A History of Korea (47 page)

NARRATIVES OF HEROISM

Admiral Yi’s death in a blaze of glory has served as the integral conclusion to the great narrative of heroism centered on this figure, whose feats of bravery and skill in the face of impossible odds are commonly recounted by Korean schoolchildren. By all viable historical accounts, Yi Sunsin was indeed an accomplished soldier, gifted strategist, and charismatic commander. From a prominent aristocratic family that had produced mostly civilian officials, he chose another path in his youth and, after passing the military examination with honors, soon ascended the ranks of the military
officialdom. As naval commander of Ch
lla province, he stood as one of the few officials who foresaw the danger from Japan, and his preparations appear to have served him well once he engaged in battle, as chronicled in his diary-like official reports to the court. These sources, as well as other eyewitness accounts and government records, all point to Yi’s great deeds. But perhaps the source that contributed most to the mythologizing of Yi Sunsin as Korea’s greatest war hero was the
Book of Corrections
(
Chingbirok
), written by Yi’s staunchest supporter in the upper echelons of government officialdom, Yu S
ngnyong. Yu had acted as one of Yi’s early patrons before the outbreak of war, and the
Book of Corrections
, in reference to the lessons that must be learned from the country’s failures in the Japanese invasion, likened Yi to a great spiritual force who almost single-handedly saved Korea. And Yi’s stoic righteousness in the face of factional injustice only heightened the impression of his purity.

In the modern era, another source of heroism has gained prominence in the conventional perspective on the Japanese war: the “Righteous Army” guerilla bands mobilized throughout the country to attack the invaders and obstruct the Japanese lines of communication and supplies. In the North Korean account of this war, for example, it is the Righteous Armies, representing the mass of the common, downtrodden people, who came to the rescue when the upper classes, including the monarchy, utterly failed to protect the nation. Such a populist perspective has become more accepted in South Korea as well, but, as scholars have pointed out, these bands, for all their effectiveness, appear to have been led by local aristocrats and thus replicated the hierarchies of society at large. To what extent these militias played a decisive role in the war’s outcome remains a point of contention. But regardless of the precise impact of these guerilla units, it seems fitting—given who suffered the brunt of the Japanese invasions—that they would be featured prominently in the national memory of the war. Indeed, their deeds lingered in the popular imagination thereafter, as seen in the reprisal of the “Righteous Army” moniker for ragtag militias that formed in the early twentieth century to resist, once again, the Japanese. In this sense, the prominence of the Righteous Armies
in the narratives of national struggle reflects the intensification of Korean identity in opposition to Japan.

There remains, however, one final major factor in the war’s outcome that, in Korea at least, has not been readily highlighted: the Chinese. North Korean accounts understandably do not even mention the Ming dynasty’s assistance, for this would run counter to their hyper-nationalist narrative of Korean history. Even in South Korea, conventional perspectives on the war give little credit to the Chinese assistance. As for Yu’s
Book of Corrections
from the early seventeenth century, it paints the Chinese in mostly a negative light, focusing on their abusive behavior, their commanders’ neglect of Korean concerns in the negotiations with the Japanese, and their battlefield failures. Other recent scholarship, however, has questioned this longstanding impression and suggests that the Chinese forces played not only a key role in the allied victory over Japan, but indeed an indispensable one.

THE REGIONAL ORDER REMADE

The significance of the Chinese contribution highlights the fact that, notwithstanding Korea’s suffering, this war’s impact spread far beyond the peninsula and may have been the most widely encompassing East Asian regional event until the modern era. Indeed the consequences extended even to an area originally untouched by the invasion, Manchuria. While there remains historical debate over the precise connections between the Japanese invasions and the conquest of Korea and China by the Manchus three decades later, the destructive force throughout East Asia could only have had a staggering, profound effect on the region.

Often overlooked when considering the fallout from the Japanese invasions of Korea is the pronounced impact on Japan itself, much of which, ultimately, was in fact beneficial. The lessons learned from the failure of Hideyoshi’s grand scheme, not to mention the expenditures of resources and lives, cast a long shadow over Japan’s subsequent history. Aside from megalomaniacal delusion, Hideyoshi’s primary reason for launching the invasion was to
provide an outlet for the energies of his warrior retainers, who had proved instrumental in his completing the project of politically reunifying Japan after centuries of fragmentation. After his death, Japanese leaders would not again venture beyond their borders for over 200 years. In fact, the leader who emerged as Hideyoshi’s successor, Tokugawa Ieyasu, instituted a peaceful, stable, and in many ways a thriving dynastic rule based partly on the policy of “closure” to the outside world until the middle of the nineteenth century. The salutary effects of the Hideyoshi misadventure would extend to unforeseen realms as well: the many Korean artisans—artists, potters, smiths, ship builders, and others—taken as war captives back to Japan appear to have made a lasting contribution to the development of Japanese culture and technology.

As for China, the dedication of massive resources to the war against Japan—an act, admittedly, that was not devoid of self-interest, since Korea served as a buffer against the Japanese—could not have helped the Ming dynasty’s increasingly fragile grip on rule. After more than two centuries, the Ming government, having concentrated its energies on internal stability through limited foreign adventures, found itself having to beat back not only the Japanese, but also Chinese rebels and ultimately yet another “barbarian” group to its immediate northeast. The Manchus, descendants of tribesmen who had periodically organized themselves into a formidable military force throughout East Asian history, had suddenly done so again while the rest of the region was preoccupied with recovery from the Japanese invasion. By the 1620s, the Manchus, following the familiar pattern of the Northmen of East Asia in previous eras, appeared on the verge of striking Korea on their way to the big prize of China itself. The brooding specter of this invasion instigated a major factional struggle in Korea over how to respond, and eventually the king, who favored a policy of accommodation with this new power, was overthrown by Chos
n’s high officials in favor of a more explicitly pro-Ming monarch. This soon brought forth the first of two devastating Manchu invasions of Korea in 1627, to be followed by the finishing blow in 1636, when the Korean monarch surrendered in ritualized humiliation to the Manchu emperor just outside of Seoul. This
paved the way for the Manchus’ march into Beijing in 1644 and their takeover of China.

Despite succumbing themselves to the irrepressible Manchu force just a few years earlier, the Koreans were completely shocked by the Ming dynasty’s fall, which constituted, from the Korean perspective, an event on the level of a cosmic shift. For all the diplomatic subordination that the Koreans endured thereafter, the legitimacy of the ensuing Qing dynasty of the Manchus was never accepted by most Korean elites, who harbored a deeply ethnicized scorn for these “barbarians.” Indeed for well over a century Koreans openly retained fantasies of engaging in a “northern campaign” to overthrow the Qing. Koreans, now deprived of their long held assumptions about civilizational order, were forced to reconsider their larger standing Under Heaven. A belief hardened among Korean elites that, with the fall of the Ming, only Chos
n remained as a bastion of (Confucian) civilization. This accompanied the equally fascinating emergence of a more widespread sense of national consciousness among lower groups of people, as seen in the expressions of popular culture from the seventeenth century onwards (
Chapter 12
). Indeed, the rallying cry of Yi Sunsin, Righteous Army leaders, and others around the common cause of national survival during the Japanese and, later, Manchu invasions laid the foundation for fortifying the idea of Koreanness itself.

10

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

Ideology, Family, and Nationhood in the Mid-Chos
n Era

CHRONOLOGY

1644	Manchu conquest of Ming dynasty China
1674	Ascent to throne of King Sukchong
1680	Marriage of King Sukchong to Queen Inhy n
1688	Birth of crown prince to a royal concubine, Lady Chang
1689	King Sukchong’s divorce from Queen Inhy n, marriage to Lady Chang, purge of Westerners
1694	Remarriage to Queen Inhy n, demotion of Lady Chang
1701	Death of Queen Inhy n, execution of Lady Chang