regarding Episode 58

[Alexa]

There is one thing I dont understand about this episode. So the King has to basically evacuate the palace and all the ministers, but what about the people? Obviously the people were upset because he was leaving them, but why didn't he evacuate the city as well? why didn't they warn the villagers to leave as well? I mean what would be the point of saving the King if his people are all killed?
Did this happen in real life?

It was so sad to see how the villagers were so disappointed in the King and how they just burned the palace down.

One quick question which may sound dumb, but what was the difference between Ming and Chosun? Were they one country split in 2, or 2 separate countries? One of the ministers referred to Ming as the father country, and I don't understand why.

Oh and I can't wait to see the look on Commander Won's face when he sees how organized Yi Soon Shin's soldiers are. I couldn't believe he said that Yi Soon Shin's soldiers might be in some sort of shape since they've been training for a year and that he might have to whip them in shape. Ah I dont like him at all. Is he going to be surprised when he comes face to face with YSS Navy!

[chigirl68]

Alexa; Ming in this series is referring to the Ming Dynasty (Chinese: 明朝; Pinyin: míng cháo also called 大明帝国 The Great Ming Empire) was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, though claims to the Ming throne (now collectively called the Southern Ming) survived until 1662.
I am sure we will get more detailed information from our knowledgeable friends here about the relationship between Korea and China during this time period.

[florel]

ac said:

There is one thing I dont understand about this episode. So the King has to basically evacuate the palace and all the ministers, but what about the people? Obviously the people were upset because he was leaving them, but why didn't he evacuate the city as well? why didn't they warn the villagers to leave as well? I mean what would be the point of saving the King if his people are all killed?
Did this happen in real life?

Unfortunately, the king and the ministers had no time to evacuate the city. Seoul was (and is) a big city. The number of habitants were more than 100,000 in the early 15th Century (and, I guess, perhaps about 150,000 in the late 16th Century, at the time of Imjin War).
Gen. Shin Rip was defeated on the 28th April. The news arrived at Seoul early in the morning of 29th April. And the king left Seoul on the 30th April. It was impossible to empty the capital in a day. But the habitants were warned to leave by public massengers who brought the war reports to the court.

In the era under dynastic rule, the king was the symbol of a country and he represented the country itself (both in Asia and in Europe). It's a strange concept for us, democratic moderners.
If the king had been captured and he had capitulated, the war would have been finished with Japan's victory as Konishi was expecting it. Konishi was upset when he found the Chosun king fled. Sunjo was a big ass, but he managed well to take flight without being captured. While Konishi and Kato were pursuing the king's carriage, the Chosun people started to organize resistance, militia guerilla wars and our Admiral YSS gained victory over the Japanese on the sea.

But abandonning Pyung-yang.... it's a different story.


The Japanese troops massacred the habitants, looted the city et set fire to houses in Seoul when they left the capital for retreating southward in 1593.

ac said:

what was the difference between Ming and Chosun? Were they one country split in 2, or 2 separate countries? One of the ministers referred to Ming as the father country, and I don't understand why.

No one can answer this question better than Moreshige. I quote his posting on "History vs. fiction" thread.

moreshige's post
MODIFIED TO MAKE URL SHORTER - Bo

moreshige said:

The reason why the Choson court refers to Ming as a "mother country" or more accurately "the father country" is because of their understanding of a Confucian notion of hierarchy in the universe. It's more like saying, "Hey, China we believe, respect and acknowledge you're #1". The Chosun court is not saying that they (Korea) originated from China nor was Chosun implying they're a vassal state to Ming ie.like during the Mongol empire. In reality, it's more of a diplomatic ploy used by the Chosun court with the end result of continued peaceful co-existence and non-interference between the two countries. And it worked for many many years.

"Korea" itself exisited for thousands of years. Before the unified Silla period, there were different Korean states or kingdoms. Basically, what happened was that they all went to war against each other with Silla being the victor which resulted in the Unified Silla period. It's not too different from ancient Greece when competing city-states such as Athens and Sparta wared against each other.


Unified Silla lasted about 250 years or so until Wang Guhn came into the scene. He and his supporters wanted to ressurect the old korean kingdom of Koguryo (one of the four korean kingdoms that vied for control of Korea before unified Silla period). Wang Guhn and his supporters won and established "Koryo" which as you can see is derived from Koguryo, a new Koguryo if you will.

Well, I hope this explains some confusion.

***************************************

ac said:

Oh and I can't wait to see the look on Commander Won's face when he sees how organized Yi Soon Shin's soldiers are. I couldn't believe he said that Yi Soon Shin's soldiers might be in some sort of shape since they've been training for a year and that he might have to whip them in shape. Ah I dont like him at all. Is he going to be surprised when he comes face to face with YSS Navy!

Won Kyun in the drama is a reckless scelerato while Won Kyun in history is a ludicrous idiot. ;D



Does anyone, Alexa and others, notice Chun-Su and his friends in the Palace incendiary scene ? They burglarize the Royal Treasury while the people set fire to the Palace. LOL

[pakyownage4eva]

makes sense to me....King is the most important person in the country...especially in those days when it was monarchy.

There would be a great fuss over Bush if there was national crisis in the U.S. too...simply because he is a person of prominence.


I'm not concerned about that though....I hate how they drag on for 3 episodes...I'm sick of it...I want to watch the battle of Okpo already :/
It FINALLY comes next week for me...

Which makes me think....it must take some guts to face an enemy incomparably larger than yours with hundreds more ships whose infantry have already devastated and committed horrible atrocities throughout the whole country in a matter of weeks.

I was wondering about something-

did the Japanese ever use cannons on their ships?

[moreshige]

pakyownage4eva said:

makes sense to me....King is the most important person in the country...especially in those days when it was monarchy.

There would be a great fuss over Bush if there was national crisis in the U.S. too...simply because he is a person of prominence.


I'm not concerned about that though....I hate how they drag on for 3 episodes...I'm sick of it...I want to watch the battle of Okpo already :/
It FINALLY comes next week for me...

Which makes me think....it must take some guts to face an enemy incomparably larger than yours with hundreds more ships whose infantry have already devastated and committed horrible atrocities throughout the whole country in a matter of weeks.

I was wondering about something-

did the Japanese ever use cannons on their ships?

I don't think so but I think skinz can give you a better explanation.
What I do know is that the Japanese up until that time had limited naval warfare experience and the few sea battles that they did engage were mostly against other Japanese who used the same naval warfare tactics: close combat fighting. So you can imagine there was no apparent need for cannons. Japanese naval battles before the Imjin wars was nothing but land battles at sea. Their ships were basically nothing but floating platforms to stage hand-to-hand combat. What would typically happen is that two enemy ships would come close to one another and the men on both sides after a few rounds of exchanging arquebus fire would use grappling hooks to board the other ship and fight man to man.The total antihesis to the Japanese way of fighting was the 'turtle' ship because it was covered with iron spikes so no enemy can climb aboard. And this was precisely what YSS wanted to avoid and what Won Kyun out of his stupidity and arrogance never understood.

Even the Japanese ships didn't have the side ports to fit cannon through. The ships were bascially made for speed with the V-shaped hulls to catch other ships. While the Chosun 'Pan-oak-suns'(sp?) were flat bottmed to provide better manuverabilty. For example, they would need to quickly turn their ships sideways 90 degrees to use their cannons. And YSS took advantage of this ability to form his fleet's classic crane formation that "fans" out into a wide 'U' shape. The Japanese in their accounts described it as an unfolding 'fan'.

[ShawScope]

yea this is true. Japanese never got around to putting cannons on the ships until 1614. This is what Osprey's Fighting Ships of Far East says. They mostly relied on closing in and boarding tactics, which was mostly useless in their engagement with YSS fleet as he kept his distance and shot up any ships before they get into boarding range. Book states that Japanese biggest success in boarding action was against - surprise- Won Kyun's fleet at the battle of Chilchonyang . Also the cannons that Japnese captured from Koreans they mostly put into the shore batteries because their main ships construction was too weak.
They did use heavy arquebuses though.

Funny story from the book. At the battle of Ungchon in 1593 Wakizaka and Kato managed to lodge grappling hooks on the same Korean warship at the same time. Wakizaka got angry and ordered his men to cut Kato's grappling ropes. While they were squabling Korean ship got away. ;D

So not only Korean over proud generals did stupid things while looking for glory. Japanese were equally capable of that as well

[moreshige]

ac said:

There is one thing I dont understand about this episode. So the King has to basically evacuate the palace and all the ministers, but what about the people? Obviously the people were upset because he was leaving them, but why didn't he evacuate the city as well? why didn't they warn the villagers to leave as well? I mean what would be the point of saving the King if his people are all killed?
Did this happen in real life?

Another reason the people stormed and burned the palace was because they wanted to destroy the slave registries. They were records that essentially recorded a person and his family's status as slaves. There were a lot of slaves back then but I don't know the actual numbers or percentage. Florel, you have any idea?

[Daemado]

I've seen figures (forget the source) that around the beginning of the Chosun dynasty about 40 percent of the population of Hanyang (Seoul) was made up of slaves. One can imagine that most of them were the household attendants of the royal family and of high officials ... troubling thought ... I wonder ... did Yu Sung-ryong own any ... The same source stated that, between the events of 1592-1598 and three centuries of further decline, slavery was pretty much gone by the end of the Chosun era (no matter what Bruce Cumings suggests).

[skinz]

pakyownage4eva said:

did the Japanese ever use cannons on their ships?

Yes they did but not on the invasion. Moreshige pointed out exactly what I was gonna say. For a nation that was surround by water they had limited naval warfare. The great naval battle of Dannoura between the Taira clan and the Minamoto clan in the 12th century used the same logic used in the 16th century: Get close and board the ship for hand-to hand combat. If the Japanese even had ships with cannons in the invasion they still would've lost IMO because they had no strategy of formations, which you have to give credit to Yi Soon Shin. Sure you could have the best equipped cannons and do damage, but what's the use if you can't organize your unit effectively.

You also have to remember that cannons were first used by the Otomo clan in warfare (someone correct me if I'm wrong,I'm not to sure about this) in the mid 16th century so it was new to them like the firearms were new to them.
The samurais were more accustomed to siege warfare but even there they still lacked technological advances. It wasn't until the Osaka campaign by Togukawa in 1614 that siege tactics were used in Japan. Yes, the samurais were excellent in hand to hand combat but they were left behind in terms of developing new weapons. Japan sure owe a lot to the Portuguese or else they would've been way behind.

[ShawScope]

Japanese most certainly had concept of formations for the naval warfare. It's a pity that Japanese navy in the show is shown advancing in a big disorganized lump. Here's how their fleet should looked like



The reluctance to use ship cannons is mostly explained by the very deep samurai traditions in the Japanese navy. They wanted to take enemy heads and to capture the prize. It was same blind glory seeking logic that prevented Korean navy commanders besides YSS to be against of adopting canons

What do you mean by siege tactics ? Japanese spent ages assaulting their own castles. And they used cannons whenever possible. Most cannons they bought from Portuguese were used in siege operations. They also on one occasion enlisted help of Portuguese warships to bombard the enemies during Sengoku Jidai
But it is true they never liked and used the cannons as much as Europeans or Koreans and Chinese.


edit: I had the book title when I first wrote the article but somehow it dissapeared when it was submitted (I had trouble displaying pictures. Sorry for inconvinience that caused. I pasted scan of the text because I was lazy to type it manually I posted some pics and scans from the same book way back in AOW forum (Unfortunatly I don't have any other book on this conflict).
The source for all this information is the
Osprey's Fighting Ships of the Far East vol.2

[TheBo]

ShawScope, what is that great, white paragraph at the bottom of your page? Is that a quote from somewhere? If so, why don't you attribute it? (If you are merely trying to use this device to emphasize your own words, it's rather annoying, and I wish you would not do that. Try using a different color next time.)

What's more, why do you not attribute the book or website from which you got the Japanese formations? Don't you think we'd like to know where you got that information? At the very least, it's good form to mention where you got stuff.

Bo

[skinz]

shawscope said:

What do you mean by siege tactics ? Japanese spent ages assaulting their own castles. And they used cannons whenever possible. Most cannons they bought from Portuguese were used in siege operations. They also on one occasion enlisted help of Portuguese warships to bombard the enemies during Sengoku Jidai

I made a mistake on my statement. There was not lack of tactics of siege warfare by the samurais, but lack of flexibility by the samurais in early to almost the end of the 16th century were fought the traditional way. The samurai way of siege warfare were very simple: the attackers shot fire arrows and attempted to burn the castle down while the defenders abandoned their castle and prompted to engage the enemy in battle instead of defending the castle properly. I know about the Shimazu and Otomo and the siege of Usuki, where the Otomo clan used cannons to eliminate the shiamzu clan, and this conflict is exactly the example I need. The Otomo clan first used the Portuguese cannons in 1561 against the Mori clan. They used cannons against the Shimzau clan in 1578 in the battle at Mimigawa also.
But at Mimigawa, the Otomo left their castle in order to engage the Shimazu in the battlefield where they lost. And at the siege of Usuki, the Shimazu made no attempt to change their tactics,which was the same traditional siege warfare, or adopt cannons even when they saw the damage cannons can have on their troops. And the funny part about all this is that Shimazu Yoshihiro was part of the, non adoptive Shimazu clan, but was able to go toe to toe with 30,000 Mings.


Oh, and good find of the Japanese naval formations. I didn't know about that but the article have the date of 1633.

[florel]

moreshige said:

Another reason the people stormed and burned the palace was because they wanted to destroy the slave registries. They were records that essentially recorded a person and his family's status as slaves. There were a lot of slaves back then but I don't know the actual numbers or percentage. Florel, you have any idea?

daemado said:

I've seen figures (forget the source) that around the beginning of the Chosun dynasty about 40 percent of the population of Hanyang (Seoul) was made up of slaves. One can imagine that most of them were the household attendants of the royal family and of high officials ... troubling thought ... I wonder ... did Yu Sung-ryong own any ... The same source stated that, between the events of 1592-1598 and three centuries of further decline, slavery was pretty much gone by the end of the Chosun era (no matter what Bruce Cumings suggests).

Daemado is right about slave percentage.

I searched more informations on population composition during the period before Imjin War.

- Aristocrats : 5-10 percent
- Yang-In (middle class and peasants) : 45-50 percent
- Slaves : 40-45 percent


Moreshige, you can find more details about slaves in Chosun period on this site written in Korean.

Slaves of Chosun kingdom (In korean)


Daemado, Yu Sung-Ryong had his own slaves, of course, even though the drama doesn't show them. Every aristocrats had their attendant slaves.
At least, in the drama, we have seen two maid slaves of Mrs. Yi.
These personal servant slaves left their Lady or Lord when they got married. (But it didn't signify the changement of their social status as slave.)

[ShawScope]

skinz said:

shawscope said:

I made a mistake on my statement. There was not lack of tactics of siege warfare by the samurais, but lack of flexibility by the samurais in early to almost the end of the 16th century were fought the traditional way. The samurai way of siege warfare were very simple


Oh, and good find of the Japanese naval formations. I didn't know about that but the article have the date of 1633.

Yes it is true that Japanese mostly used canons randomly and never developed a system of using cannon in battle.

As for the article , It was my oversight for not declaring the souce of the information. I've fixed that now. Because it is scan from the book the story has nothing to do with the picture, they just happened to be on the same page. And that article just tells an anecdot of Japanese using canons for shore-to-ship bombardment.

[skinz]

Oh! I see. Now you've got me very interested in the Japanese naval formations. I really want to see how the Chosun Navy formations fought against the Japanese formations.