⑦ Wailing — The Death of a Beloved Son

The Death of His Third Son, Yi Myeon

A month after the Battle of Myeongnyang, on October 14, 1597 (by the lunar calendar), Japanese forces struck Asan — where Admiral Yi's family lived — as if in retaliation for their defeat, and killed his third son, Yi Myeon. Myeon was twenty years old at the time, and the child the Admiral loved most.

Admiral Yi had walked out of prison on April 1, 1597, and, on the road as a disgraced soldier, had faced his mother's death on April 13. As a man still under punishment, he could not even hold a proper funeral for her, and was forced back onto the road on April 19. Six months after his mother's death, he now received word that the child he loved most had died. That day was October 14, by the lunar calendar.

Let us look now at his diary entry from that day:

In the evening, someone came from Cheonan bringing a letter from home. Before I had even broken the seal, my bones and flesh trembled and my heart grew restless and confused. I unfolded the outer wrapping in haste, and saw my second son Yeol's handwriting — and on the outside were written the two characters "tonggok," a wail of grief. I knew at once that Myeon had died, and before I knew it my whole being collapsed, and I wailed aloud without restraint. How can Heaven be so without mercy? By all reason it should be I who dies and you who lives — yet you have died and I remain. What manner of twisted order is this... (the rest omitted)

The grave of Yi Myeon, behind the Admiral's old family home at Hyeonchungsa Shrine

The Admiral's Wailing

I am myself now a man in my mid-fifties, and my own child is nearly thirty. If I were to receive word one day that my child had suddenly died, I too would surely wail without restraint, just as Admiral Yi did. That, I think, is a feeling every father who has raised a child shares.

Having lost both his beloved mother and his son, Admiral Yi wrote again and again in his diary the same laments: "Better simply to die," "Is there anywhere under heaven a life like mine?" But he had no one to receive these laments, and the crushing responsibility of rebuilding the navy — while enemy forces still threatened to push up the western coast — bore down on his shoulders without pause.

He was, without question, a lonely man — but a man as immovable as a great mountain. What people forget is that even a great mountain can weep. What I want to pass down to future generations is not the Admiral's record of twenty-three battles and twenty-three victories, but this wailing. Only by understanding the Admiral's grief can we understand his true greatness.

How do you understand Admiral Yi's wailing?

👉 Next post: ⑧ Seonjo — The Ultimate in Cowardice, and the Starting Point of Joseon's Fall

— Momcheolhak