ELI 100 Fall ’01, Ford
History Citation Handout
10/26/01
Toyotomi Hideyoshi had spent most of the previous decade involved in constant campaigns to unify Japan. He finally achieved this unification in 1591 with the subjugation of Northern Honshu province
1
. With this task complete, he began to set his sights on other lands to conquer. While struggling for unification in 1585, he had already begun looking beyond his unification of Japan by making plans to invade China. In 1577, as an officer under General Oda Nobunaga,
Hideyoshi had dreamt of the conquest of China for the glory of Japan 2 .
King Sonjo of Korea was concerned about Hideyoshi's plans, so he sent envoys to Japan in an attempt to discover Hideyoshi's true intentions (Nahm,
1993). These envoys returned with conflicting reports. King Sonjo listened to the envoy who advised, “Japan would not attack Korea.” Using this information, no military preparations were made for the defense of the Korean peninsula
4
.
Hideyoshi ordered the construction of an enormous staging area for the invasion at Nagoya on Kyushu, the point in Japan closest to Korea
5
. The main invasion force massed there with supplies for 480,000 soldiers
5
. A large naval base was also built there, and the Japanese navy was assembled to transport the troops across the Tsushima Strait
5
. This navy consisted of some 9,000 sailors aboard a massive fleet of small pirate vessels and large men-of-war
6
.
It was at this point that Korean Admiral Yi Sun-sin began to make his presence known to the Japanese. In 1591 he had been appointed Left Navy
Commander of Cholla Province, charged with protecting Korea's southwest coast
(Han, 1970). Admiral Yi directed the construction of a fleet of modern warships, including one ship that he designed himself, unlike any that the world had ever seen. He called his invention kobuk-son , the turtle ship
8
.
Based on a reconstruction of the ship using these descriptions, its deck appears to have been covered with hexagonal iron plates that were spaced several inches apart from each other
9
. In the synopsis to Nanjung Ilgi , the writer s ays, "…all important parts of the hull were covered with protective iron" (xxv).
However, the reconstruction shows iron only on the deck of the ship. Another source states that the turtle ship was not an ironclad at all, but that it had a wooden deck "spiked with sharp pieces of metal" (Elisonas 278).
1

ELI 100 Fall ’01, Ford
History Citation Handout
10/26/01
Footnotes
1 Jurgis Elisonas, “The inseperable trinity: Japan’s relations with China and
Korea”
, The Cambridge History of Japan . Ed. John W. Hall (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1991), 235-300.
2 Elisonas 267.
3 Nahm, Andrew C., Introduction to Korean History and Culture (Elizabeth, NJ:
Hollym Corp., 1993).
4 Woo-keun Han, The History of Korea, Trans. Kyung-shik Lee, Ed. Grafton K.
Mintz (Seoul: Eul-Yoo Pub., 1970).
5 Elisonas 272.
6 George Sansome, A History of Japan 1334-1615 (Stanford: Stanford UP,
1961).
7 Han, The History of Korea , p. 254.
8 Ki-baik Lee, A New History of Korea , Trans. Edward W. Wagner (Seoul:
Ilchokak Pub., 1984).
9 Admiral Yi Sun-sin, Nanjung Ilgi: War Diary of Admiral Yi Sun-sin, Trans. Taehung Ha, Ed. Pow-key Sohn (Seoul: Yonsei UP, 1984). See drawing and photo of the ship on opening pages of the book.
Works Cited
Elisonas, Jurgis.
"The inseperable trinity: Japan's relations with China and
Korea." The Cambridge History of Japan. Vol. 4. Ed. John Whitney Hall.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. 235-300.
Nahm, A.C. Introduction to Korean History and Culture. Seoul: Hollym, 1993.
Lee, Ki-baik. A New History of Korea . Trans. Edward W. Wagner and Edward J.
Schultz. Seoul: Ilchokak, 1984.
George Sansome. A History of Japan . Stanford: Stanford UP, 1961.
Yi, Sun-sin. Nanjung Ilgi: War Diary of Admiral Yi Sun-sin . Trans. Tae-hung Ha.
Ed. Pow-key Sohn. Seoul: Yonsei UP, 1977.
Han, Woo-keun. The History of Korea. Trans. Kyung-shik Lee. Ed. Grafton K.
Mintz. Seoul: Eul-Yoo, 1970.
2