㉒ During the Ceasefire Talks, What Was Admiral Yi Doing?

From March 1593 to September 1596, Ming China and Japan carried on ceasefire negotiations.

Joseon was not a party to these talks.

It's easy to think of this stretch as a “blank period” in Admiral Yi's story. Set against the narrative arc running from Okpo to Myeongnyang, four years without a single battle can look like four years of doing very little. Even King Seonjo, the ruler at the time, seems to have thought Admiral Yi wasn't doing much of anything.

Some of you reading this, like King Seonjo, may suspect that Admiral Yi didn't do much during those four quiet years of the Ming-Japan ceasefire talks either. Admiral Yi himself left an answer to that, directly, in the Nanjung Ilgi:

I've been out at sea for three years now -- there's no way that could be true. (Nanjung Ilgi, September 3, 1594)

Let's look at what actually happened during the Ming-Japan ceasefire talks, and what Admiral Yi was doing all that time.

How the Negotiations Began

By early 1593, both Ming China and Japan were already exhausted.

That January, Ming had retaken Pyongyang with a force of some 43,000 troops under Li Rusong. But the victory came at a steep price. In the battle that followed at Byeokjegwan, the elite cavalry Li Rusong led personally was caught in an ambush and suffered heavy losses. Winter campaigning meant fodder for the horses couldn't be supplied in time; the horses grew weak with hunger, plague broke out, and Ming's cavalry strength was badly cut down.

From Ming's perspective, there was no longer any reason to keep fighting. Their goal -- driving the Japanese out of northern Joseon -- had already been achieved. They had no wish to sacrifice more of their own troops on foreign soil. Konishi Yukinaga's forces, pushed out of Pyongyang, were in no better shape -- starving, freezing, in dire condition.

In this situation, Shen Weijing -- chosen as a negotiating envoy by the Ming minister of war, Shi Xing, for no reason beyond his fluency in Japanese and familiarity with Japan -- joined hands with Konishi Yukinaga, the vanguard commander of the Japanese army. The two first met in Pyongyang in September 1592 to discuss a ceasefire. Formal negotiations began in earnest in March 1593, and by May, a Ming delegation including Shen Weijing had crossed all the way to Nagoya in Kyushu to meet Toyotomi Hideyoshi directly. There, Hideyoshi put forward seven conditions, including the cession of four Joseon provinces and sending a Ming princess to Japan as a royal consort.

How the Negotiations Ended

The talks dragged on for more than three years after that. During this time, the Ming court sent Li Zongcheng as chief envoy and Yang Fangheng as deputy, dispatching them to Japan as an investiture mission. Then, in April 1596 (byeongsin), unexpected news reached even Hansan Island.

The Ming envoy (Li Zongcheng) fled, while the deputy envoy remains in the Japanese camp; on the 8th of this month, a report was made to the higher authorities explaining the reason for his flight. (Nanjung Ilgi, April 22, 1596)

The place chief envoy Li Zongcheng fled to wasn't Japan -- it was the Japanese army camp at Busan.

Li Zongcheng had grown afraid of a rumor that Hideyoshi meant to seize and humiliate the investiture envoys, and fled in disguise, abandoning even his official seal and robes. He never set foot on Japanese soil at all. The remaining deputy envoy, Yang Fangheng, took over as chief envoy, with Shen Weijing filling the vacancy, and the negotiations continued. They finally crossed to Japan that September, delivering the Ming emperor's investiture document to Hideyoshi in Osaka. But the document reflected none of the conditions Hideyoshi had originally demanded. Furious, Hideyoshi declared the negotiations broken off, ending a ceasefire that had lasted nearly four years. The Jeongyu War began the following year.

Through this entire process, Joseon remained, to the very end, no party to the negotiations.

Admiral Yi could follow how the talks were unfolding through his own intelligence network planted in Busan.

King Seonjo's Rebuke -- “Just Standing By, Arms Folded”

On September 3, 1594 (gapo), a secret royal directive reached Hansan Island.

The various officers and soldiers of the navy and army just stand by, arms folded, watching each other, without formulating so much as a single plan to strike the enemy.

Admiral Yi wrote in his diary:

I've been out at sea for three years now -- there's no way that could be true. (Nanjung Ilgi, September 3, 1594)

The absence of battle didn't mean Admiral Yi had folded his arms and done nothing.

Archery, Military Farmland, Shipbuilding, Intelligence -- A Day on Hansan Island

In the diary for 1595 (eulmi), it's harder to find a day without a record of archery practice. “The deputy naval commander, the Sobipo deputy commander, the Geoje magistrate, and the Mijohang deputy commander all came together, shot some rounds of arrows, and then parted.” (Nanjung Ilgi, January 17, 1595) Archery wasn't a pastime. It was training with real combat application, and a way of managing morale among his officers and men.

Support from the court was practically nonexistent. Admiral Yi cultivated military farmland, called dunjeon, to supply his own rations. “The Nagan magistrate came and reported that he had brought in the rice harvested from the military farmland.” (Nanjung Ilgi, January 20, 1596) “The Heungyang magistrate delivered 352 seok of rice from the military farmland.” (Nanjung Ilgi, February 8, 1596) Admiral Yi understood: if war broke out again, there could be no fighting without rations.

In June 1593 (gyesa), right after moving his base to Hansan Island, he immediately began building ships. “Began planing timber for warships -- 214 carpenters were assigned to the work.” (Nanjung Ilgi, June 22, 1593) Even during a lull in the fighting, the hands preparing for the next battle never stopped.

He also kept real-time track of how the negotiations were unfolding, through people he had planted in the Japanese camp at Busan. “The Ming negotiator Shen Weijing and Konishi Yukinaga... crossed the sea before dawn on the 16th of this month.” (Nanjung Ilgi, January 18–19, 1596) He didn't wait for official word from the court. He ran his own intelligence network, and tracked exactly how far the negotiations had progressed.

During the quiet years of the Ming-Japan ceasefire talks, Admiral Yi, on Hansan Island, had to face the most feared enemy of all. That enemy -- famine and plague -- is the one I introduced in an earlier post, “The Most Feared Enemy: Famine and Plague.”

👉 Related post: ㉑ The Most Feared Enemy: Famine and Plague

👉 Next post: ㉓ The Second Battle of Danghangpo: A Fight That Didn't Stop, Even During the Ceasefire Talks

— Momcheolhak