Battle of Noryang (1598): The Last Battle of Admiral Yi Sun-sin

The Battle of Noryang was the last major naval battle of the Imjin War, fought in the Noryang Strait off southern Korea on the night of 15–16 December 1598. A combined Korean and Ming Chinese fleet under Yi Sun-sin and Chen Lin intercepted a large Japanese fleet trying to rescue a besieged army as Japan withdrew from Korea. The allies won a clear victory, but Admiral Yi Sun-sin was killed in the closing stage of the fight.

Background: the Japanese withdrawal

By the autumn of 1598 the second Japanese invasion of Korea had stalled. Japanese armies held a line of fortresses on the south coast, where Ming and Korean forces besieged them. On 18 September 1598 Toyotomi Hideyoshi died, and the council of regents ruling for his young son secretly ordered all troops home.

Konishi Yukinaga’s army of over ten thousand men was trapped in its fortress at Suncheon (Yegyo) on the south coast. A Ming army besieged it on land, while Yi Sun-sin’s Korean fleet and the Ming fleet under Admiral Chen Lin blockaded it by sea. Konishi tried to negotiate a safe passage, offering bribes to the Ming commanders, but Yi refused to let the invaders leave unpunished.

The relief fleet

To rescue Konishi, Japanese commanders further east gathered a fleet at Sacheon and nearby bases. It was led by Shimazu Yoshihiro of Satsuma, together with Tachibana Muneshige, Sō Yoshitoshi and others. Estimates of its size vary from about 300 to 500 vessels, many of them transports.

The allied fleet, usually put at roughly 140 to 150 warships, about 80 Korean panokseon and some 60 Ming ships, moved east to intercept it at the Noryang Strait, the narrow channel between Namhae Island and the mainland. Yi’s own war in the region had begun six years earlier with victories at Okpo and Sacheon in 1592, recounted in the article on the Imjin War.

The battle

The Japanese fleet entered the strait in the early hours of 16 December. The allied ships attacked in the darkness with cannon, fire arrows and incendiaries, and the narrow channel turned into a scene of burning ships and hand-to-hand fighting. The aged Ming commander Deng Zilong, then in his seventies, was killed when his ship was set on fire and boarded. At one point Chen Lin’s flagship was surrounded, and Yi’s ships came to its rescue.

At dawn the battered Japanese fleet fell back toward Gwaneumpo bay on Namhae Island. As Yi led the pursuit, he was hit by an arquebus bullet. According to the war memoir of the chief minister Yu Seong-ryong and other early accounts, Yi ordered that his death be kept secret because the battle was at its height. His nephew Yi Wan concealed it and continued to direct the flagship until the fighting ended around noon.

Losses

Korean accounts claim that around 200 Japanese ships were destroyed and many more captured or damaged, with very heavy loss of life. Japanese sources acknowledge a serious defeat but give lower figures, and modern historians treat all numbers as estimates. Allied losses were smaller but included Yi Sun-sin, Deng Zilong and several senior Korean officers.

While the main fleets fought at Noryang, Konishi Yukinaga used the distraction to slip out of Suncheon by another route and escape. Within days the last Japanese forces left Korea, ending the war.

Key people

• Yi Sun-sin (1545–1598): Korean admiral, victor of Myeongnyang, killed in the battle.
• Chen Lin (1543–1607): Ming admiral who commanded the Chinese fleet and cooperated closely with Yi.
• Deng Zilong (died 1598): veteran Ming commander killed in the fighting.
• Shimazu Yoshihiro (1535–1619): Satsuma lord who led the Japanese relief fleet and escaped; two years later he fought at the Battle of Sekigahara.
• Konishi Yukinaga (died 1600): Japanese commander whose escape from Suncheon was the aim of the relief operation.

Legacy

Yi Sun-sin’s body was taken to his family home in Asan, where he was buried. He was posthumously given high honours and later the title Chungmugong, “Duke of Loyalty and Warfare”. His shrine, Hyeonchungsa in Asan, and the Yiraksa shrine at Gwaneumpo, where he died, are national memorials. His statue stands in central Seoul.

Some writers have argued that Yi deliberately sought death to avoid persecution at court after the war, pointing to his earlier arrest in 1597. This remains speculation without clear evidence; it is equally consistent with the sources that he was killed while leading from the front, as he had done throughout the war.

Timeline

• 1598, 18 September: Hideyoshi dies; withdrawal is ordered.
• 1598, autumn: Ming and Korean forces besiege Konishi at Suncheon.
• 1598, mid-December: Shimazu Yoshihiro assembles a relief fleet.
• 1598, 16 December, early hours: The fleets clash in the Noryang Strait.
• 1598, 16 December, morning: Yi Sun-sin is killed during the pursuit.
• 1598, late December: The last Japanese troops leave Korea.

Why it matters

Noryang closed the Imjin War with a final allied victory at sea and inflicted heavy losses on the departing invaders. Yi Sun-sin’s death at the moment of victory sealed his reputation as Korea’s greatest national hero, and the words attributed to him on his deathbed remain among the most famous in Korean history.