Seven-Year War
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- For the 1756–1763 war, see Seven Years' War. For the 1563–1570 war, see Nordic Seven Years' War.
| Korean Name | |
|---|---|
| Hangul | 임진왜란 |
| Hanja | 壬辰倭亂 |
| Revised Romanization | Imjin Waeran |
| McCune-Reischauer | Imchin Waeran |
| Japanese Name | |
| Japanese | 文禄・慶長の役 |
| Hepburn Romaji | Bunroku Keicho no Eki |
| Chinese Name | |
| Traditional Chinese | 壬辰衛國戰爭 |
| Simplified Chinese | 壬辰卫国战争 |
| Hanyu Pinyin | rénchén wèi guó zhànzhēng |
The Seven-Year War was the military confrontation from 1592 to 1598 on the Korean peninsula, following two successive Japanese invasions of Korea. Japanese troops invaded Korea in 1592 with the professed aim of conquering China. Japan reinvaded in 1597 during a truce. In both campaigns, the Japanese invasions were defeated by the allied forces of Korea and China.
Contents |
The first invasion
Toyotomi Hideyoshi established his hegemony in Japan in the latter part of the 16th century. Motivated in part by a need to satisfy the perpetual land hunger of his vassals and find employment for restive samurai, he began making plans for the conquest of Ming Dynasty China. He first made his intentions to conquer China known to Mori Terumoto in 1586, pursued the plan after he defeated the clans of Shimazu and Hojo.
First he sent an envoy to Korea demanding safe passage to China, but it was left unanswered. Then he sent another, and when King Seonjo refused Hideyoshi's offer of an alliance and military access for Japan, Hideyoshi launched a war against Korea in 1592. Tokugawa Ieyasu and a handful of others opposed his intention to invade Korea and China. Konishi Yukinaga and So Yoshitoshi were among those who tried to arbitrate between Hideyoshi and Korea.
Initial assault
The Japanese invasion of 1592 with 160,000 Hideyoshi loyalists from Western Japan, had great initial success, mainly due to the element of surprise and its use of European firearms. Two armies, under Konishi Yukinaga and Kato Kiyomasa, landed on the 25th and 26th of May and marched north. The forces of Kuroda Nagamasa also joined their troops and marched northwest. They also had skilled lieutenants such as So Yoshitoshi. They had to overcome two Korean main forts in a timely manner, Busan and Dongnae, to maintain their initiatives.
Chungju campaign
Template:Main After the southern defense perimeter was breached in a matter of days, the Korean Royal Court quickly sent forces from the northern military sector commanded by General Shin Lip. The skilled young general was supposed to meet General Yi Il's fleeing forces at the narrow, mountainous Joryeong Pass and attack the marching Japanese. However, General Shin chose instead to fight the Japanese at the plain of Chungju, trusting the power of his cavalry unit. His battle-hardened cavalry units were, however, wiped out by Japanese musketeers who were trained to provide a continuous rain of fire when faced with cavalry. This tactic was devised and used by Oda Nobunaga and his successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi to help establish his hegemony in Japan. The tactic proved effective since the Korean troops had not yet adopted the idea of fire concentration.
The Japanese generals believed that, if employed massively, muskets were a far better and cheaper weapon system than bows. Korean generals, on the other hand, believed that muskets were hard to mass-produce and had extremely poor accuracy and effective firing range compared to well-made bows. Therefore only a small experimental detachment was armed with muskets while at least half of the Japanese invasion forces were armed with small firearms. Korea had the advantage when it came to cannon technology, but the artillery of that time did not have the mobility of its modern-day equivalent. So on the field, the Japanese armies easily crushed their Korean opposition.
Fall of Hanseong
With the strongest Korean army unit gone and most of the defense forts under Japanese control, the road to the capital was wide open. The entire defense perimeter collapsed as the Japanese forces advanced. They met little resistance on the field.
Konishi reached the Han River south of Hanseong (present-day Seoul) and entered the city on June 12, just 18 days after landing at Busan. King Seonjo and his court withdrew first to Songdo, then Pyongyang and finally to Uiju, on the Yalu River. Japanese troops ravaged many key towns in the southern part of Korea, took Pyongyang and advanced as far north as the Yalu and Tumen rivers. (See also Kato Kiyomasa's campaign in the North-Eastern part of Korea)
The Four Campaigns of Admiral Yi
In May and June, a small Korean fleet commanded by Yi Sun-sin destroyed several Japanese flotillas and wrought havoc on Japanese logistics. The Korean iron-roofed Geobukseon, or turtle ships, were technologically superior in almost every way. In all, perhaps 72 Japanese vessels were sunk by the end of June.
Korean Irregular Army
Korean marines and irregulars harassed the Japanese rear, so no attempt could be made by the Japanese to exploit their initial advantage. Insurgency resistance was especially strong in the southern provinces of Chungcheong, Jeolla and Gyeongsang. Gwak Jae Woo, Jo Heon, Kim Cheon-il, Go Kyung Myung, and Jeong Inhong were among the notable insurgency leaders.
In the north, insurgency leader Jeong Mun-boo fought against Kato Kiyomasa, and defeated the Japanese at the northernmost point in Korea. Many Buddhist monks also rose up against the Japanese. While the official army was being easily overrun by the Japanese army, the hit-and-run tactics of the irregular army was actually the biggest threat for the invaders.
Intervention of Ming China
In July, the Ming Dynasty Emperor Wan-li, responding to Korean King Seonjo's request for aid, sent an initial symbollic force of 5,000, which was not nearly enough to fend off the Japanese.
Hideyoshi, having suffering numerous setbacks, including logistical problems caused by Korean saboteurs and major naval defeats at the hands of the Korean navy, proposed to China the division of Korea: the north as a self-governing Chinese satellite, and the south to remain in Japanese hands. The peace talks were mostly carried out by Konishi Yukinaga, who did most of the fighting against the Chinese. The offer was promptly rejected. This negotiation was, of course, done out of sight of the Korean Royal Court.
Having seen the forces they had sent to Korea wiped out, the Ming Emperor sent a much larger force in January 1593 under the two famous Generals Song Yingchang and Li Rusong. The salvage army had a prescribed strength of 100,000, made up of 42,000 from five northern military districts and a contingent of 3000 soldiers proficient in the use of firearms from South China. The Ming army was also well armed with artiliary pieces.
In February 1593 a large combined force of Chinese and Korean soldiers attacked the Korean capital Pyongyang and drove the Japanese into eastward retreat. Li Rusong personally led a pursuit with an advance force of 1000 heavy cavalry, but was checked by a large Japanese formation outside Seoul. The Ming vanguard fought in a pitched battle, with Li personally parrying with the Japanese invasive troops before Ming relief forces arrived to force the Japanese into retreat. In February, Li ordered a daring raid into the Japanese rear and burned several hundred thousand koku of military rice supply, forcing the Japanese invading army to retreat from the Korean capital in the prospect of food shortage.
These engagements ended the first phase of the war, and peace negotiations followed. The Japanese evacuated Hanseong in May and retreated to fortifications around Busan. Some Japanese soldiers left the army and settled down in Korea, even marrying Korean women. The ensuing truce was to last for close to four years.
Treaty negotiations
In the summer of 1593, a Chinese delegation visited Japan and stayed at the court of Hideyoshi for more than a month. The Ming government withdrew most of its expeditionary force, but kept 16,000 men on the Korean peninsula to guard the truce.
An envoy from Hideyoshi reached Beijing in 1594. Most of the Japanese army had left Korea by autumn 1596; a small garrison was nevertheless left in Busan. Satisfied with the Japanese overtures, the imperial court in Beijing dispatched an embassy to allow retired Regent (Taikō (太閤)) Hideyoshi to have the title of "King of Japan" on condition of complete withdrawal of Japanese forces from Korea.
The Ming embassador met Hideyoshi in October 1596 but there was a great deal of misunderstanding about the context of the meeting. Hideyoshi was enraged to learn that China insulted the Emperor of Japan by presuming to cancel the Emperor's divine right to the throne, offering to recognize Hideyoshi instead. To insult the Chinese, he demanded among other things, a royal marriage with the Wanli Emperor's daughter, the delivery of a Korean prince as hostage, and four of Korea's southern provinces.
Peace negotiations soon broke down and the war entered its second phase. Early in 1597, both sides resumed hostilities.
Second invasion
Soon after the Chinese embassy was given safe conduct home, Hideyoshi sent 200 Japanese ships to Korea carrying a force of 140,000 under the command of Todo Takadora and Kato Yoshiaki to take revenge for the insult. The court in Beijing appointed Yan Hao as supreme commander of an initial mobilisation of 38,000 troops from as far away as Sichuan, Zhejiang, Huguang, Fujian, and Guangdong. These were assisted by a naval force of 21,000 men. Ray Huang has estimated the combined strength of the Chinese army and navy at the height of the second campaign at 75,000 men.
The Japanese met with stronger resistance in the second invasion. They pushed to just south of Seoul in August 1597, but were turned back by a large Korean and Chinese force that winter. As the Japanese retreated south through Gyeongsang-do they burned Gyeongju and destroyed and stole much of the historic and artistic legacy of Silla.
Thereafter, Japan was on the defensive. Naval operations, already important in the first campaign, was decisive in the second. Led by experienced naval commanders such as Todo Takadora and Kurushima Michifusa, the Japanese engaged the Korean navy under command of Admiral Won Gyun.
Following the loss of Chilchonryang, Yi Sun-sin, who had been sent to jail, was reinstated. With his return the Koreans soon regained control over the waters of the straits, forcing the Japanese to land men to take defensive positions along the coast from Ulsan in the east to Suncheon in the west. On September 16, 1597, Yi led 13 warships against 133 Japanese warships in the Myeongnyang Strait. The Korean force devastated the Japanese naval fleet and sank or disabled 123 enemy vessels in the Battle of Myeongnyang and forced the Japanese forces retreat. In November, the Japanese fleet was lured by Yi into a tide-race.
By early 1598, the Japanese forces, severely crippled by Korean and Chinese armies, found themselves unable to break out of the south despite fierce fighting. The Wanli Emperor sent a Chinese fleet under artillery expert Chen Lin in May 1598; this naval force saw action in joint manouvres with the Koreans and dealt several major blows to the already much-battered Japanese navy. In November 1598, the last remnant of the Japanese fleet was ambushed and annhilated by the combined Chinese-Korean forces, resulting in the loss of over 450 Japanese vessels and at least 10,000 Japanese soldiers drowned to death. Yi Sun Shin died in this battle which sealed the disastrous end of Japan's untimely expedition.
With a decimated navy, Konishi Yukinage warned that the Japanese position in Korea was untenable. Hideyoshi in turn ordered the withdrawal of close to half of the invading force, leaving mostly Satsuma warriors under Shimazu clan member commanders. The remaining Japanese forces fought desperately, turning back Chinese attacks on Suncheon and Sacheon as the Ming army amassed more troops for prepare for a final assault. On 18 September 1598, Hideyoshi died. The council of five regents immediately decided to withdraw the remaining Japanese army (Tokugawa Ieyasu was one of the five regents) from imminent destruction. The invasion was abandoned when the order reached the Japanese camp late in October. (See also the Movement of Japanese Left Army, Right Army and Japanese Navy).
Aftermath
The Seven-Year War left deep scars in Korea. Farmlands were devastated, irrigation dikes were destroyed, villages and towns were burned down, the population was first plundered and then dispersed, and many skilled workers (celadonware makers, craftsmen, artisans, etc) were kidnapped and brought to Japan to help develop and expand Japan's crafts during the war. In 1598 alone, the Japanese took some 38,000 ears as gruesome trophies. The long war reduced the productive capacity of farmlands from 1,708,000 kyol to 541,000 kyol.
With its tremendous military losses, Japan was discouraged from waging wars abroad again for the next three centuries. Hideyoshi's much weakened military machine also led to the country's takeover by Tokugawa Ieyasu after his death. Ming Dynasty had to put in an enormous amount of human and material resources in this bloody war in Korea, which contributed to empty the State Treasury and aggravated its difficulties in defending its northeastern border against the emerging power of Manchu.
Following the war, relations between Korea and Japan were completely suspended. After the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, however, negotiations between the Korean court and the Tokugawa shogunate were carried out via the Japanese lord on Tsushima Island, So Yoshitoshi. The So clan needed to restore commercial relations with Korea. Tokugawa Ieyasu also hoped to make peace with Korea.
In 1604, Tokugawa Ieyasu met Korea's demands and released some 3,000 captives. As a result, in 1607, a Korean mission visited Edo and diplomatic and trade relations were restored on a limited basis.
Battles of the Seven-Year War
- 1592
- Siege of Busan
- Siege of Dongnae
- Battle of Sangju
- Battle of Chungju
- Battle of Okpo - first major naval battle between the invading Japanese fleet and Korea's 'turtle ships'.
- Battle of Sacheon - naval battle
- Battle of Imjin River
- Battle of Dangpo - naval battle
- Battle of Hansan - naval battle
- Siege of Pyeongyang - the city was sieged twice in this year.
- Battle of Jeonju
- Battle of Haejeongchang
- Battle of Busan - naval battle
- Siege of Jinju
- 1593
- Siege of Pyeongyang
- Battle of Byeokjegwan
- Battle of Haengju
- Siege of Jinju - the second siege on Jinju castle in the War.
- 1597
- Battle of Chilchonryang - naval battle
- Siege of Namwon
- Battle of Myeongnyang - naval battle, 13 Korean ships defeat 333 Japanese vessels.
- Siege of Ulsan
- 1598
- Battle of Sacheon
- Battle of Noryang Point - final naval battle of the Seven-Year War
Weapons Used During the Seven-Year War
- Koreans
- Japanese
- Sekibune class warship
- Adake class warship
- Portuguese musket
- Cannon
Through international maritime trade, the Japanese had imported large amounts of muskets, which had longer range than Korean bow and arrows. Additionally, Japan, which had in war previously, had much larger army, and, many battles, would often outnumber the Koreans. Advantages for the Koreans included Hwa Cha, which had a range of over 1km, the famous ironclad turtle ship, and longer ranged and more powerful cannons. Yet these could not be mass-produced as the guns, and were useful only in limited environments.
See also
- History of Korea
- Ming China (明)
- List of Korea-related topics
- Military history of Japan
- Li Rusong (李如松)
- Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豐臣秀吉)
- Yi Sun-sin (李舜臣)
- List of wars
- Bukgwan Victory Monument