Asia in World History : 1450 – 1770 to Japan to improve crafts industries there . Due to logistical issues , the Samurai practice ( borrowed from the Chinese 7 ) of submitting the heads of their dead foes to claim honors and rewards had to be modified to permit the submission of ears . As a result , Japanese warriors returned to Japan more than 38,000 ears , which eventually were buried at Mimizuka , the “ Hill of Ears ” in Kyoto . 8
Four years of war would leave 90 percent of Koreans homeless , their agriculture ruined and the populace on the brink of starvation . The scholar O Huimun , forced to forage far and wide to stay alive , was one of several Koreans who compiled diaries of those times which evoke horrific images of “ roads lined with corpses , desolated farmland , victims of mass rapes , suicides of women seeking to avoid capture , and cannibalism among the desperately hungry population .” 9 Even these scenes paled in comparison with those to be seen at the Korean fortress-city of Chinju . Because it had held out against the initial Japanese onslaught , Hideyoshi sought to make an example of it . According to Donald Liu , the fall of the city witnessed the bloodiest and cruelest of the atrocities committed by the Japanese , the memory of which “ is scarred deep into the Korean psyche .” He views Chinju as “ comparable to that of the Jews of Masada after the fall of Jerusalem to Roman troops , with Korean soldiers fighting to the death and “ Korean women flinging themselves from the ramparts , rather than be sexually assaulted by the invaders .” 10
YI SUN-SHIN TAKES COMMAND Yi Sun-Shin was not caught unawares by the Japanese assault . Upon his arrival in southern Korea , he immediately set about improving Korea ’ s naval preparedness . He had long studied the strengths and weaknesses of both Korean and Japanese naval practices and knew that the Japanese relied on their greatest martial strength — expert samurai swordsmen and bowmen . To maximize this strength , the Japanese had built broad-beamed ships that carried a large number of soldiers . Their strategy was to approach enemy vessels as closely as possible and rake them with arrow fire until the enemy ’ s decks were clear enough for infantry to sweep aboard . Stiff resistance was met with fire arrows shot by the bowmen firing at close range . More recently , though the Japanese had chosen not to mount more than one cannon to each of their ships , they were filling their vessels with musketeers . The range of Japanese ( smooth bore ) muskets was no greater than that their bowmen ’ s arrows , but the bullets fired by muskets may have had greater penetrating power . As for the invasion armada , according to some Japanese sources , the best and largest of their ships , called Atakebune , were ironclad , but were also very slow and thus illsuited to anything more than coastal operations . The majority of Japanese naval vessels were little more than armed transports , whose commanders could draw on little naval tradition due to the Japanese emphasis on land warfare . Japanese naval forces were thus fearsome in size and deadly in close combat , but had weaknesses that could be exploited .
Like the builders of the caravel in Western Europe , the Koreans built ships with “ castles ” to better protect their crews from attack by arrows and muskets obtained in Asia from Portuguese and Chinese merchants , and also mounted cannon . Fear of Chinese and Japanese territorial ambitions had led the Korean King Taejong ( 1367 – 1423 ) to create a special gunpowder service unit that experimented with shipmounted artillery . However , it was his son , Sejong ( 1397 – 1450 ), who made the development and use of gunpowder weapons a priority . 11 Korean records suggest that a cannon-armed ship called a “ Turtle
Painting that depicts the Japanese landing on Pusan . Chesungdang ( Victory Hall ), Hansan Isle . Image source : Wikipedia http :// en . wikipedia . org / wiki / Image : WakouLandingColor . jpg
Ship ” ( Geobukseon or Kŏbuksŏn ) was under construction as early as 1414 , but by the time of Yi Sun-Shin ’ s appointment , no Korean ship of any type of armament was capable of defeating the Japanese .
Yi Sun-Shin lost no time in urging the local boatyards to rectify this problem . Within months they produced a vessel that provided Yi with the naval technology that helped him to seize control of Korea ’ s sea approaches and thus cut Japan ’ s lines of communications and supply . His success in this task was pivotal in thwarting Japanese ambitions and has since become so entwined with Korean national pride that it has led to outlandish claims regarding the magnitude of his achievement . It is often asserted that these Turtle Ships were the world ’ s first armored battleships or ironclad vessels or even the world ’ s first submarines . 12 They certainly were innovative in design , but , despite Korea ’ s brilliance in metal-working , it is unlikely that the Turtle Ships carried any true metal armor . Their advantage over the Japanese was their speed and multi-cannon armament : heavy ship armor would have slowed the ships , and , in combination with as many as forty cannon , they mounted and their lack of a keel would have made them so top-heavy as to easily capsize .
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