㉑ The Most Feared Enemy: Famine and Plague

When I was growing up, I once wondered: what is the single most frightening thing in life?

So I asked my grandfather that question directly, before he passed away, and I asked my father the same question directly, before he passed away too. Both of them -- men who loved and cared for me deeply -- gave me the same answer.

“Hunger.”

I don't really understand why that would be the most frightening thing. I've rarely gone hungry myself.

But because both of them gave the same answer, I still carry the belief that hunger is the most frightening thing in life.

Getting to know Admiral Yi Sun-sin, I once found myself wondering: what was the enemy Admiral Yi feared most?

As for the Japanese invaders, I'll let his record of 23 battles, 23 victories answer for me. The Japanese could never have been the enemy Admiral Yi feared most. Was it King Seonjo, then? No. Even when King Seonjo locked him up in the state tribunal's prison intending to kill him, Admiral Yi said, “Life and death are Heaven's will -- if I am meant to die, I will die.” So for a while I thought perhaps Admiral Yi feared nothing at all. But I've changed my mind since. I believe Admiral Yi did have an enemy he feared. And that enemy was famine and plague.

The Great Gyegap Famine Swallows Joseon

In the years following the outbreak of the Imjin War -- 1593 (gyesa) and 1594 (gapo) -- Joseon suffered one of the worst food crises in its recorded history. Farmland was destroyed by the fighting, the people who would have worked it were dying, and what little food remained was requisitioned as military rations. This period would later come to be known as the Great Gyegap Famine.

The famine unfolded in two phases. The first ran from the winter of 1592 through the summer of 1593. With no one left to farm, food supplies ran out, and epidemics began spreading among a population weakened by malnutrition and collapsing immunity. The second phase ran from the winter of 1593 through the summer of 1594 -- striking again at people who had barely survived the first, and reaching depths of horror almost beyond description. With no food to be had, thieves ran rampant, and there were even reports of cannibalism.

The Nanjung Ilgi records in detail just how severe the Great Gyegap Famine and the plague that followed it truly were.

Famine and Plague in the Joseon Navy's Own Camp

In January 1594 (gapo), grim news arrived one after another at the camp on Hansan Island.

“I appointed the Nokdo manho as the officer in charge of gathering and burying those who had died of illness, and sent him off.” (Nanjung Ilgi, January 20, 1594) The next day, the Nokdo manho returned and reported: “We gathered and buried 214 bodies of those who had died of illness.” (Nanjung Ilgi, January 21, 1594) The day after that, it was the same: “We gathered and buried 217 more bodies of those who had died of illness.” (Nanjung Ilgi, January 22, 1594) Over two days, 431 men were buried.

The Sobipo deputy commander Yi Yeong-nam reported to Admiral Yi that “nearly all the archers and rowers on the ships from Yeongnam are on the verge of starving to death.” Admiral Yi wrote:

It was so miserable that I could not bear to listen. (Nanjung Ilgi, January 19, 1594)

Admiral Yi Himself Collapses

Two months later, it was Admiral Yi's own turn to fall ill.

Over three days beginning March 4, in the Second Battle of Danghangpo, Admiral Yi burned every one of the twenty-one Japanese ships there without exception. The desperate Japanese apparently appealed to the Ming side for help, because on the evening of the third day, March 6 (gapo), the Ming vice-commissioner Tan Zongren sent a written order demanding that the Joseon navy “not attack the enemy.”

From that very day -- the day he had to halt, right before his eyes, a hard-won battle he had already won -- the diary begins recording that “my body is extremely unwell.”

“My body is extremely unwell, so much that it's hard even to move.” (March 7) “No real improvement. My strength is failing further, and I was in pain all day.” (March 8)

Just as he seemed to recover, he would fall ill again; this bout of illness dragged on for over three weeks, until March 27. And even through it, he kept drafting official reports, practicing archery, and attending to the business of his camp.

On April 1, Admiral Yi held a yeoje -- a rite to console the souls of those who had died of plague. He had wine distributed among the soldiers of the three provinces: 1,080 vessels of it. And eight days later: “The deputy commander Eo Yeong-dam has passed away. What words could possibly express my grief!” (Nanjung Ilgi, April 9, 1594) This was the same Eo Yeong-dam who had guided the fleet at the battles of Okpo, Sacheon, and Hansan Island. A man the fighting itself had never taken from him -- the plague did.

According to reports submitted to the court at the time, over the course of 1594 alone, 1,904 soldiers died of plague and 3,759 more fell ill -- some 40 percent of the navy's fighting strength lost. The following year, 1595, the plague spread again, and the navy's total troop strength fell as low as 4,109.

If the records say that 1,904 navy soldiers died of plague in 1594 alone, that number is larger than the total of Joseon sailors killed in combat against the Japanese across Admiral Yi's entire seven years of battles combined -- excluding Chilcheollyang -- a figure usually put at somewhere between 200 and 500. That number alone suggests that famine and plague were, for Admiral Yi, his most feared enemy of all.

My Answer to a Question Actor Choi Min-sik Once Raised

Before closing this post, I want to think once more about what must have been going through Admiral Yi's mind.

However great a victory Admiral Yi won, whenever he returned from battle, he consoled the dead and wounded with the deepest respect, and even looked after the families of soldiers who had died. In record after record, it's easy to find evidence of a man trying, wherever possible, to spare even a single soldier's or civilian's life.

To an Admiral Yi like that, the suffering of soldiers dying from famine and plague must have felt like his own. Perhaps that's why he, too, fell ill and suffered alongside them for three weeks. Someone who has known that kind of shared, fellow-suffering pain can think this way: ‘If my own death could end this suffering and save others, then let me die.’

To the question the actor Choi Min-sik, who played Admiral Yi in the film The Admiral: Roaring Currents, once raised, this is the answer I want to offer.

https://youtube.com/shorts/CF94qIgkY3Y?si=C5O6cSUx8TsZAPla

👉 Next post: ㉒ During the Ceasefire Talks, What Was Admiral Yi Doing?

— Momcheolhak