Seven-Year War Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
This article is about the 1592–1598 war in Korea. For the 1756–1763 world war, please see Seven Years' War.
| Seven-Year War | |
|---|---|
| Korean Name | |
| Revised Romanization/ McCune-Reischauer | Imjin Waeran |
| Hangul | 임진 왜란 |
| Hanja | 壬辰倭亂 |
The Japanese invaded Korea twice, in 1592 and again in 1597, bringing the already deteriorated (from the first Japanese invasion in 1592) political, economic, and social order to a state of complete collapse. Korean troops who did not have firearms were unable to check the Japanese using firearms. Korea was saved from the savagery only when Admiral Yi Sun-sin devastated the Japanese Naval Fleet and the Ming Dynasty joined the fight against the Japanese.
The war carried dramatic consequences on East Asian history. For Korea, the horrible devestation would leave the country in a perpetually weakened state until the Japanese returned and annexed Korea in 1910. In addition, the cost of the conflict also helped to bankrupt the Ming Dynasty and lead to its eventual collapse at the hand of the Manchus.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who established his hegemony in Japan in the latter part of the 16th century, had hoped but failed to receive cooperation from the Ming Dynasty in his attempt to make himself a new Shogun. Motivated in part also 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 China. He first made his intentions to conquer China known to Mori Terumoto in 1586, then set about trying to realize it after he defeated Shimazu and Hojo. As the first step he intended to secure the Korean peninsula as an invasion route for his forces. After King Seonjo refused his offer of an alliance against China and military access for the Japanese troops, Hideyoshi launched a war against Korea in 1592 to secure passage to China.
The Japanese invasion of 1592 with 160,000 troops had great initial success mainly due to firearms. Two armies, under Konishi Yukinage and Kato Kiyomasa, landed on the 25th and 26th of May and marched north. Konishi reached the Han River south of Seoul and entered the city on June 12, just 18 days after landing at Busan. The Korean 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 and advanced as far north as Pyongyang. In July, Ming China, appealing to King Seonjo's request for aid, sent a small force of 5,000, which was not enough to fend off the Japanese forces. At this juncture Hideyoshi, after suffering numerous setbacks, including logistical problems caused by Korean saboteurs and major naval defeats at the hands of the Korean navy which had completely cut off Japans supply lines, proposed to China the division of Korea - the north as a self-governing Chinese satellite, and the south to remain in Japanese hands.
Knowing Japan had no chance of victory, that offer was promptly rejected. In January 1593, China sent a much larger force of 50,000 and in February 1593 a large combined force of Chinese and Korean soldiers attacked Pyongyang and drove the Japanese into southward retreat. By the end of 1593, King Seonjo was back in Seoul. With the military assistance given by Chinese and Korean warriors, and Korean naval victories won by Admiral Yi Sun-shin (who invented the armored 'turtle ship'), Japan requested an armistice. Admiral Yi Sun-shin had a technological advantage over the Japanese naval fleet, the Koreans had the first iron-clad ships in the world which allowed the Koreans with 12 ships devastate 133 Japanese Imperial fleet into defeat.
For four years there was an informal truce. Some Japanese soldiers left the army and settled down, even marrying Korean women. Further peace talks were fruitless, however. Chinese negotiators demanded that Japan acknowledge vassal status, while Hideyoshi demanded, among other things, a royal marriage with the Chinese Emperor's daughter and four of Korea's southern provinces. In 1597 Hideyoshi sent another force of 140,000 men to Korea. China again sent aid by reinforcing their armies with another 40,000 men. This time they met with stronger resistance and were turned back just south of Seoul by a large Choson and Ming force. As the Japanese retreated south through Kyeongsang-do they burned Kyonju and destroyed and stole much of the historic and artistic legacy of Silla. By early 1598, the Japanese forces, hemmed in by Korean and Chinese armies, found themselves unable to break out of the south despite fierce fighting. The whole attempt was suddenly abandoned with Hideyoshi's death in September 1598.
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 tens of thousands of skilled workers (celadon ware makers, craftsmen, artisans, etc) were either killed during the war or kidnapped to Japan as captives to help Japanese develop their crafts. In 1598 alone, the Japanese took some 38,000 ears as horrific trophies. The long war reduced the productive capacity of farmlands from 1,708,000 kyol to 541,000 kyol. Pillage and foraging by Chinese troops only added to the unmitigated tragedy of a war from which the peninsula kingdom never fully recovered.
Following the war, relations between Korea and Japan had been completely suspended. Japan was cut off from the technology of the mainlands. 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. In 1604, Tokugawa Ieyasu, needing to restore commercial relations with Korea in order to have access to the technology of the mainland again, met Korea's demands and released some 3000 captive Koreans. As a result, in 1607, a Korean mission visited Edo, and diplomatic and trade relations were restored on a limited basis.
This is an Article on Seven-Year War. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Seven-Year War The first invasion
The second invasion
See also