Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions. Yu Hyongwon and the Late Choson Dynasty - James B. Palais

DISINTEGRATION OF THE EARLY CHaSON 79

ese troops from entering Cholla Province in the southwest. Konishi Yukinaga

pushed north and occupied Pyongyang by July 23, where he halted for the win-

ter. A second wing under Kata Kiyomasa and Nabeshima Naoshige moved into

the northeast up to the Yalu and Tumen rivers.49

Ming forces belatedly entered the contest in January 1593 and defeated Kon-

ishi Yukinaga's men in a battle at Pyongyang on February 8, 1593. Heady with

their victory at Pyongyang, the Ming commander, Li Ju-sung, rashly pursued

the retreating Japanese but suffered a stinging defeat at the battle of Pyokcheg-

wan on February 25-27, 1593,just north of the capital at Hansong (Seoul). That

defeat sobered the Chinese and created an almost excessive caution and defen-

siveness among them for the rest of the war, but Konishi realized that the tide

of battle had turned against him. He agreed on April 18, 1593, to a truce call-

ing for the mutual withdrawal of Japanese forces from Hansong to the Pusan

area and Ming forces to the Liao-tung area in China, and the return of two Korean

princes that Kata Kiyomasa had obtained from a Korean rebel in Hamgyong

Province. 50

Konishi then began a period of protracted negotiations with a Chinese offi-

cial, Shen Wei-ching. Sung Ying-ch'ang, the Ming military commissioner

(Ching-Weh) then in charge of affairs in Korea, was hoping that a promise to

have the Ming emperor confer investiture on Hideyoshi as "King of Japan" would

satisfy his desire for recognition and formal relations and bring the invasion to

an endY

Korean Military Peiformance in the First Phase

Dispatch of Field Commanders from the Capital. When word of the landing
of Japanese troops first arrived at the capital in Seoul (Hansong) in 1592, the
government followed current practice of dispatching a mobile border commander
(Sunbyonsa), Yi II, to take charge of troops in the south. The Ministry of War
assigned him what was supposed to be three hundred crack troops from the cap-
ital as his own contingent, but he found that half the men consisted of raw recruits,
clerks in their square caps, or students dressed in their hats and gowns with their
examination books in hand - a motley crew of men who had spent their lives
trying to evade military service. He finally left these men behind and took only
sixty cavalrymen, recruiting troops on the way south.
When he arrived at Mun'gyong in north Kyongsang Province, there were no
troops there to meet him. All the soldiers from the area south of Mun'gyong had
been assembled near Taegu for several days to await his arrival but had run away
when they heard that the Japanese were approaching. He pressed on to Sangju
where he found but a few hundred troops whom he joined with his own men to
form a small force that was soon overwhelmed by the 20,000 Japanese under
Konishi Yukinaga at the battle of Sangju on May 15-16, 1592 (lunar 4.24-5),51
Yu Songnyong, the chief state councilor for much of the war, later wrote that
this disaster had been caused by the abandonment of the early Choson chin'-