Yi Sun-sin: His character and those around him

I wrote in this column recently about a presentation I made on Yi Sun-sin at a conference at Seoul City Hall. There, someone from KBS asked me to follow up that report with a program on television. This gave me the chance to delve deeper into the character of the man, and to compare him to some of those around him, including Lord Horatio Nelson. Both Nelson and Yi are seen as the two greatest naval heroes in history.

By all accounts Yi was a strict, disciplined and upright man. We can see this from what he wrote in his diary, the famous "Nanjung Ilgi" — "Diary in War" — which has been recognized as a UNESCO treasure. In the diary, his character is clearly reflected in his mourning for the loss of his soldiers both high and low, in his condemning bad behavior in others and in his comments on his own actions. For example, he wrote that he regretted scolding a subordinate officer, saying he should not have lost his temper and that reflected badly on himself.

Before the war with Japan, when his older “nephew” held a prominent position, he was asked if he would like to meet his nephew — the famous scholar, Yi I, known as Yulgok. They were not closely related, 19-degree cousins in Korean reckoning. With that degree of remoteness, Yulgok, though on a line lower on the genealogical chart, like a remote nephew, was actually older than Yi Sun-sin, the uncle. Yi Sun-sin refused the suggestion, saying that people could easily assume there was some kind of favor or privilege being asked for or offered, and he wanted none of that kind of suspicion about him.

In his writings, and in the opinion of his colleagues, he was extremely cautious and circumspect in all manners of character. For example, his childhood friend Yu Seongnyong, who knew him well, later became the prime minister and when Yi was falsely accused of cowardice in the middle of the war, and stripped of rank, incarcerated and tortured, it was Yu who stepped up to defend him and prevent, possibly, his execution.

Through that Yi harbored no ill will against the king but rather wrote of his desire to serve him as a loyal subject. And he did not complain about his primary accuser, Won Gyun. However, separate from Won’s conspiracies and lies that got Yi incarcerated, Yi had already written about Won’s character and flaws in leadership style. Specifically, he wrote that Won was given to drunkenness, self-aggrandizing behavior and moral turpitude.

To jump to the end of the story, it was Won who fed the king false reports that Yi was a coward who refused to follow a spy’s report that the Japanese navy was vulnerable and anchored at a certain place. Yi did not follow because he smelled a rat. After Yi was dismissed, Won got his dream assignment — the command of the whole navy. Won sailed into the trap lost all but 12 of his 200 warships, and in the process lost his life.

Won was a pain in Yi’s side prior to this ultimate moral failing, and Yi wrote about Won and his impetuous behavior, drunkenness and sexual exploitation of the wives of his subordinate officers. One can sense Yi's moral outrage as he writes about Won, and like a tragic play, it is Won’s recklessness that loses nearly the entire Korean War fleet.

Strangely, Yi’s greatest rival in naval brilliance on the world stage, Lord Horatio Nelson, had a character similar to Won. Nelson is described as having a bent toward recklessness, drunkenness and exploitation of women who were the wives of his subordinate officers. Condemnations of the two men, Won and Nelson, in separate sources, come off as shockingly similar.

This was not Yi, however. He is reported as being extremely upright and even in his diary he writes of striving for Confucian ideals of character and morality.

Maybe virtuous to a fault? When Won sailed the whole Korean navy into the Japanese trap, as it became clear the situation was hopeless, a commander at the rear of the armada thought it best to save what ships he could for another day, sailing away with 12 ships. The commander was Bae Seol, and by fleeing the battle, he saved the Korean navy and enabled Yi to use those 12 ships to defeat the Japanese navy.

This prevented them from rounding the corner to the West Sea, which in turn kept them from supplying the Japanese forces in Seoul and northward. Yet, Yi never forgave Bae for abandoning the fight, once it was engaged. Bae played a critical role in saving the country, but the ever-strict Yi seemed ambivalent about honoring one who had fled from battle.

Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is associate professor of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.