[Lee Kyong-hee] Yi Sun-sin: The human behind the legend

"I fear, but I will not stand back. So long as I live, I will protect Joseon."

So he did — faithfully and admirably. By the time Adm. Yi Sun-sin fell to a stray bullet while commanding his final battle in the southern seas, the vicious seven-year war launched by Japan's warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi was nearing its end. The invaders soon retreated, leaving the peninsula devastated. Joseon remained safe, and Japan's ambitions of conquering the Far East were checked for the next three centuries.

"The Great Admiral Yi Sun-sin," a special exhibition now underway at the National Museum of Korea, revisits the heroic struggle of the 16th-century naval commander who defended the nation during a major regional conflict involving Korea, China and Japan. Despite its familiar subject, the exhibition stands out for its remarkable scale and its restrained focus on the admiral's personal dimensions beyond the aura of a saintly hero. It sheds light on how Yi withstood hardship in both public and private life amid wartime crises and court intrigues, expressing his emotions and thoughts in poetic passages within his journals.

The exhibition features an unprecedented array of documents and artifacts. Among them are all seven volumes of the admiral's handwritten war diary, "Nanjung Ilgi," his two ceremonial swords, letters, reports to the king, royal edicts appointing him to military posts, posthumous citations and weaponry used during the conflict. These materials have been assembled through the cooperation of Yi's head descendant family and dozens of academic institutions and museums.

Other highlights include drawings of various turtle ships and battle formations — two pivotal factors behind Yi's seemingly impossible yet repeated victories. The turtle ships, widely regarded as the world's first iron-covered warships, were designed to counter Japanese boarding tactics and intimidate enemy fleets with their formidable presence. Yi's famed crane-wing formation, effectively creating an inverted V-shaped barrier across narrow straits, allowed his smaller forces to trap and overwhelm numerically superior enemies.

Also on display are portraits of Hideyoshi and the Japanese generals who led the invasion, along with their armor and weapons, historical paintings depicting major battles on land and seas, and prewar images of daimyo encampments at Hideyoshi's castle in Nagoya. These works are on loan from overseas institutions, including the Nagoya City Hideyoshi and Kiyomasa Memorial Museum, the Fukuoka City Museum and the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm.

Chinese Adm. Chen Lin's postwar report to King Seonjo draws particular attention. Chen, who allied with Yi during the war's final phase, praised him highly, writing, "He was capable of governing the world; he deserves the merit of sewing up the torn skies and bathing the sun."

In the early 20th century, Japanese Adm. Togo Heihachiro, famed for his victory in the Russo-Japanese War, acknowledged Yi as his superior. Responding to a speech that compared him with Horatio Nelson and Yi Sun-sin, Togo remarked, "It may be proper to compare me with Nelson, but not with Korea's Yi Sun-sin, for he has no equal."

US Navy Capt. George M. Hagerman, in his essay "Lord of the Turtle Boats," published in the December 1967 issue of Proceedings by the US Naval Institute, wrote, "With only 80 ships against an 800-ship invading force, Adm. Yi faced enormous odds. Yet among the Korean armada were the Kobukson, or turtle ships, the first ironclads in history. And these unlikely looking warships would drastically reduce the odds."

Hagerman identified Yi's campaigns as among the three most important naval operations of the late 16th century, alongside the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 and the Defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. "Though virtually unknown to the Western world, the influence this battle exerted on the course of history is as significant as that of the other two," he noted. "The campaigns of Adm. Yi were the only bright spots of an otherwise disgraceful Korean resistance to the invader."

American missionary Homer B. Hulbert, in his 1906 book "The Passing of Korea," cited factional strife among officials — "a war of factions with no great political opinions or platforms" — as a key reason for Joseon's initial inability to repel the invasion. Yi ultimately turned the tide by cutting off Japan's maritime supply routes and reinforcements.

When Yi was mortally wounded in his final battle, Hulbert wrote that "The redoubtable admiral did not regret it, for he saw that his country was freed of invaders, and he felt sure that his enemies at court would eventually compass his death even if he survived the war."

Yi has long been revered for his strategic vision, intelligence, courage and compassion — qualities that defined his invincible leadership in times of crisis. Yet his personal life was marked by profound sacrifice. In an entry dated to the 10th month of 1597, he recorded the grief he felt upon learning that his youngest son had been killed by Japanese agents:

"Heaven, why art thou so merciless! My heart burns and tears in pieces. I should die and you should live. Ah, sad! My son, I wish to follow you to the grave, to stay and weep together, but I should endure with a live body but dead soul. … To pass a night is like waiting for a full year to go by."

Lee Kyong-hee

Lee Kyong-hee is a former editor-in-chief of The Korea Herald. The views expressed here are the writer's own. — Ed.