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

While Ming China and Japan were negotiating their ceasefire, from March 1593 to September 1596, Admiral Yi on Hansan Island spent his time cultivating military farmland and building panokseon warships, preparing for the next war. In all that time, only one battle counts among the 23 battles, 23 victories: the Second Battle of Danghangpo, fought in March 1594. There was also the Battle of Jangmunpo afterward, in September 1594, but that engagement had so little actual fighting to it that I've left it out of the 23 battles, 23 victories.

Why I left the Battle of Jangmunpo out of that count is something I'll explain in detail in the next post.

In this post, I want to introduce the Second Battle of Danghangpo -- the one engagement, across three and a half years of ceasefire talks, that can genuinely be called a real fight.

Intelligence, and the Sortie

On the evening of March 3, 1594 (gapo), an urgent report arrived from Je Han-guk, the scout officer posted at Byeokbang (referring to Byeokbangsan Mountain, straddling Gwangdo-myeon in Tongyeong and Georyu-myeon in Goseong County, South Gyeongsang Province).

Six Japanese ships are anchored in the area of Oriryang and Danghangpo. (Nanjung Ilgi, March 3, 1594)

Admiral Yi immediately sent out orders to muster the fleet, and put thirty of his best ships under the right deputy commander Eo Yeong-dam to destroy the enemy. That night, the fleet set out at once.

Three Days of Pursuit

At dawn on March 4, the Joseon navy chased down Japanese ships fleeing toward the coast, burning six near Jinhae and two more at Dotseom (present-day Jeodo Island). That same day, word came that fourteen more Japanese ships were in the Sosogang River, so Admiral Yi assigned the deputy commander and the Gyeongsang Right Naval Commander Won Gyun to handle that front.

Danghangpo harbor, tucked deep inland

Deep inside the harbor at Danghangpo, more ships still remained. On March 5, the right deputy commander Eo Yeong-dam sent an urgent report:

Fearing our soldiers' show of force, the enemy fled under cover of night, so we burned every one of the seventeen empty ships left behind. (Nanjung Ilgi, March 5, 1594)

And then, at dawn on March 6, the final report came in after the harbor had been fully searched:

We report urgently that all twenty-one Japanese ships at Danghangpo have been burned without exception. (Nanjung Ilgi, March 6, 1594)

The “seventeen” from March 5 was a provisional count taken before the harbor search was finished; the “twenty-one” from March 6 was the final total after the search was complete -- meaning the twenty-one already includes the earlier seventeen, so the two numbers shouldn't be added together. Add to that the eight ships burned earlier out at sea (six near Jinhae, two at Dotseom), and the total the Nanjung Ilgi records for the Joseon navy's three days of fighting comes to twenty-nine Japanese ships. Other accounts of this battle often cite thirty-one instead, likely because a few ships burned near Goseong's Eoseonpo don't appear separately in the original text of the Nanjung Ilgi. Either way, over three days of pursuit, somewhere around thirty Japanese ships were burned without exception. A complete victory.

A Ming Order Arrives Right After the Victory

But the joy of victory didn't last long. That same evening, the Namhae magistrate delivered unexpected news:

Two Ming soldiers and eight Japanese men arrived carrying a written order, so I am sending that order along with the two Ming soldiers. (Nanjung Ilgi, March 6, 1594)

Opening the order, it read:

The Ming vice-commissioner Tan Zongren orders that the enemy not be attacked. (Nanjung Ilgi, March 6, 1594)

At the time, Ming China and Japan were in the middle of their ceasefire negotiations, and Tan Zongren, the Ming official overseeing those talks, had directly ordered the Joseon navy to “stop fighting.” And that order to “stop fighting” arrived carried by two Ming soldiers and eight Japanese men. It meant halting, right before his eyes, a hard-won victory. Admiral Yi wrote in his diary that day:

My body is in such pain that even sitting or lying down is uncomfortable. (Nanjung Ilgi, March 6, 1594)

Plague Strikes the Admiral, Right Alongside the Order

The next day, March 7, Admiral Yi's condition had worsened further.

My body is extremely unwell, so much that it's hard even to move. (Nanjung Ilgi, March 7, 1594)

And yet he personally saw to the reply that had to be sent to Tan Zongren.

He had a subordinate draft it first, but found “the writing wasn't fit to send”; a version written at Won Gyun's request by Son Ui-gap didn't satisfy him either. In the end, despite his illness, Admiral Yi forced himself to sit up and compose the letter himself, then had Jeong Sa-rip copy it out and sent it off.

In a body he could barely hold up, he turned away two drafts written by his subordinates and picked up the brush himself. It's a moment that shows just how seriously he took his responsibility, even for a single diplomatic document addressed to Ming China.

From the day he received the Ming order to stop fighting, Admiral Yi suffered from serious illness for three weeks straight. Given that the Great Gyegap Famine and the plague that followed it were striking the Joseon navy's camp hard around this same time, it seems likely that the admiral himself contracted the same plague and very nearly died. And General Eo Yeong-dam, who had distinguished himself so greatly at the Second Battle of Danghangpo, also fell to the plague and passed away around this same period.

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

Across the three and a half years of the ceasefire talks, the Joseon navy sortied only for the Second Battle of Danghangpo and the Battle of Jangmunpo in 1594, with no recorded sorties at all in 1595 or 1596.

Given that a hard-won victory at the Second Battle of Danghangpo had to be halted on Ming China's order, and that famine and plague were claiming so many soldiers' lives, it's easy enough to understand why the sorties stopped after that.

But how must the admiral have felt, forced to halt a fight he could have won even more decisively, on nothing more than a single word from Ming China? And is it really just a coincidence that the plague struck down his own body on the very day that Ming order arrived?

👉 Next post: ㉔ The Battle of Jangmunpo: The Battle Left Off the List of 23

— Momcheolhak