Siege of Pyongyang (1593)

Having achieved unity at home, Hideyoshi could afford to
devote some thought to restoring Japan’s position in south-east Asia. The vast
and apparently stable Chinese empire had grown in relative stature during
Japan’s centuries of anarchy, and in order to have a free hand against the
potential enemy Hideyoshi decided to invade the nearby peninsula of Korea. The
Japanese duly descended on Korea in the spring of 1592, and won a vital
bridgehead by storming into Pusan. The Korean forces of easy- going nobles and
serf-like peasants thereupon gave way in all directions, and allowed the
invaders to occupy the principal town, Seoul, without offering resistance.

After this first run of disasters the ingenious Koreans
managed to put up a very creditable performance at sea and around the
fortresses in other words in the kinds of war in which technical expertise
counted the most

Korean chroniclers leave no doubt that gunpowder appeared
in their land at an early date

At the end of 1392 a Chinese merchant .. . stayed in the
home of a general in charge of weapons along the River Imjin near Songdo. The
general told his servant to treat him kindly (the Koreans always got on well
with the Chinese) and the merchant showed him how to mix saltpetre. This was
the first time we had powder in Korea (Boots, 1934, 20)

In 1494 an official manual mentions the existence of cannon
that were designed to throw stones and arrows, and by 1569 Korean gunnery was
advanced enough to produce a large cannon called a ‘flying, striking,
earthquake heaven thunder’, which hurled a fuzed explosive or incendiary
missile for several hundred yards. The Koreans were backward only in the
production of hand weapons, and the matchlock remained unknown to them until
the Japanese envoy so unwisely presented them with a specimen in 1589 Many more
weapons were captured from the Japanese in the war of 1592, and the Koreans
were delighted to discover that you could strike a man down at a distance
merely by ‘pointing a dog’s hind leg at him’ (ibid.)

The design of Korean fortifications was distinctive, not to
say bizarre. The walls rarely rose more than twenty feet high, and the hundreds
of merlons along the crest formed so many miniature citadels, each between six
and ten feet long, pierced by three loopholes, and roofed over to the rear.
Every stone block of the revetment was dressed on the inner side into a
pyramid, which served to fix the masonry into the rampart’s core of earth and
loose stones However, the workmanship and materials of the wall were liable to
vary a great deal from one section to the other, for the construction was
carried on by separate gangs, each with its own way of working. In time of
siege the soul of defence was the town prefect, who took up station in the
upper storey of the main gate and beat encouraging noises on a great drum. An
historian comments that

since the Koreans geometrically and were psychologically
always on the defence in warfare, the wall naturally came to be their most
respected and efficient weapon. . . . By this mental attitude and the actual
physical protection of her walled retreats, Korea was able to maintain for so
long her individuality as a nation and to turn her enemies’ assaults into empty
victories by holding them for months without their gates until the shortage of
supplies and weakened spirit made their ‘victorious’ return home the better
part of valour (ibid., 36-7)

These cunning enemies soon made the Japanese regret that
they had ever invaded Korea. The Koreans were victorious at sea, thanks largely
to an iron-plated ‘tortoise-boat’ of their invention, and on land the
guerrillas were so had to maintain heavy garrisons in a series of forts along
the communications between Seoul and Pyongyang. The Korean levies under General
Pak Jin actually went over to the offensive, and used a ‘flying, striking,
earthquake heaven thunder’ to throw a large bomb into the town of Kyongju. The
fizzing missile attracted a crowd of Japanese, and repaid their curiosity by
blowing bits. The rest of the garrison abandoned the town in active that the
Japanese a score of them to terror

Thus the Koreans prolonged their resistance until, early in
1593, the Chinese poured over the Yalu to their help. Pyongyang fell to a
Chinese escalade in February, and the Japanese retreated to a series of
fortified camps on the south coast (much as the United Nations forces were to
do in the face of the North Korean invasion of 1950). The enforced
concentration of their troops in the south at least enabled the Japanese to
gain their last notable success of the war, when they annihilated the 60,000 or
70,000 Korean defenders of the long-isolated fortress of Chinju. The siege was
crude, even by Japanese standards: almost one hundred assaults were repulsed,
and the Japanese made their breach only by advancing a ‘sow’ to the corner of a
wall and prising the stones loose by crowbars.

The Japanese held their coastal camps against intermittent
attack until they concluded peace with the Chinese in 1598. The last of the
expeditionary force was withdrawn from Korea not long afterwards.

Siege of Pyongyang

The Siege of Pyongyang was a military conflict fought
between the allied Ming-Joseon army and the Japanese First Division under
Konishi Yukinaga. The battle ended in victory for the allies but a successful
retreat from Pyeongyang by the remaining Japanese in the night of 8 February
1593.

A minor Ming force of 5,000 under Wu Weizhong arrived at the
Yalu River on 5 January.

The Ming army of 35,000 under Li Rusong arrived at the Yalu
River on 26 January. They were then joined by the advance force and a bodyguard
unit sent to protect Seonjo of Joseon, raising their strength to 43,000,
another 10,000 Koreans at Sunan under I Il, and finally 4,200 monks under
Hyujeong.

Li Rusong sent ahead the envoy Shen Weijing to negotiate
with Konishi Yukinaga, however this act was insincere. He had no intention of
negotiating with the Japanese. Konishi sent 20 men to greet the Ming envoys,
but most of them did not return. It’s not certain what happened to them. One
version of events state that they were killed during a banquet with Shen
Weijing, another says they were simply ambushed on the way.

During the march to Pyeongyang they encountered a Japanese scout
party, three of whom were captured, and five killed. The allied army arrived at
Pyeongyang and set up camp north of the city on 5 February 1593.

Konishi offered to hold negotiations but was refused. That
night some 800 Japanese sneaked out and attacked the Ming camp, however they
were spotted by guards and driven back by fire arrows, suffering 30 casualties.

The battle began on 6 February 1593. Hyujeong’s monks with
support from Wu Weizhong attacked the large hill north of Pyeongyang where
around 2,000 enemy troops were stationed under Konishi Yukinaga. Konishi was
almost surrounded at one point until Sō Yoshitoshi counterattacked and rescued
him. The fighting lasted for two days before the last Japanese commander,
Matsuura Shigenobu, was forced to pull back to Pyeongyang. The monks suffered
600 casualties and Wu Weizhong was wounded in the chest by a bullet.

In the morning of 8 January, Li Rusong’s army advanced on
the city, their tightly packed ranks “looking like the scales on a
fish.” Yang Yuan and Zhang Shijue attacked from the north and west, Li
Rubai from the southeast, and I Il and Gim Eungso from the southwest. The east
was covered by the Daedong River and could not be attacked.

Once the signal cannon fired, they rushed the walls with
ladders, shot fire arrows and threw bombs into the city, and started pounding
the gates with cannons. The Japanese defense was almost too much. Li Rusong’s
own horse was shot out from under him and the assault began to show signs of faltering
before Li went forward, cut off the head of a retreating soldier, and offered
5,000 taels to the first man over the wall. The allied troops renewed their
assault until Luo Shangzhi was able to clear the wall and Yang Yuan followed by
breaking through the northern gate. In the west the surviving monks and troops
from the earlier attack joined Zhang Shijue’s push into the city once the gate
had been destroyed by cannons.

The Japanese pulled back to their last line of defense, an
earth and log fort in the northern corner of Pyeongyang. Li Rusong instructed
his troops to set the building on fire using fire arrows, but even so the
Japanese could not be dislodged. Instead the crush of allied soldiers and
cavalry suffered horrendous casualties to Japanese gunfire. Unable to move
forward, many retreated through the western gate. Seeing this, Konishi chose to
go on the offensive and sortied out with his men, only to be driven back by
cannon fire.

Unwilling to suffer any more casualties, Li Rusong called
off the attack as night approached.

Although nominally successful in repelling the enemies, the
Japanese were no longer capable of defending the city. All the gates had been
breached, no food was left, and they had suffered horrible casualties. With
this in mind Konishi led the entire garrison out into the night and snuck
across the frozen Daedong River back to Hanseong.

Konishi’s men reached Hanseong on 17 February.

After the Japanese loss at Pyeongyang, Kuroda Yoshitaka
called for the removal of Konishi Yukinaga, saying that he was a poor leader
and did not get along with his fellow commanders. Konishi, in turn, became the
primary advocate for peace on the Japanese side, having suffered one of the
heaviest losses during the campaign.

Song Yingchang invited Seonjo of Joseon to return to Pyeongyang on 6 March.