① The Hidden Story Behind "Hansando-ga"

Do you know the poem "Hansando-ga," written by Admiral Yi Sun-sin?

On a moonlit night on Hansan Island, I sat alone in the watchtower,

my long sword at my side, sunk deep in worry,

when from somewhere a single flute cry pierced through, and it broke my heart.

There is hardly a Korean who doesn't know this poem. Most could recite it under their breath, since it appears without fail in middle and high school textbooks — a poem that belongs to the nation.

And yet, few people know what truly lies behind it. Korean history education leans so heavily on rote memorization that schools rarely teach the bitter, blood-soaked circumstances of when and where Admiral Yi actually wrote it. It is a little like teaching only the cut of a great man's coat, and never his character or his life.

Most of us simply assume the poem is set on Hansan Island (閑山島), off the coast of Tongyeong in South Gyeongsang Province. But hidden within it is a startling fact.

What the Admiral's Own Handwriting Reveals

The Chinese character for the place name "Hansan" in the poem's title, as it turns out, is written slightly differently from what most people expect. A surviving manuscript in the Admiral's own hand offers striking evidence of this.

Hansando-ga in Admiral Yi's own handwriting (cursive script)

Looking closely at that manuscript, the title on the right reads "閒山島歌" (Hansando-ga). The character most of us know for "hansan" — meaning "idle" or "at leisure" — is 閑, built from "gate" (門) enclosing "tree" (木). But in the Admiral's own handwriting, the character is 閒, which encloses "moon" (月) instead. The two look different, but in that era they were used interchangeably, and both simply denote the place name Hansan Island.

The real chill comes in the next line. In the poem's opening line, where the verse actually begins, Admiral Yi did not use 閒 (han, "idle"), the character for the place name — he wrote 寒 (han), meaning "cold" and "desolate," giving us "寒山島月明夜..." ("On a moonlit night on the cold, desolate island...").

He set the place name Hansan Island (閒山島) plainly in the title — and then, in the very first line, chose instead "hansan" (寒山), "a cold, desolate mountain." It is a stroke of poetic genius that works two ways at once: it longs for the sea off Hansan Island in its brighter days, while laying bare the Admiral's present state of mind — cold, raw, and utterly alone.

Historians have in fact confirmed that Admiral Yi wrote this poem not on Hansan Island at all, but on the night of the Chuseok full moon, the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month of 1597, at Yeolseollu Pavilion (列仙樓) in Boseong, South Jeolla Province.

What Happened Before August 15, 1597?

Let's turn the clock back to the start of that year. The Admiral's last two years were an unbroken chain of tragedy. On February 6, 1597, King Seonjo — the ruler of Joseon at the time — ordered his arrest. On March 4 he was thrown into the prison of the Uigeumbu, the royal tribunal, and for twenty-eight days — until he walked out on April 1 — he endured torture that brought him to the edge of death.

The year before, Seonjo had charged General Kim Deok-ryeong, supreme commander of the righteous armies — the civilian militias raised to fight the Japanese invasion — with treason and had him killed. He believed Yi Sun-sin deserved the same fate, and made it brutally clear that any official who dared speak in the Admiral's defense would be punished just as severely. Had Jeong Tak, the seventy-two-year-old Second State Councillor, one of the king's most senior ministers, not risked his own life to submit his petition of defense — the Singucha (伸救箚) — Admiral Yi would not have escaped Seonjo's blade.

When he walked out of prison on April 1, the Admiral began his journey as a soldier stripped of rank. As if that were not enough, on April 13 word reached him like a thunderclap: his mother had died. The entries in his war diary, the Nanjung Ilgi, from that day are almost unbearable to read — the words of a man holding his collapsing heart together with his bare hands. (I will return to this chapter later in the series.)

The tragedy did not end there. On July 15, the Joseon navy — now under Won Gyun, who had taken command in his place — was annihilated at the Battle of Chilcheollyang. With the nation's entire sea power wiped out, Seonjo — with breathtaking shamelessness — reinstated Yi Sun-sin as Naval Commander of the Three Provinces on July 22.

Betrayed and tortured by his own king, having lost his mother, and now commanding a navy that no longer existed — it was out of this blood-red despair that the Admiral made his way to Boseong. What awaited him there?

👉 Next post: ② "I Still Have Twelve Ships"

— Momcheolhak