DISINTEGRATION OF THE EARLY CHOSON 83tion, hunger, and disease. After the retreat from Pyongyang, and later from Seoul,
Hideyoshi must have realized that his original aim of conquering Ming China
had little chance of success. Yet, just on the eve of an armistice agreement with
the Chinese, Hideyoshi ordered the subjugation of the town of Chinju, just to
the west of Pusan. The ruthless massacre of all its defenders and inhabitants -
60,000 men, women, and children - was the worst single atrocity of the war.62
The fighting was halted and all but 43,000 Japanese troops were withdrawn
to Japan for three years between 1594 and 1597 while negotiations were con-
ducted for a compromise. Konishi Yukinaga and Shen Wei-ching had to create
a number of deceptions to keep the negotiations moving. With Shen's cooper-
ation Konishi on February J J, J 594, forged a letter of submission from Hideyoshi
to the Ming emperor that omitted mention of Hideyoshi's demands and appeared
to represent a request for trade as a tributary of China to enable the dispatch of
a Chinese mission to Japan.^63
When Hideyoshi finally agreed to accept a Ming envoy at his court, King Sonjo,
who had been opposing the negotiations from the outset, had no choice but to
send Hwang Sin as the official Korean ambassador (T'ongsinsa), to follow after
the Chinese to Japan.^64 The mission foundered, however, because Hideyoshi's
terms for peace - amity with the Ming sealed by Hideyoshi's marriage to a Ming
princess, a renewal of the tally trade, annexation of four Korean provinces, Korean
hostages, and a Korean pledge to refrain from challenging Japan - were impos-
sible for the Chinese emperor, let alone the Koreans, to consider. The negotia-
tions came to a sudden end when Hideyoshi exploded in a paroxysm of rage
when the Ming emperor's patent of investiture was read aloud to him. He found
it so demeaning and insulting that he was about to order the execution of the
entire Sino-Korean mission on the spot. Restrained by his underlings, however,
he agreed to release the mission before he accepted the hawkish Kata Kiyomasa's
request to renew the conflict. He dispatched troops back to Korea, rebuilt his
forces there to J 4 J ,500 men, and then demanded the cession of the three south-
ern provinces of Korea.^65
In the second invasion, the Japanese navy defeated the Korean fleet at the bat-
tle of Ch'i1ch'ollyang on Koje Island, which was then under the command of
Won Kyun because Yi Sunsin, who had been supported by the Easterner chief
state councilor, Yu Songnyong, had been imprisoned and demoted because of
unjustified charges by the Westerner faction.^66 The Japanese then divided their
forces into left and right armies, which moved into Cholla Province for the first
time and ruthlessly carried out an extermination campaign against the inhabi-
tants. The bloody advance was finally driven back by the Eastern Expeditionary
Army of the Ming at Iksan on October I7 (9.7 lunar), 1597, a town just south
of Seoul. The Japanese fleet then suffered a major defeat on October 26 at the
naval battle of Myongnyang, and Yi Sunsin, now restored to command, was able
to defeat a force of over 300 Japanese ships with only twelve of his own, there-
fore blocking the Japanese from further access into the Yellow Sea.^67
Pushed back to the southern coast by Ming and Korean regular and irregular