Battle of Myeongnyang (1597): Yi Sun-sin's 13 Ships Against 133

The Battle of Myeongnyang was a naval battle fought on 26 October 1597, during the second Japanese invasion of Korea, in the narrow Myeongnyang Strait off south-western Korea. Admiral Yi Sun-sin, with only 13 warships, defeated a Japanese fleet that Korean sources number at 133 warships. The victory, won weeks after Korea’s navy had been almost destroyed, stopped the Japanese from using the west coast to supply their armies and became one of the most celebrated events in Korean history.

Background: a navy destroyed

In the first years of the Imjin War, Yi Sun-sin’s fleet had won a series of victories that cut Japanese sea communications. During the peace talks of 1593–1596 he was appointed supreme naval commander of three southern provinces. But in early 1597, as Japan prepared a second invasion, rivals at court accused him of disobeying orders. He was stripped of command, arrested, interrogated and sent to serve as a common soldier.

His successor, Won Gyun, led the Korean fleet against the Japanese near Geoje Island. At the Battle of Chilcheollyang on 28 August 1597 the fleet was surprised and almost entirely destroyed; Won Gyun was killed. Only about a dozen panokseon escaped under the officer Bae Seol, who had withdrawn from the battle.

King Seonjo hurriedly reappointed Yi as naval commander. Yi gathered the survivors and recruited sailors from the coast. When the court suggested that he abandon the sea and join the land forces, he replied in a memorial that he still had twelve warships, and that as long as he lived the enemy would not dare to look down on Korea’s navy.

The Japanese, meanwhile, were confident. Their armies were advancing through Jeolla Province, and their fleet was ordered to move west along the coast, round the south-western tip of the peninsula and support the land campaign. After Chilcheollyang they had little reason to fear the remnants of the Korean navy, and Yi’s small force retreated westward ahead of them for several weeks, avoiding battle while he gathered ships, supplies and men.

The Myeongnyang Strait

Yi chose to fight in the Myeongnyang Strait, known in Korean as Uldolmok, the “roaring strait”, between Jindo Island and the Haenam peninsula. At its narrowest it is only about 300 metres wide, and the tidal current rushes through it at speeds often given as around 10 knots, changing direction roughly every six hours.

The strait was the gateway from the south coast to the Yellow Sea. A Japanese fleet that passed it could sail up the west coast to support the army advancing north toward Hanseong (Seoul). The narrow channel would also prevent the Japanese from surrounding Yi’s small fleet and would force them to come at him in a crowded column.

On 25 October Yi moved his fleet to Usuyeong, the naval base at the northern end of the strait. That evening, according to his diary, he told his officers that in war those who are determined to die will live, while those who seek to live will die, and warned that anyone who failed in his duty would be punished under military law.

The battle

On the morning of 26 October a large Japanese fleet entered the strait with the current behind it. Korean records count 133 warships, with perhaps 200 or more transport and supply vessels following. The Japanese commanders included Tōdō Takatora, Katō Yoshiaki, Wakisaka Yasuharu and Kurushima Michifusa, an experienced leader of former pirates from the Inland Sea.

Yi’s 13 panokseon formed a line at the northern mouth of the strait. At first, according to his diary, the other captains hung back in fear and Yi’s flagship fought almost alone, firing cannon and arrows into the Japanese vanguard. Yi raised signal flags to summon his officers. When the ships of An Wi and Kim Eung-ham approached, he shouted to An Wi that he would be executed under military law if he retreated; An Wi’s ship then plunged into the fight and was nearly boarded.

The panokseon, built of heavy pine with high decks, were well suited to cannon fire, while the Japanese preferred to close in and board. In the narrow channel the Japanese ships crowded against each other. Kurushima Michifusa was killed; his body was identified in the water by a Japanese prisoner on Yi’s ship, pulled aboard and hung from the mast, which shook Japanese morale.

Around midday the tide turned and the current began to flow against the Japanese. Their ships, now pushed back on each other, became easy targets. After losing around thirty ships, the Japanese fleet withdrew. No Korean warship was lost; Yi’s diary records only light Korean casualties.

Key people

• Yi Sun-sin (1545–1598): the Korean admiral, reinstated after his dismissal, who planned and led the battle and recorded it in his war diary, the Nanjung Ilgi.
• Kurushima Michifusa (1561–1597): Japanese commander killed in the battle, a member of the Kurushima branch of the Murakami sea lords.
• Tōdō Takatora (1556–1630): one of the senior Japanese naval commanders; he was reportedly wounded in the battle.
• Wakisaka Yasuharu (1554–1626): Japanese admiral who had been defeated by Yi at Hansando in 1592.
• An Wi and Kim Eung-ham: Korean captains whose ships joined Yi’s flagship at the height of the battle.

By the numbers

Almost everything known about the battle comes from the Korean side, above all Yi Sun-sin’s personal war diary, the Nanjung Ilgi, and his official reports to the court. The diary records the weather, the tides, his orders and his anger at hesitant officers in vivid detail, and it gives the figure of 133 enemy ships. Later Korean histories, such as the official annals of King Seonjo’s reign, broadly confirm the outcome.

Japanese records of the battle are brief. Family histories of commanders such as Tōdō Takatora mention the fighting and the death of Kurushima Michifusa but say little about numbers. Historians therefore accept the Korean victory and the scale of the Japanese defeat in the strait, while treating the exact figures with caution. Some suggest that only part of the Japanese fleet, perhaps the faster and lighter vessels, actually entered the narrows.

Consequences

Although the Japanese fleet still far outnumbered his, Yi had achieved his aim. The night after the battle he withdrew north to regroup, since his small force could not hold the strait indefinitely. But the Japanese did not try again to push up the west coast. Combined with the Ming army’s success at Jiksan earlier in October, the battle halted the Japanese offensive, and their forces fell back to fortresses on the south coast.

The victory also restored Korean confidence. Yi rebuilt his fleet over the following year, and in 1598 he cooperated with a Ming fleet under Chen Lin. In revenge for Myeongnyang, Japanese soldiers raided Yi’s home district of Asan, where his youngest son, Yi Myeon, was killed.

Myths and facts

Several popular stories have grown up around Myeongnyang. One holds that Yi stretched iron chains across the strait to trap the Japanese ships. This does not appear in Yi’s diary or official reports, and historians generally regard it as a later legend.

Turtle ships are often shown in modern depictions of the battle, but none took part. The few that existed had been lost at Chilcheollyang, and Yi fought only with panokseon. It is also sometimes said that the Japanese fleet was annihilated; in fact most of it survived and withdrew, although it was badly mauled.

Legacy

Myeongnyang became the most famous example of Yi Sun-sin’s leadership and of Korea’s resistance during the Imjin War. Yi’s words about those who are prepared to die are widely quoted in Korea. The battle site is marked by memorials on both shores, and the Jindo Bridge, opened in 1984, now spans the strait, where an experimental tidal power station has also been built.

Yi’s war diary, which describes the battle, was inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World register in 2013. In 2014 the South Korean film The Admiral: Roaring Currents, based on the battle, became the most-watched film in the country’s history. Yi died the following year in the war’s last naval battle, the Battle of Noryang, just as the invasion ordered by Toyotomi Hideyoshi came to an end.

Timeline

• 1597, early: Yi Sun-sin is dismissed and arrested.
• 1597, 28 August: The Korean fleet is destroyed at Chilcheollyang.
• 1597, September: Yi is reappointed naval commander with about a dozen ships.
• 1597, 17 October: Ming forces halt the Japanese army at Jiksan.
• 1597, 25 October: Yi moves to Usuyeong and addresses his officers.
• 1597, 26 October: Battle of Myeongnyang.
• 1598, 16 December: Yi is killed at the Battle of Noryang.

Why it matters

Myeongnyang showed how skilful use of geography, tides and firepower could overcome overwhelming numbers. Coming just after Korea’s worst naval defeat, it kept the Japanese out of the Yellow Sea, helped stall the second invasion and made Yi Sun-sin the enduring national hero of Korea.