⑪ The Nanjung Ilgi: Reading the Extraordinary Hidden in the Ordinary

The Day He Walked Out of the State Tribunal's Prison -- One Line in the Nanjung Ilgi

On April 1, 1597, Admiral Yi Sun-sin walked out through the prison gate of the Uigeumbu, the state tribunal, after 28 grueling days of torture.

On the day a man returned to the world from the threshold of death, this is how his war diary, the Nanjung Ilgi, begins that entry:

Clear skies. I left the prison gate.

The Nanjung Ilgi

Not a single line of resentment toward the king who had tried to kill him. Not a single line of grievance about his situation.

The first time I read this passage, I felt a strange wave of emotion -- I nearly choked up.

How could a person, in a moment like that, leave behind such an ordinary record?

But reading back through all seven years of the Nanjung Ilgi, I found that this kind of plain, ordinary entry wasn't limited to that one day, April 1.

“Not a Serious Wound” -- the Truth Behind the Gunshot at Sacheon

This happened at the Battle of Sacheon, fought about a month after the Imjin War broke out, on May 29, 1592. That day's diary entry reads:

I urged the officers forward, and we charged all at once, raining arrows down like a storm and firing every kind of cannon like thunder, until the enemy grew frightened and fell back... In this fight, the officer Na Dae-yong was struck by a bullet, and I too was struck by a bullet above my left shoulder, which passed through and out my back -- but it was not a serious wound.

This was the day a bullet passed straight through his shoulder and out his back.

The admiral summed it up in one line -- “not a serious wound” -- and moved straight on to the next sentence.

And yet letters he sent to acquaintances the following year, 1593, show that the wound was anything but minor. These letters carry no exact date, but they appear in the Nanjung Ilgi after March 22, 1593. Certain phrases recur throughout them:

The spot where the enemy bullet struck was severe... it injured me deeply down to the shoulder bone, and pus keeps running from it, so that I still cannot put on my clothes. I've tried every kind of medicine, but there's been little improvement, and I can't draw a bowstring either, which troubles me greatly.

I've tried washing it with mulberry-ash lye and with seawater by turns, but there's still been little improvement, which troubles me.

Nearly a year after being shot, the wound was still oozing, and he still couldn't properly put on his clothes. Washing it alternately with mulberry-ash lye and seawater as treatment shows just how far that day's entry -- “not a serious wound” -- was from the truth.

The Catastrophe at Chilcheollyang -- News of the Navy's Annihilation, and a Rare Outpouring of Grief

On July 18, 1597, while serving as a private soldier stripped of rank after leaving prison, Admiral Yi received word that the Joseon navy under Won Gyun's command had been wiped out at Chilcheollyang.

They said the navy had suffered a great defeat. Hearing it, I could not hold back my wailing.

Here, for once, raw emotion breaks through. This was news that the navy he had spent his whole life building had vanished overnight at the hands of the very man who had slandered him. Who wouldn't weep?

What's truly remarkable, though, is the very next sentence -- recorded as something he said to a bewildered General Gwon Yul at the time:

Wouldn't it be best if I went to the coastal region myself, to see and hear things firsthand, before deciding what to do?

Grief and resolve sit together in the same passage. He doesn't even allow himself time to sit with his sorrow -- he rises at once and sets out on the road.

The Moment of His Reappointment as Naval Commander of the Three Provinces

Fifteen days after the defeat at Chilcheollyang, on August 3, 1597, the royal messenger Yang Ho unexpectedly arrived carrying a royal decree.

Early this morning, the royal messenger Yang Ho unexpectedly arrived bearing a royal decree. The order was my appointment as Naval Commander of the Three Provinces. After performing the bow of receipt, I wrote and sealed only a brief note acknowledging the order, then set out at once, heading straight down the road to Duchi.

A man who had walked out of prison as a condemned criminal four months earlier now returned to command the entire Joseon navy. No venting of the injustice of the past months, no outpouring of emotion. He simply drafted a short document confirming that he had received the appointment, and set off straight for the front.

I think this passage forms an exact pair with “I left the prison gate” on April 1. One marks the day he began again from the very bottom; the other, the day he returned as Naval Commander of the Three Provinces. Yet the feeling each record leaves behind is no different.

Why the Nanjung Ilgi's Ordinary Sentences Are So Moving

Lay these four records side by side and a single pattern emerges.

Walking out of prison. The gunshot wound. The catastrophe at Chilcheollyang. The reappointment as Naval Commander of the Three Provinces -- at the most extreme moments of his life, the admiral's sentences are, if anything, calm and plain.

Nowhere do you find detailed descriptions of his own feelings, outpourings of grievance, or resentment toward other people. Even on the days of the greatest events, what the Nanjung Ilgi records are mostly plain, ordinary-looking sentences about what happened that day.

I found myself deeply moved by these seemingly ordinary sentences in the Nanjung Ilgi.

If the admiral had filled his diary day after day with long sentences pouring out his passions and explaining himself, I probably wouldn't have been moved nearly as much. But that plain, unadorned line -- “Clear skies. I left the prison gate.” -- with no embellishment at all, was what caught in my throat as I read it.

The rest of us, ordinary people, are quick to tell small lies for our own benefit, or to blow up a small achievement into something bigger. And we long to dress up our ordinary selves as something extraordinary.

But reading Admiral Yi's Nanjung Ilgi, I think the reason those plain sentences caught in my throat is that shame at myself and admiration for Admiral Yi's character washed over me all at once.

👉 Next post: ⑫ Admiral Yi Sun-sin's Record of Illness

— Momcheolhak