Admiral Yi Sun-sin

At a glance

• 🏹Passed the military exam in 1576

  He passed the regular military examination in the third class and entered office as a junior officer of the Military Training Agency.

• 🛡️He alone was ready

  The record for the eve of the war states that only Yi Sun-sin, commander of Left Jeolla, had prepared for an invasion.

• 🌊1593: the first Commander of the Three Provinces

  After clearing the southern coast he moved his camp to Hansando as headquarters and became the first to hold that office.

• 🕯️Noryang, 19 November 1598

  He found 500 enemy ships assembled to withdraw, attacked, and was hit by a stray shot.

He was not a commander marked out from the beginning.

In 1576 he passed the regular military examination in the third class and took his first office as a junior officer of the Military Training Agency. He held several posts afterwards, and while serving as garrison commander at Josanbo he asked the central government for more troops to strengthen the defences; the request was not granted, and when a raid came he could not hold with the few men he had and was obliged to withdraw.

That episode is worth setting down. His career contains several occasions on which a request was refused and he carried the consequences. The imprisonment that comes later belongs on the same line.

In the record of the Imjin War, his name appears as the exception.

Several commanders were sent to inspect defences, but "it was already too late, and only resentment among the people grew. Only Yi Sun-sin, naval commander of Left Jeolla, had made his preparations and was ready for the enemy's invasion."

Once the war began he immediately put his warships in order and readied himself for battle, but analysed the situation closely before striking. His whole fleet assembled off the naval headquarters on 29 April, with daily councils of war and enforced manoeuvring exercises, and he boarded his flagship on 2 May.

That sequence — repair, analyse, assemble, drill, and only then sail — was his method.

On 29 May he sailed from Yeosu with 23 warships, the turtle ship in the lead.

The most famous battle is Hansando. The Japanese had 36 large, 24 medium and 13 small ships anchored at Gyeonnaeryang, and Yi Sun-sin, judging Gyeonnaeryang too narrow and awkward to manoeuvre in, sought out Hansando as the place instead.

In other words, he did not fight where the enemy was; he chose where to fight. The result is as the war record has it: Hansando and Angolpo gave Joseon complete command of the sea and cut off the enemy's advance into the West Sea. For Hansando he was promoted to the senior rank of Jeongheon daebu.

In 1593, after destroying the enemy navy at Busan and Ungcheon and clearing the southern coast entirely, he moved his camp to Hansando as his headquarters and became the first Naval Commander of the Three Provinces.

This is the part most often left out.

Yi Sun-sin, who had been holding the southern coast with Hansando as his command headquarters, was imprisoned on false charges, and Won Gyun was appointed in his place.

The consequence is plain in the record. Won Gyun's unskilled tactics and ignorant fighting drew him into the Japanese strategy; he was defeated and killed, Yi Eok-gi, Choe Ho and Bae Heung-nip also fell, and the defences Yi Sun-sin had built at Hansando collapsed overnight.

Then Yi Sun-sin, reinstated as commander, won a great victory at Myeongnyang on the 16th day of the ninth month and blocked the Japanese advance westward.

The last battle was fought against an enemy already leaving.

On 19 November 1598 at Noryang he sighted 500 enemy ships assembled to withdraw and, persuading the Ming naval commander Chen Lin — who wished to avoid the engagement — went on the attack. He drove hard at the retreating ships and the Japanese lost many men and vessels.

But while directing his men from the prow he was struck by a stray enemy shot. And to the moment of his death he said, "The battle is at its height — take care not to announce my death," and quietly closed his eyes.

Almost everyone in Korea knows that sentence. Its weight comes from where it falls: in a battle already being won, days before the war ended.

Honestly: most of the places tied directly to Yi Sun-sin are outside Seoul — Tongyeong and Hansando, Yeosu, the Uldolmok strait at Jindo, and Asan. This site does not yet hold records for those places.

In Seoul, the place that covers him is the War Memorial of Korea, which deals with the wars of Korean history as a whole and takes in the Imjin War and Yi Sun-sin within that.

The statue in Gwanghwamun Square is a monument. Passing it with the last section of this article in mind makes it read a little differently.

Places connected to Yi Sun-sin

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  War Memorial of Korea

  Where the Imjin War and Yi Sun-sin are covered together in Seoul.

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  Changdeokgung Palace

  A palace of the dynasty he defended, and the first rebuilt after the war.

Frequently asked questions