Ryu Seong-ryong: The Man Who Recommended Yi Sun-sin

At a glance

• 🖋️Seoae, 1542–1607

  Bon-gwan Pungsan, art name Seoae, born in Uiseong. A disciple of Yi Hwang who studied alongside Kim Seong-il.

• ⚓He recommended two commanders

  Expecting invasion, he recommended Gwon Yul for Uiju and Yi Sun-sin for the Jeolla left naval command.

• 🏛️Sacked mid-war, then reinstated

  Impeached at Pyongyang for 'ruining the country' and dismissed, he was made grand commander at Uiju and chief state councillor again the next year.

• 📕The Jingbirok

  His Jingbirok and Seoae Collection are called invaluable materials for research on the Imjin War.

His training was entirely civil. Bon-gwan Pungsan, courtesy name Ihyeon, art name Seoae, born in Uiseong; his father Yu Jung-yeong was governor of Hwanghae-do. He was a disciple of Yi Hwang, and studied alongside Kim Seong-il, with whom he was close.

He became a licentiate in 1564, entered the Sungkyunkwan the next year, and passed the special literary examination in 1566. Twenty-four years of offices follow, and then the ladder gets short: third state councillor in 1590, with the third grade of the Gwangguk merit subject and the title Prince Pungwon; second state councillor and concurrently minister of personnel in 1591.

In the faction politics of that year he belonged to the moderate Namin wing of the Dongin, against Yi San-hae's hardline Bugin. That alignment is not trivia — it is the same fault line that removes him in 1598.

Alongside the two recommendations, he asked that Yi Il replace Jo Dae-gon as right army commander of Gyeongsang, and that the jingwan garrison system be restored to its old form. He was, in other words, trying to rebuild a defensive structure before there was a war to justify it.

Japan invaded in force on 13 April 1592. He held the war ministry concurrently and directed military affairs as grand commander, then became chief state councillor and escorted the king — and at Pyongyang he was impeached by his opponents for having ruined the country, and dismissed.

The dismissal lasted about as long as the retreat did. At Uiju he was made grand commander of Pyeongan-do; the following year he recovered Pyongyang together with the Ming general Li Rusong, then as grand commander of Chungcheong, Gyeongsang and Jeolla advanced as far as Paju. That year he was raised to chief state councillor again, commanding four provinces as grand commander.

When Li Rusong was heavily defeated at Byeokjegwan and fell back westward, Ryu tried hard to stop him and failed; he then had Gwon Yul and Yi Bin hold Paju Sanseong and divided the strategic points among the commanders.

Then the part that outlasted the war. In the tenth month he escorted King Seonjo back to Seoul and requested the establishment of the Hullyeon Dogam. When it was set up in 1594 he became its superintendent and lectured on the Jixiao Xinshu; he asked that temple lands in Hoseo be assigned to it to supply military grain and that state colony fields be opened at Joryeong — continuing to work on military preparation even while Ming and Japan were negotiating peace.

A standing trained army, funded by reassigned land, created in the middle of a war by a Confucian scholar. That is the administrative achievement, and it is less famous than the book.

In 1598 the Ming commissioner Ding Yingtai falsely reported to his own court that Joseon meant to attack Ming in league with Japan. The Bugin impeached Ryu for not going to refute it, and he was stripped of office. He was restored in 1600, but never took office again and lived in retreat.

In 1604 he was enrolled in the second grade of the Hoseong merit subject and re-enfeoffed as Prince Pungwon. Rehabilitated on paper, retired in fact — and that retirement is when the Jingbirok gets written.

There is a caveat worth carrying. His student Jeong Gyeong-se wrote in the funerary account that "the poems and prose he composed over his life were lost in the fires of the Imjin War, and now ten volumes of the collected works, the Sinjongnok, the Yeongmorok and the Jingbirok are kept at the house" — from which it is clear that most of it was lost.

So the Jingbirok survives partly because so little else did. His grave is on the hill behind Suri in Pungsan-eup, Andong; he was enshrined at Byeongsan Seowon among other places; his posthumous title was Munchung.

Both sites people visit for him need a correction.

Chunghyodang at Hahoe is his house — but it was not built by him. The heritage record is precise: the men's quarters and the inner quarters were built by his grandson Ryu Won-ji (1598–1674) and extended and repaired by his great-grandson Ryu Ui-ha (1616–1698), while the long servants' wing was built by his eighth-generation descendant Ryu Sang-jo (1763–1838). Ryu Seong-ryong died in 1607; his grandson was nine. The Chunghyodang plaque in the men's hall is said to have been written by the calligrapher Heo Mok (1595–1682).

Byeongsan Seowon began as Pungak Seodang, the Pungsan Ryu clan's school, and Ryu moved it to this site in 1572. Jondeoksa was built in 1614 to enshrine his spirit tablet, and that of his third son Ryu Jin was added in 1629. In 1863 it received the name Byeongsan from the king and so became a seowon. The buildings' own story is in Byeongsan Seowon.

And one line that connects the whole of the nineteenth century to him: Byeongsan Seowon is one of the 47 seowon that remained when the Daewongun ordered the seowon abolished in 1868. It was inscribed on 6 July 2019 as part of Seowon, Korean Neo-Confucian Academies, a property of nine academies, under criterion (iii).

Places connected to Ryu Seong-ryong

• 

  Byeongsan Seowon

  Where his spirit tablet was enshrined in 1614 — and one of the 47 seowon left standing after 1868.

• 

  Andong Hahoe Folk Village

  The Pungsan Ryu village he came from; Chunghyodang here is called his house though his descendants built it.

Frequently asked questions