Siege of Namwon (1597)

The siege of Namwon was one of the first great battles of the second Japanese invasion of Korea, which began in 1597 after years of failed peace talks between Ming China and Japan. Namwon, a walled town in the south-east of Jeolla Province, lay on the road by which an army coming from Gyeongsang Province could enter Jeolla, and the Ming and Joseon allies chose it as the place to stop the Japanese.

The town was held by about 3,000 Ming cavalry under the deputy regional commander Yang Yuan, together with a smaller Joseon force led by Yi Bok-nam, army commander of Jeolla Province, and several local officials. Against them came the Japanese Left Army under Ukita Hideie, with tens of thousands of men. The Japanese arrived on the 12th–13th day of the 8th lunar month of 1597 (22–23 September in the Western calendar, converted with the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute table) and surrounded the town.

After three days of musket fire, on the night of the 15th or 16th (25 or 26 September; the records differ) the Japanese filled the moat with bundles of cut rice plants and grass, piled them against the walls and climbed in. The town fell in a few hours. Yi Bok-nam, the Ming officers Li Xinfang, Jiang Biao and Mao Chengxian, and almost all the Joseon officials were killed, and many soldiers and townspeople died with them. Yang Yuan broke out with a handful of men.

The fall of Namwon opened Jeolla. The Ming garrison of Jeonju, the provincial capital, abandoned the city, and the Japanese occupied it without a fight on 29 September. The battle is also remembered for its cruelty: in this campaign the Japanese took noses from the dead as proof of their kills. Today the dead of Namwon are commemorated at Manin Uichong, the “tomb of ten thousand righteous people”.

In the first invasion of 1592 the Japanese had swept to Hanseong (Seoul) and Pyongyang, but they never held Jeolla, Joseon’s richest rice-growing province, which went on feeding the Korean war effort. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture describes the first aim of the new invasion as the conquest of the Honam region, that is Jeolla, and Japanese Wikipedia summarises Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s instructions for 1597 as “to punish all of Jeolla Province and then advance into Chungcheong”, after which the commanders were to build castles on the coast. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture puts the army raised for the new invasion at about 140,000 men.

The plan depended on the sea. In August 1597 the Joseon navy under Won Gyun was almost destroyed at Chilcheollyang (27–28 August), and Jingbirok notes that Japanese ships then pushed west along the coast, landed at Duchijin and advanced on Namwon. According to the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, the Japanese armies set out from the 28th day of the 7th lunar month (9 September). The Left Army, with Ukita Hideie as commander-in-chief, marched from Sacheon by way of Hadong to Gurye, while part of it came through Hamyang to Unbong, so that Namwon could be attacked by land and by water.

A second army, the Right Army under Mōri Hidemoto with Katō Kiyomasa in the van, crossed the mountains further north by way of Chogye and Anui, heading for Jeonju. Ukita Hideie was then about 25 years old. He was lord of Bizen and Mimasaka, was married to Hideyoshi’s adopted daughter Gōhime and had already been overall commander at the battle of Haengju in 1593; in the Left Army he had with him experienced commanders such as Konishi Yukinaga, Shimazu Yoshihiro and Hachisuka Iemasa.

Yang Yuan was a Ming general from the northern frontier. In 1593 he had led one wing of the Ming army that retook Pyongyang and, according to Korean and Chinese Wikipedia, helped rescue Li Rusong at Byeokjegwan. In 1597 he came back to Korea ahead of the main Ming army, reaching Hanseong in the 5th lunar month with 3,000 men. The History of Ming records that the Ming high command ordered him to take up position at Namwon and then to arrest Shen Weijing, the envoy whose deceptive reports had helped wreck the peace talks. According to the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, other Ming units were posted at Jeonju, Seongju and Chungju.

The choice of Namwon was made quickly. At an audience on the 15th day of the 8th month, King Seonjo recalled that when Yang had asked which place he should hold, the Border Defence Council had answered “Namwon” on the spot, and that Yang had boasted, “I am like a tiger, the enemy like sheep; how could they stand against me?” The same day an official warned that Yang was a northern general who knew how to fight the horsemen of the steppe but had never faced the Japanese.

Joseon was represented in the town by Jeong Gi-won, the official attached to Yang as liaison officer, the Namwon magistrate Im Hyeon and other local officers. The main Joseon field force was supposed to come under Yi Bok-nam, army commander of Jeolla, who had fought at Ungchi in 1592 and had been Namwon magistrate. Yang summoned him, but Yi was slow to arrive. Jingbirok says he came with only a few hundred men; the king’s report to the Ming says he led over a thousand picked soldiers, cut his way through the Japanese and reached the town with 700. With Kim Gyeong-no, Sin Ho, commander of the nearby Gyoryong mountain fortress, and others, he took over the north gate.

Many of the people the defenders were meant to protect had already gone. Jeong Gi-won had assured Yang that Namwon’s people relied on him “like a long wall”, but Jingbirok says that when news came of the Japanese advance by land and sea the townspeople panicked and fled, leaving only Yang’s 3,000 Liaodong cavalry inside. Shortly before the siege a report from the Ming commander at Jeonju said that the town of Namwon was empty, and after the fall the Office of the Inspector-General complained that Korean soldiers and civilians had fled and left the Ming troops to defend the town alone.

Namwon’s walls were not a mountain fortress but the stone wall of a county town on flat ground. Begun in 1477, they were enlarged before 1530 to a circuit of about 3.4 kilometres, roughly 850 metres on each side, with a gate in the middle of each wall and a grid of streets inside. In 1593 the Ming officer Luo Shangzhi repaired the walls after the first invasion and added gate enclosures and bastions.

Yang Yuan strengthened them further. Jingbirok, using the account of a survivor, says he raised the wall by about one zhang (some three metres), cut many gun ports in a low outer wall called the yangmajang (“sheep-and-horse wall”), set several large cannon at the gates and dug the moat one or two zhang deep. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture adds that he raised the wall to 16 cheok with a parapet. Excavations since 1997 have found the north wall, the north gate, a bastion and, 7–8 metres outside the wall, the base of the yangmajang, with a stone-lined moat 4–5 metres wide beyond it; a Joseon handgun was found at the yangmajang.

Not everyone agreed with Yang’s choice. Outside the town stood Gyoryong mountain fortress, an old stone fortress on a steep hill that had been repaired during the war. Jeong Gi-won and the magistrate Im Hyeon urged Yang to use it, so that the town and the mountain fortress could support each other, and the Revised Annals say that general opinion favoured the mountain fortress. Yang refused: he judged the town wall defensible and, according to Jeong’s report, scoffed that Korean soldiers ran away in battle.

The most detailed account of the siege comes from Kim Hyo-ui, one of twelve soldiers of the Joseon Office of Armaments who had gone into Namwon with Yang Yuan and the only one of them to survive. Yu Seong-ryong recorded his story in Jingbirok “so that later defenders may take warning”. On the 13th (23 September) about a hundred Japanese skirmishers came up to the walls, fired their muskets and scattered among the fields in small groups. The defenders answered with small Korean guns but could not hit such scattered targets, while Japanese bullets often struck men on the wall. Then the Japanese called up to the walls; Yang sent one of his men with an interpreter to their camp, and he came back with a letter challenging the garrison to battle.

On the 14th (24 September) the Japanese camped around three sides of the town and kept up their fire. Yang had burned the crowded houses outside the south gate, but their stone and earth walls still stood, and Japanese musketeers sheltered behind them and hit many defenders. According to Japanese Wikipedia, Ukita, Tōdō Takatora and Ōta Kazuyoshi were posted on the south side, Konishi Yukinaga and Sō Yoshitoshi on the west, Shimazu Yoshihiro and Katō Yoshiaki on the north and Hachisuka Iemasa on the east.

On the 15th (25 September) the defenders saw the Japanese cutting grass and the ripening rice in the paddies outside and binding them into countless bundles, but did not understand why. The Ming commander Chen Yuzhong was at Jeonju with about 3,000 men, and the garrison waited every day for him to come, but he never came. By evening, Kim Hyo-ui said, the men on the walls were whispering to each other and saddling their horses.

In the first watch of the night a great shout rose from the Japanese lines and guns were fired at the walls “like hail”, so that the defenders could not look out. In an hour or two the bundles had filled the moat and been piled against the yangmajang until they were level with the wall, and the Japanese climbed over. Japanese Wikipedia, following Japanese accounts, adds that fire was opened from tall siege towers and that long ladders were used. The report that reached the king a few days later says the Japanese climbed over at the south gate on the night of the 16th; Jingbirok places the assault on the night of the 15th. Most Korean summaries date the fall to 26 September, the 16th day, but the records disagree about the night of the final assault.

When the Japanese broke in, fires sprang up all over the town. Kim Hyo-ui, posted at the outer wall by the south gate, ran inside and found the wall already deserted. At the north gate the Ming cavalry, all mounted, were trying to get out, but the gate was shut and the street was jammed with horses. When it opened they poured out, only to meet Japanese troops drawn up in two or three rings around the town, guarding the roads and cutting them down with long swords. The moon was bright, and few escaped. Kim jumped into a rice paddy and hid in the grass until the Japanese withdrew.

Inside the town the Joseon commanders fought on. A report sent by King Seonjo to the Ming, based on an interpreter who escaped with Yang Yuan, says that Yi Bok-nam, Sin Ho and the Gurye magistrate could not hold out in the street fighting and were killed with Jeong Gi-won, the magistrate Im Hyeon, his deputy Yi Deok-hoe and over 700 officers and men. The Revised Annals list the Ming officers Li Xinfang, Jiang Biao and Mao Chengxian, and on the Joseon side Jeong Gi-won, Yi Bok-nam, O Eung-jeong, Kim Gyeong-no, Sin Ho, Im Hyeon, Yi Deok-hoe and the Gurye magistrate Yi Won-chun among the dead, and say that the Ming and Korean soldiers were cut down to the last man. Jeong Gi-won had refused Yang’s advice to leave and had written to his father that he had already given his life to the country.

The killing went beyond the soldiers. In the second invasion Hideyoshi’s orders told his commanders to kill without distinction of age or sex, and noses, easier to ship than heads, were cut from the dead and sent to Japan as proof of the number killed. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture lists Namwon first among the places in Jeolla where tens of thousands of noses were taken. A 2019 study by Park Hyun-kyu notes that Hideyoshi’s red-seal letters acknowledging the Namwon kills survive for several commanders, among them Shimazu Yoshihiro and Tōdō Takatora. Many people were also carried off as captives.

One Japanese eyewitness of the campaign has left an unusually critical record. Keinen, an elderly Buddhist priest and physician who went to Korea with Ōta Kazuyoshi, one of the commanders posted before Namwon, kept a diary, the Chōsen nichinichiki, from the 24th day of the 6th month of 1597 to the 2nd day of the 2nd month of 1598 by the Japanese calendar. It records burning, killing and human trafficking by the Japanese army; in one passage he describes slave dealers who followed the troops, bought men and women, young and old, and drove them along tied together by the neck. The sources used here do not quote what Keinen wrote about Namwon itself.

Yi Bok-nam’s death is told in two different ways. Korean Wikipedia says he killed himself: its article on the battle says that he, O Eung-jeong and Kim Gyeong-no set fire to the powder store at the north gate and blew themselves up, and its article on Yi himself says that on the 16th he had his soldiers pile rice straw around him and set it alight. The article on the Manin Uichong tomb also speaks of self-immolation. These articles give no source for the story, and they do not agree on how it happened.

The earlier and official records say only that he died in the fighting. King Seonjo’s report to the Ming, sent less than three weeks after the fall and based on an eyewitness who escaped with Yang Yuan, says that Yi Bok-nam and others “could not hold out in the street fighting” and were killed. The Revised Annals list him among those who “all died”, Jingbirok says that he and the other commanders “all died”, and the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture writes that he was killed in the confused fighting after the Japanese broke through the south gate.

This article follows the stronger sources: Yi Bok-nam was killed when the town fell, fighting inside the walls. The story of his suicide by fire may come from family or local tradition, or from later commemorative writing, but the sources used here do not show where it began. Yi was posthumously promoted to the high office of jwachanseong, enshrined at Namwon’s Chungnyeolsa shrine in 1612 and later given the posthumous name Chungjang.

Yang Yuan got out, but the accounts of how differ. The first report to reach the court says he broke out through the west gate with some 300 men, was hit by two bullets and came back with only ten or so. The king’s report to the Ming says he rode through the encirclement with over a hundred horsemen, and the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture gives 50. Jingbirok says he dashed out with a few of his retainers and “barely escaped with his life”, and adds a rumour: “some say the Japanese knew he was the commander and let him go.” The History of Ming has a Ming adviser remark that the Japanese “did not dare to kill Yang Yuan” because they still hoped for a settlement. A later Korean note says that Yang went back into the town three times looking for Jeong Gi-won before he left.

The Ming court held Yang responsible. On the 20th day of the 9th lunar month (30 October 1597) the Ming Censorate proclaimed an imperial order that Yang Yuan and Chen Yuzhong, who had abandoned Jeonju, had “stolen away and fled north” and were to be arrested and severely punished. The Ming commander in Korea, Yang Hao, told Korean officials that the Joseon court should not plead for Yang, because other generals would then follow his example. In the summer of 1598 a Ming official told King Seonjo that Yang was in prison in Liaoyang.

Yang was executed in 1598. On the 8th day of the 10th lunar month of that year (6 November 1598) his severed head was brought to the South Gate of Hanseong and displayed; Jingbirok and the Revised Annals likewise say that the Ming executed him and paraded his head in Korea. The Border Defence Council recalled his part in the recapture of Pyongyang and asked to send an official to offer sacrifice to him. The court historian added that Yang had fought a lone town without reinforcements, while Chen Yuzhong, who had “sat and watched without helping”, still kept his head, and that people regretted Yang’s death. Japanese Wikipedia says that both men were executed; the sources used here do not record what finally happened to Chen.

While the Left Army besieged Namwon, the Right Army was crossing the mountains to the north-east. Its vanguard under Katō Kiyomasa attacked Hwangseoksan, a mountain fortress at Aneum on the road from Gyeongsang into Jeolla. The inspector-commissioner Yi Won-ik had ordered the Aneum magistrate Gwak Jun to hold it with the troops of three counties, helped by Baek Sa-rim, magistrate of Gimhae, and the former Hamyang magistrate Jo Jong-do had joined them with his family. The attack began on the 16th day of the 8th lunar month (26 September). The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture dates the fall to the 17th (27 September) and Korean Wikipedia to the 18th (28 September).

When the Japanese attacked the south gate, Baek Sa-rim, according to the Revised Annals, let his wife and children down the wall by rope and fled; Jingbirok too says that he slipped away first and that the defenders then broke. The Revised Annals tell that Gwak Jun, urged by his family to save himself, laughed, “This is where I die; what other plan is there?”, and was killed sitting calmly on his camp chair; his two sons died beside him, and his daughter, whose husband had been captured, hanged herself. Jo Jong-do had written before the battle that dying in defence of a city was an honour, and died with Gwak.

Jeonju, the capital of Jeolla, fell without a battle. Chen Yuzhong, about 100 li (some 50 kilometres) away with his Ming troops, had not answered Namwon’s calls for help and, according to the History of Ming, abandoned the city as soon as he heard that Namwon had fallen. Korean officials also blamed the Jeonju magistrate Pak Gyeong-sin, who prepared to flee before the Japanese came near and whose departure set off a riot among the townspeople. On the 19th day of the 8th lunar month (29 September) the Japanese occupied Jeonju, and the Left and Right Armies met there before moving into Chungcheong Province.

Earlier in 1597, on 5 February, Hideyoshi’s government had 26 Catholics, Japanese and foreign, crucified at Nagasaki, a turning point in the persecution of Christianity in Japan. In Europe the long war between England and Spain went on: between October and November 1597 a third Spanish Armada sailed against the British Isles but was scattered by storms.

In England, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was first printed in 1597, in a quarto edition of poor quality that later editions corrected. In Ireland the Nine Years’ War between Irish lords and the English crown, begun in 1593, was at its height.

None of these events was connected with Namwon. Setting them side by side shows only that the year in which Jeolla was overrun was also a year of religious persecution in Japan and of naval war and new literature in Europe.

The dead were gathered into a common grave. According to Park Hyun-kyu’s 2019 study, the Ming general Li Fangchun, returning to Namwon in the 4th lunar month of 1598, collected the remains that lay heaped inside and outside the town and buried them in a great mound, the forerunner of today’s tomb. In 1612 local Confucian scholars founded a shrine, Chungnyeolsa, to the officials who had died; it first honoured four of them, among them Jeong Gi-won and Yi Bok-nam, and later more. The shrine was moved, abolished in 1869 and rebuilt, pulled down again during the Japanese colonial period and re-established in 1964.

In 1964 the tomb itself was moved to its present site in Namwon, and in 1981 it was designated a Historic Site of the Republic of Korea; since 2011 its official name has been Namwon Manin Uichong, “the tomb of ten thousand righteous people of Namwon”. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture describes it as the grave of the soldiers, officials and civilians who died defending the town. Park argues that the name “ten thousand” was given after Korea’s liberation in 1945 to express that very many had died, and is not evidence of an exact number.

Namwon’s fall also entered literature. In 1621 Jo Wi-han wrote Choe Cheok-jeon, a story in classical Chinese about a Namwon family scattered by the war: when Namwon falls, the wife Ok-yeong is carried off by Japanese soldiers and the husband goes to China with a Ming officer, and after years apart they meet again in Annam (Vietnam). The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture praises it for its sense of real history and geography.

In Japan the dead of Namwon are remembered in other ways. Park notes a “thousand-person nose mound” said to have been made by a retainer of Ukita Hideie, and a memorial stele that Shimazu Yoshihiro and his son set up on Mount Kōya in 1599 for the dead of both sides, whose text mentions 420 dead of Namwon. In Kyoto, the mound later called the Mimizuka (“ear mound”) was raised in 1597 over noses sent from Korea; the diary of the abbot Gien records fifteen tubs of ears and noses arriving from Korea in the 9th month, and a memorial service was held there on the 28th day of the 9th month of the Japanese calendar. The sources used here do not say how many of the noses buried in Kyoto came from Namwon. Keinen’s diary, kept in Usuki, was recommended for designation as an Important Cultural Property of Japan in March 2026.

The defenders are counted in different ways. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture gives 3,000 Ming troops and 1,000 Joseon government troops, 4,000 in all, and Japanese Wikipedia gives about 3,000 Ming and 1,000–3,000 Joseon soldiers. Jingbirok says that the townspeople fled, leaving Yang’s 3,000 Ming cavalry in the town, and that Yi Bok-nam then arrived with only a few hundred men; the king’s report to the Ming says 700 Joseon soldiers reached the town. Contemporary reports also say that most of the townspeople had fled before the siege, which makes later figures of ten thousand or more civilians inside the walls hard to reconcile with the records.

The attackers are given as about 56,000 in the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture’s article on the battle and 50,000 in its article on the war; Japanese Wikipedia counts 56,800 for the Left Army and naval units together, and English Wikipedia 49,600. These are totals for the whole army and do not tell how many men actually took part in the assault.

For the dead, the earliest Korean figure is the king’s: over 700 Joseon officers and men killed with their commanders, besides the Ming troops. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture’s article on Manin Uichong speaks of 2,000 soldiers and over 10,000 residents, the Chungnyeolsa article of “more than 5,000 souls”, Korean Wikipedia of 4,000 soldiers and 7,000 townspeople, and Japanese Wikipedia of 5,000 Ming and Joseon dead. Park Hyun-kyu, combining the count in Ōkōchi Hidemoto’s account (Chōsen monogatari, also called Chōsenki) with Hideyoshi’s red-seal letter to Tōdō Takatora, arrives at 3,735 dead; he finds no evidence for a figure of ten thousand.

None of these figures can be checked against a complete list. The Japanese counts depend on the noses and heads presented for reward, the Korean figures on later commemoration, and the name “ten thousand righteous people” on a modern tradition. Taken together, these sources indicate that almost every officer in the town was killed, that the Ming garrison was largely destroyed, and that soldiers and civilians were massacred when the town fell. Japanese losses are not recorded in the sources used here.

The earliest record is the report entered in the Veritable Records of King Seonjo on the 18th day of the 8th month, two days after the fall: the Japanese surrounded Namwon on the 12th, attacked day and night, and climbed over the south gate on the night of the 16th. It was written from a distance and quickly. The king’s report to the Ming of the 2nd day of the 9th month adds the testimony of the interpreter Pak Ui-seong, who escaped with Yang Yuan, and lists the dead officials. The Revised Annals, compiled decades later, give a tidy summary with the gates assigned to each commander.

Jingbirok is the richest source. Its account of the siege comes from Kim Hyo-ui, a common soldier who fought on the walls, and gives day-by-day details found nowhere else: the challenge letter, the burned houses outside the south gate, the rice-straw bundles and the crush at the north gate. But it was written by Yu Seong-ryong after the war from one man’s memory, and its dates do not quite match the court report: Jingbirok places the arrival of the Japanese vanguard on the 13th and the final assault on the night of the 15th, while the court report has the siege begin on the 12th and the walls fall on the night of the 16th. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture gives the 13th to the 16th in one article and an assault from the 14th in another.

Names and details vary too. The Gurye magistrate who died is Yi Won-chun in the Revised Annals, but Jingbirok calls him Yi Chun-won, magistrate of Gwangyang; O Eung-jeong’s name is written with two different characters. At Hwangseoksan, the Wikisource text of Jingbirok calls Jo Jong-do a former magistrate of Haman (咸安), his home county, but the same passage as copied into Jo’s collected writings reads Hamyang (咸陽), as do the Annals; Jingbirok also calls Baek Sa-rim a former magistrate of Gimhae, while the Annals treat him as the serving one. A report by Kim Eung-seo, army commander of western Gyeongsang, even says that Baek was still in the fortress when it fell and was led out by a surrendered Japanese soldier. The History of Ming, compiled in the Qing period, says that Katō Kiyomasa besieged Namwon, although Kiyomasa was with the Right Army at Hwangseoksan. Japanese accounts, such as Ōkōchi Hidemoto’s Chōsenki, written by a retainer of Ōta Kazuyoshi, and Hideyoshi’s letters, give the attackers’ view and their counts of the dead, but the sources used here only cite them through modern studies.

Some popular details rest on weaker ground. Yi Bok-nam’s suicide by fire is not in the early records, and claims in some modern retellings that Yang Yuan made a secret bargain with the Japanese go beyond what the sources say: Jingbirok reports only a rumour that the Japanese let him go, and the History of Ming only a remark that they did not dare to kill him. The figure of ten thousand dead behind the tomb’s name is, as Park argues, not supported by contemporary evidence.

Contemporaries blamed several things. Yu Seong-ryong concluded that Yang Yuan was a Liaodong general who knew how to fight the northern horsemen but not the Japanese, and that a town on flat ground is very hard to hold; his choice of the town over the Gyoryong mountain fortress, against Korean advice, left 3,000 cavalry boxed in behind walls where horses were of little use. The odds were also overwhelming: a garrison of a few thousand, with most of the townspeople gone, faced an army ten times its size, and the relief force at Jeonju never came.

Korean officials also blamed themselves. After the fall the Office of the Inspector-General wrote that Korean soldiers and civilians had scattered and left the Ming to fight alone, and that the Jeonju magistrate had fled before the enemy arrived. The king, writing to the Ming, admitted that Joseon’s weakness had forced the Ming to fight on foreign soil. The flight of the population, the delay of Yi Bok-nam’s force and Chen Yuzhong’s refusal to help all left Namwon isolated.

The consequences were immediate. With Namwon and Jeonju gone, Jeolla lay open, and the Japanese plundered the province and moved north into Chungcheong; Hanseong panicked, and people began to flee the capital. Jingbirok says that after Namwon fell, everything north of Jeonju collapsed. Yet the Japanese did not reach Hanseong. A Ming force met part of the Japanese army near Jiksan in October, Yi Sun-sin defeated a Japanese fleet at Myeongnyang on 26 October, and from the autumn the Japanese withdrew to their castles on the south coast. How much each of these events contributed to the withdrawal is still debated.

Namwon thus stands at the turning point of the second invasion: it was a major Japanese victory on land in 1597, and also the clearest example of the brutality of that campaign. For Korea it became, with the second siege of Jinju in 1593, a symbol of soldiers, officials and civilians dying together in defence of their town.