weeks. The war was then decided at sea, because the Japanese armies depended on seaborne supply along the coast. Yi destroyed successive Japanese fleets — Okpo, Sacheon, Hansan Island in 1592, where he used a crane-wing formation to envelop them — and cut the supply line, which stopped the advance into China. He developed or revived the geobukseon, the turtle ship: a low vessel with a covered deck studded with iron spikes to prevent boarding, cannon on all sides, and a dragon head that emitted smoke. Court intrigue had him arrested, tortured and demoted to common soldier in 1597. His replacement lost almost the entire fleet at Chilcheollyang. Reinstated with thirteen ships, he met some 130 Japanese vessels at Myeongnyang in October 1597 in a narrow strait with a violent tidal current, and destroyed about thirty of them without losing a ship. He was shot at Noryang in December 1598 during the final battle, and ordered his death concealed until it ended.

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