The Imjin War

In 1591, in the halls of King Seonjo's court at Hanseong, an envoy from Japan delivered a message from Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the regent who had just finished unifying Japan after a century of civil war among daimyo. Hideyoshi's demand was blunt: let his armies pass through Korea to strike Ming China, or face conquest themselves. His words, recorded at the time, warned that if Korea would not join him against Ming, 'I shall conquer that country first.' Seonjo's court did not take the threat lightly at first. In 1591 scouts were sent across the strait to Japan to judge the man's intentions, and they returned with conflicting reports, one warning of real danger, another dismissing it as bluster. Seonjo chose to believe the milder assessment. No mobilization followed, no forts were strengthened, no grain was stockpiled against siege. Hideyoshi's ambitions, meanwhile, reached beyond Korea entirely. He spoke of Korea only as a road, a corridor his armies would cross on their way to conquering Ming China itself, the vastly larger empire beyond. The refusal that Seonjo's court gave was quiet, almost bureaucratic, a matter of court correspondence rather than declared war. But it was the trigger. By the spring of the following year, Hideyoshi's transport ships were already being loaded at the southern Japanese ports, and Korea's coastline had never been defended for anything like what was coming.