The Imjin War (36 page)

After sending the Korean princes south to Kyongsong, Kato led eight thousand of his men, reinforced by three thousand Koreans, across the
Tumen River into Manchuria, ostensibly to see how well the vaunted Jurchen tribesmen could fight. They had not gone far when they came upon the first “Orangai” (barbarian) fortress. “As dawn was breaking,” records Kato Kiyomasa’s chronicler, “we arrived...and drew up our ranks. As is the usual way in this strange country...[Jurchen fortresses] are not only enclosed securely in front, but at the rear they have recourse to high stone walls in mountain recesses. When we saw that it did not appear to be very well defended, the [Korean] men of Hoeryong went forward, while the Japanese went round to the mountain at the rear, and with 50 men or 30 men working together prised out the stones using crowbars, and the wall collapsed.” The Jurchen fortress was quickly seized, and many of its defenders undoubtedly slaughtered.

The next day the three thousand Koreans who had participated in the attack withdrew back across the
Tumen River, leaving Kato’s forces to deal with the nearly ten thousand agitated tribesmen from the surrounding region who had been assembled to counterattack. The battle that ensued was for the Japanese a very close thing—so close that Kato ordered that all the heads cut off be discarded after counting. There were reportedly eight thousand. The fighting eventually ceased, Kato’s chronicler concludes, when “an exceptionally heavy rain fell on our behalf, and blew in the faces of the Orangai, so they withdrew.”
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And so Kato forded back across the
Tumen River and returned to Korea. He had now covered an extraordinary distance from Pusan, more than fifteen hundred kilometers, all on foot and horseback, through unknown and hostile territory. When measured from the actual starting point of the invasion, Hideyoshi’s Nagoya headquarters on the island of Kyushu, his achievement becomes all the more astonishing, equivalent almost to Napoleon’s march from Paris to Moscow in 1812. This incredible foray would earn Kato a reputation in Japan for courage and daring that has endured to this day. It would inspire numerous Tokugawa and Meiji period woodblock prints depicting him crossing to Korea, fighting Korean and Chinese troops, and, most popular of all, hunting tigers armed only with his trademark three-bladed spear. It would also solidify his reputation among the Koreans as the most fearsome of Hideyoshi’s daimyo commanders, a ferocious, almost inhuman apparition, instantly recognizable by the strange, conical helmets he wore, and by the death and destruction he left in his path.

Following his campaign in the far north, Kato returned south and took up residence at Anbyon near the border between the provinces of Hamgyong and Kangwon. He took with him the two Korean princes and the officials he had captured. They would remain with him for the next several months. On October 25 he sent a letter to Hideyoshi boasting that he had now subdued the entire
province of Hamgyong from north to south, and that he had done such a thorough job of it that there was not the slightest chance of further resistance. Things were going so well that he had been able to turn over the fortresses at Heoryong and Kyongsong to Korean allies who had sworn allegiance to him. Disturbances might occur elsewhere in Korea, he wrote, where control had not been firmly established, but there was no worry of that in Hamgyong. Not with him in charge.
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Kato’s claims were premature. The people of Hamgyong, cowed by the Japanese and indifferent to the fate of their own leaders, had ini
tially proved an easy conquest. But they soon came to chafe under the strictures of foreign occupation: the swaggering samurai, the summary executions, the lawless soldiers who took whatever they wanted. During the closing months of 1592 and into 1593, local resistance began to build and to coalesce into guerrilla bands that eventually would grow strong enough to place Nabeshima Naoshige’s headquarters at Kilchu under siege. A campaign was also launched to strike back at those Koreans who had sided with the enemy. The most notable victim was Kuk Kyong-in, who had handed the princes over to the Japanese. For this he would be beaten to death.

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As Kato swept with relative ease through Hamgyong-do, his colleagues in other parts of
Korea were having a more difficult time. Not only were they being frustrated in their attempts to subdue the provinces assigned to them, they were in some areas actually being driven back. The Korean opposition that they faced was divided into three distinct groups: guerrilla bands of civilian volunteers, independent groups of monk-soldiers, and regrouped units of government troops.

By the early summer of 1592 the majority of the regular armed forces still remaining in
Korea, a total of approximately 84,500 men,
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had been driven far to the north by the Japanese advance. A large por
tion of these troops were now encamped at Sunan, a short distance beyond Pyongyang, waiting for assistance from China before they dared attempt a counteroffensive. Throughout the country, meanwhile, particularly in the south, private citizens were awakening from the initial shock of the invasion and were beginning to take up arms on their own accord to resist the Japanese. The guerrilla bands of civilian volunteers that subsequently came into being were called
uibyong
, “righteous armies.” Their leaders were for the most part upper-class yangban scholars—literate, well-educated landowners who commanded the respect of the peasantry, and who in many cases possessed the wealth necessary to outfit private armies. A few had some military experience; most were just committed amateurs who learned as they went along. They were all driven by a deep sense of patriotism, a desire to protect their families, their land, and their king, and an all-consuming hatred of the Japanese. Beginning in June of 1592, one month after the start of the invasion, these civilian volunteers harassed the enemy throughout the south, threatened supply lines, massed together to attack strongholds, and gradually succeeded in turning the peninsula into an ungovernable headache for the Japanese.

Significant military activity among the civilian population first occurred in Kyongsang-do, the southeastern province through which the Japanese vanguard under Konishi Yukinaga and Kato Kiyomasa had marched during their twenty-day blitzkrieg north to
Seoul in May and June. During this incredibly rapid advance a number of important cities in the province had been taken, including Pusan, Taegu, Kyongju, and Sangju. But the province as a whole had been by no means subdued. The Japanese had in fact taken only a strip of territory running up its center, with large regions on either side being left untouched. As news of this catastrophe spread, and with it the realization that government troops were unable to protect them, villagers and townspeople throughout the province formed guerrilla bands and leaders began to emerge, men like Kim Myon, Chong In-hong, and Kwak Jae-u.

Kwak Jae-u, one of the most flamboyant of these civilian com
manders, remains particularly revered in Korea today. He was known as the “Heaven Descending Red Coat General,” so named for the unique coat and trousers he wore, dyed red in the first menstrual blood of young girls. Kwak believed this turned the garments into a sort of armor by infusing them with yin energy, which would repel the yang energy of Japanese bullets.
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Tales of Kwak’s exploits have been told and retold by Koreans for the past four hundred years, with the usual embellishments being added along the way. He remains today a figure instantly recognized by young and old alike, a Korean folk hero of a stature similar to
America’s Sam Houston or Davy Crockett.

Kwak was from a respectable yangban family in
Kyongsang Province. He was by all accounts well educated, intelligent, and a forceful and persuasive speaker. But he tended to be too outspoken and temperamental for his own good. Although he passed the civil service exam at the age of thirty-four, he submitted an essay that was so critical of the authorities that it sank any chance he had of securing a government post. With nothing else to do, Kwak spent the next several years in quiet retirement, apparently doomed to live out his days in obscurity.
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Then the Imjin War began, providing this prickly, outspoken “failure” a chance to prove his true worth to the nation. Immediately after the start of the invasion, Kwak began raising a force of civilian volun
teers to protect those parts of Kyongsang that had not yet been overrun by the Japanese, reportedly selling his patrimony to raise money to arm his men. In a typically stirring recruitment speech at the village of Uiryang, he roused the locals to action with the following words: “The enemy is fast approaching! If you don’t stand up and do something now, your wives and your parents and your children will all be slain! Are you going to just sit here and wait for the sword to fall? Or will you join with me now, and go to Chong-am ford! I can see that there are hundreds of strong young men among you. If you will make a stand with me at Chong-am; if we can together prevent the Japanese from crossing the river, you will teach the enemy something about the bravery of the men in these parts! And you will keep your town safe!”
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By mid summer of 1592 Kwak Jae-u, the “Red Coat General,” had raised a force of one thousand men in this manner and was beginning to prove a nuisance to the Japanese units assigned to hold the south. According to popular lore he dashed about Kyongsang so quickly that the Japanese came to believe that he possessed magical powers and could transport himself and his men across vast distances in the twink-ling of an eye. The mere sight of Kwak’s fiery red coat was thus supposedly enough to send the enemy into instant retreat. While such tales are undoubtedly exaggerated, the “Red Coat General” does seem to have been a skilled guerrilla leader. He wisely avoided meeting the Japanese in open battle, where they had amply proved themselves to be superior. Instead he concentrated on harassing them and wearing them down. He ambushed small parties of Japanese when they were out for
aging for food. He severed supply lines. He delivered rapid strikes against enemy strongholds when their guard was down, then melted back into the hills.

And he used trickery wherever he could. When the Japanese attempted to enter a new district, Kwak is said to have sent men into the hills surrounding their camp, each carrying a frame bearing five torches so that the enemy, thinking they were surrounded by a large force, would be unable to sleep for fear, and would flee the area the next morning. According to another tale, probably apocryphal, he once dug up an ancient tomb and placed a large lacquered box full of hornets beside the excavation for the Japanese to find. Sure enough, when the Japanese stumbled upon the box they assumed that it was a treasure trove that had been plundered from the grave and greedily pulled it open—only to release the furious insects and be badly stung. The next day, the now wary Japanese came upon a similar treasure box, con
veniently sitting beside a second excavated tomb. Thinking that the Koreans were trying to use the same trick a second time, they threw it into the fire to burn up the hornets that they supposed were inside. But this time the box did not contain hornets. The wily Kwak had instead filled it with gunpowder, resulting in an explosion that killed a hundred Japanese.
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As a heroic guerrilla leader, Kwak Jae-u remained just as critical and cantankerous as he had before the war. It was a trait that quickly made him enemies. One of the first was Kim Su, the governor of
Kyongsang Province. During the first days of the war Kim had led a force of several thousand government troops south from the provincial capital of Kyongju to meet the Japanese. Upon hearing of the fall of Tongnae, however, he concluded that the invaders could not be stopped, so he retreated with his army and issued a public order for the people of Kyongsang to flee into the hills. Kwak Jae-u was furious when he learned of this and sent Kim a heated letter accusing him of cowardice and listing seven reasons why he should be put to death. It was the start of an ongoing feud. Kim, deeply offended, wrote back to Kwak, calling him a “robber,” and sent a letter north to King Sonjo accusing the “Red Coat General” of disloyalty to the throne. Kwak then wrote a letter of his own to the king: “Governor Kim ran away from his post of duty, and when I upbraided him for it he called me a robber. I have killed many of the ‘rats,’ but as I have been called a robber I herewith lay down my arms and retire.”
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After abandoning his life as a guerrilla leader, Kwak was drawn into the government in recognition of his contribution to the war effort, serving first as a section chief in the Ministry of Justice in late 1592, magistrate of the town of
Songju in 1593, then magistrate of Chinju in 1595. As a government official Kwak remained just as prickly as ever and continued to alienate others with his criticisms and apparent arrogance, so much so that at one point he was dismissed and sent into exile. He finally withdrew from government service altogether, saying, “If I am not going to be listened to then I may as well leave.” He lived out the rest of his life in the countryside, declining offers of other appointments, immersed in scholarship and literary work under the pen name Mangudang, “Hall of Forgotten Cares.”
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The people of the neighboring southwestern
province of Cholla-do, meanwhile, had not been inactive. It was from bases along this region’s southern coast that Korean naval commander Yi Sun-sin delivered the first blows against the Japanese beginning in June, sinking nearly three hundred of their ships and preventing them from establishing the crucial supply route north via the Yellow Sea. It would now be from this region’s fertile inland plains that some of the most eminent uibyong leaders—most notably the scholar-warriors Ko Kyong-myong, Kim Chon-il, and Cho Hon—would arise and begin organizing guerrilla bands to resist the Japanese.