What happened at the Battle of Noryang?
Joseon Korea and Ming China won the sea battle. Their combined fleet under Yi Sun-sin and Chen Lin destroyed or captured a large part of Shimazu Yoshihiro's fleet in the Noryang strait on 16 December 1598. But Konishi Yukinaga's trapped garrison escaped, Japan completed its withdrawal, and Yi was killed in the battle.1
Before dawn on the 19th day of the eleventh lunar month of 1598, 16 December in the Western calendar, the last great battle of the Imjin War was fought in the narrow strait between Namhae Island and the Korean mainland. Joseon and Ming fleets under Yi Sun-sin and Chen Lin caught a Japanese fleet sailing to rescue Konishi Yukinaga's garrison. The allies won, but Yi lay dead on his flagship.2
Part of Battles of Korea · Before: Myeongnyang, 1597 · Next: Inchon, 1950
Who won the Battle of Noryang and why?
Joseon and Ming won at sea. Warned that Konishi had sent for help, Yi persuaded Chen Lin to sail out and meet the relief fleet in the narrow strait before dawn, where the Japanese could not use their numbers. Hundreds of Japanese ships were burned, sunk or taken. Yet the victory was incomplete: Konishi escaped and Yi was killed.3
Background: Hideyoshi's death and the order to go home
Japan invaded Korea in 1592 on the orders of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and renewed the war in 1597. By 1598 the second campaign had stalled, with the Japanese holding fortresses along the southern coast, from Ulsan in the east to Suncheon in the west, with Shimazu Yoshihiro at Sacheon. Hideyoshi died in September 1598, and his commanders hurried to withdraw from the peninsula.4
The death was kept quiet at first. Hideyoshi had asked that the armies come home, and the Japanese commanders in Korea began to pull back and to arrange a truce. James Murdoch, following Japanese and missionary sources, describes a withdrawal that "soon proved to be anything but a simple operation."5
For the Japanese, the sea was the danger. In 1592 Yi's fleet, with its armored turtle ships, had won a string of victories along the southern coast, from Okpo and Sacheon to Hansan Island, and cut the sea lanes that supplied the Japanese armies. Homer Hulbert, the American historian of Korea, called the first of them the decisive point of the war.6
Yi Sun-sin had nearly not been there at all. Early in 1597, after a Japanese ruse and the intrigues of his enemies at court, he was arrested, came close to being executed and was reduced to the ranks. His successor, Won Gyun, led the Joseon fleet to disaster at Chilcheollyang that summer and was killed, and the king had to give Yi back his command.7
With the few ships left, Yi beat a far larger Japanese fleet at Myeongnyang in the autumn of 1597. He then rebuilt the navy almost from nothing, feeding his men by farming and the sale of fish and salt, in the words of the court historian, and settling refugees around his new base on Gogeum Island, in the words of the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture.8
The allied plan: Konishi trapped at Suncheon
In 1598 the Ming army took the offensive in three columns, each against a Japanese stronghold: Ma Gui in the east against Kato Kiyomasa, Dong Yiyuan in the center against Shimazu, and Liu Ting in the west against Konishi, while Chen Lin commanded the Ming fleet. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture gives Liu Ting about 13,600 men and Chen Lin some 13,300 sailors; the Ming History gives Chen Lin more than 13,000 men and several hundred warships.9
The westernmost Japanese stronghold was the coastal fort near Suncheon, called Waegyo in Korean sources, held by Konishi Yukinaga. Liu Ting attacked it from the land while Chen Lin and Yi Sun-sin closed the sea. The sources tell the siege differently: the Ming History has Liu Ting try to lure Konishi to a parley and seize him, a plot betrayed by his own men, while the Korean encyclopedia says Konishi bribed Liu Ting, who pulled back his troops and let the joint attack collapse.10
Konishi also tried to buy his way out by sea: the encyclopedia says he bribed Chen Lin, who let a single courier boat through and then told Yi. The Veritable Records tell how, after four Japanese slipped out by boat one evening, Yi warned Chen that they had gone for help and that a large force would follow; Chen at first refused, then gave way when Yi pleaded in tears.11
The fleets and their commanders
Shimazu Yoshihiro, based at Sacheon, gathered ships from Sacheon, Namhae and Goseong to break the blockade. Yi Deok-hyeong, the minister who reported the battle to King Seonjo, wrote of over 300 ships; Monthly JoongAng gives about 350; the encyclopedia over 500. The encyclopedia puts the allied fleet at over 200 ships.12
Yi chose to meet the relief fleet in the strait rather than wait for it outside Konishi's fort, so that the Japanese could not attack him from two sides. That night, the tradition goes, he burned incense on his flagship and prayed that if this enemy were destroyed he would die without regret; Hulbert tells the same story with different words.13
The night battle in the strait
The allied fleets rowed through the night and reached Noryang before dawn, just as the Japanese arrived. The encyclopedia's Imjin War entry credits Yi's fleet with breaking about half of the Japanese fleet. Yi Deok-hyeong reported wreckage and bodies covering the water so thickly that the sea seemed unable to flow, and the water red with blood.14
Yi and Chen fought side by side, each coming to the other's rescue when he was in danger. Hulbert, following Korean accounts, says that Yi drove the Japanese ships together and set them on fire, and that a wind fanned the flames through the crowded fleet.15
Deng Zilong's death
According to the official Ming History, Deng Zilong, then over seventy, crossed with 200 men to a Korean ship and charged; incendiary weapons thrown by mistake from another allied ship set his vessel alight, and the Japanese closed in and killed him. A 2024 account in Monthly JoongAng instead has Japanese soldiers board his ship, a Korean warship Yi had given him, and cut him down. Chen Lin's own flagship was then surrounded, and Yi forced his way through to relieve it.16
Gwaneumpo and the death of Yi Sun-sin
Driven back, part of the Japanese fleet fled into Gwaneumpo, a deep bay on Namhae Island. Pursuing it on the morning of the 19th, Yi was hit by a bullet. The court historian wrote that he was shooting arrows at the enemy himself when a Japanese ball struck him in the chest.17
So later Korean accounts give his last words, as quoted by the encyclopedia and, in other words, by Hulbert; Monthly JoongAng traces them to Yu Seong-ryong's memoir Jingbirok, and wordings vary. The court historian records none. Accounts differ on who carried on: the Veritable Records name an officer, Yi Mun-uk, who covered the body and beat the drum, the Imjin War entry and Hulbert Yi's nephew Yi Wan. People said, the court historian noted, that the dead Sun-sin had routed the living enemy.18
A 2009 Maeil Shinmun review of a book by Jang Han-sik lists unproven theories: that Yi, fearing King Seonjo's suspicion, chose death in battle; that he faked his death; and Jang's claim that the shot came from his own side. It notes that his nephew Yi Bun wrote only of a "flying bullet" and that the cause can no longer be established; the official record names an enemy bullet.19
Losses on both sides
Yi Deok-hyeong reported over 200 Japanese ships destroyed and several thousand men killed or wounded. Chen Lin's report, as Monthly JoongAng gives it, claimed 200 ships sunk, 100 captured, 500 heads and 180 prisoners. The Ming History goes further and speaks of tens of thousands burned or drowned. As for the Japanese ships that got home intact, Monthly JoongAng cites 50 in Chinese records and 60 in Japanese ones, and the Korean encyclopedia says Shimazu escaped with some 50 ships.20
Monthly JoongAng also cites a Japanese chronicle that, quoting Shimazu family records, puts the loss at half the men. Allied dead included the Joseon commanders Yi Yeong-nam, Bang Deok-ryong and Go Deuk-jang, and Yi Deok-hyeong's report counts more than ten men killed by bullets, Yi Sun-sin among them; the Ming lost Deng Zilong.21
Two ways of telling the victory
At sea the allies clearly won: Joseon and Ming ships destroyed or captured a large part of the Japanese fleet and killed many of its men. In strategic terms the result was mixed. Konishi's garrison escaped while the battle raged, Japan completed its withdrawal, and Korea lost its most successful admiral.22
The Joseon and Ming side
The court historian praised Yi's loyalty and recorded that when news of his death spread, the people of the whole southwestern province wept. Ming histories gave the credit to Chen Lin, who was ranked first when rewards were handed out. The Ming History has him intercept Shimazu, whom it calls Shi Manzi, and claims that he was killed; in fact Shimazu escaped with about 50 ships.23
The Japanese side
Shimazu's sortie was a relief mission answering Konishi's call for help, not an attempt to win a war Japan was already leaving. While the fleets fought in the strait, Konishi abandoned his fort, slipped out by sea around the south of Namhae Island and joined Shimazu at Busan, and from there the armies went home. Japanese accounts, the historian James Murdoch noted, admit that the fleet was severely handled but say it beat off its attackers, killing Yi, and reached Tsushima safely. For the lords who led these armies, see the greatest commanders of feudal Japan.24
Aftermath: the end of the Imjin War
Noryang was the last sea battle of the Imjin War, and with it the second invasion came to an end. Within weeks the remaining Japanese forces had sailed from Busan, and the Ming armies marched home in 1599. In Japan, Hideyoshi's death opened a struggle for power among his former lieutenants that was settled at the Battle of Sekigahara.25
Memory: Korea, Japan and China
In Korea, Yi's body was first laid on Namhae Island, near the Noryang crossing, at the place where the shrine of Namhae Chungnyeolsa now stands. Local people raised the first shrine there, a thatched hall, and the court later granted it a royal name plaque. An empty grave behind it marks where the body rested before it was taken to Asan.26
At Gwaneumpo, where he fell, a shrine called Irak-sa, "the shrine where Yi fell", stands with a memorial stele.27
Seen from Japan, Noryang was a costly episode of the withdrawal, its heavy losses admitted in Japanese records. In China, the Ming History remembers Deng Zilong as an old soldier who died fighting in Korea, and gives the victory to Chen Lin.28
The battlefield today
Two suspension bridges now cross the strait; the older one, the Namhae Bridge of 1973, is the thin line near the bottom of the 2008 astronaut photograph at the top of this page. On Namhae Island, Namhae Chungnyeolsa and the Gwaneumpo memorial with the Irak-sa shrine are the two main places of remembrance.29
