Per Gunsen History's request, let's talk about Imjin War!
I rarely write about Imjin War topic. Truth be told I don't recall ever written anything about it in this blog, as various sources and analyses usually contradict each other, making the prospect of doing an through overview on the subject difficult. I also lack academic expertise, time, and resource to do independent research on my own.
That being said, I am well aware of the scarcity of English-language resources on this subject. To make matters worse, most English resources do not make use of many Chinese primary sources, thus painting an incomplete and often biased picture on the war.
Luckily, there has been growing interest in Imjin War from China as well, especially among the Mainland Chinese netizens. I often find their studies on Imjin War highly comprehensive and informative, as what they lacked in professional academic training they more than made up with access to vastly greater range of primary and secondary sources, mastery of all the languages used in these sources (namely Chinese and Japanese, as most ancient Korean documents were also written in Chinese), better understanding of the cultural quirks and norms of the period (being Chinese and all), deeper focus, and attention to details, as the following reconstruction of Battle of Byeokjegwan will show.
Before I start though, I should reiterate that this article is NOT written by me — I merely translated it to English (with some heavy formatting on my part) for wider audience. The original Chinese articles can be found here and here.
『吾兵雖云乘勝，實遠來疲罷。倭奴集各道之兵与王京，且有以虎視石之戒，正未可輕敵也。』
"Although our troops appear to be on high morale (following the victory at Pyongyang), in reality they are already weary from the long march. The Japanese are recalling their troops from various provinces to the Capital, so we should heed to the wisdom of 'assigning a tiger to keep watch on a stone', and not to underestimate them."
I rarely write about Imjin War topic. Truth be told I don't recall ever written anything about it in this blog, as various sources and analyses usually contradict each other, making the prospect of doing an through overview on the subject difficult. I also lack academic expertise, time, and resource to do independent research on my own.
That being said, I am well aware of the scarcity of English-language resources on this subject. To make matters worse, most English resources do not make use of many Chinese primary sources, thus painting an incomplete and often biased picture on the war.
Luckily, there has been growing interest in Imjin War from China as well, especially among the Mainland Chinese netizens. I often find their studies on Imjin War highly comprehensive and informative, as what they lacked in professional academic training they more than made up with access to vastly greater range of primary and secondary sources, mastery of all the languages used in these sources (namely Chinese and Japanese, as most ancient Korean documents were also written in Chinese), better understanding of the cultural quirks and norms of the period (being Chinese and all), deeper focus, and attention to details, as the following reconstruction of Battle of Byeokjegwan will show.
Before I start though, I should reiterate that this article is NOT written by me — I merely translated it to English (with some heavy formatting on my part) for wider audience. The original Chinese articles can be found here and here.
『吾兵雖云乘勝，實遠來疲罷。倭奴集各道之兵与王京，且有以虎視石之戒，正未可輕敵也。』
"Although our troops appear to be on high morale (following the victory at Pyongyang), in reality they are already weary from the long march. The Japanese are recalling their troops from various provinces to the Capital, so we should heed to the wisdom of 'assigning a tiger to keep watch on a stone', and not to underestimate them."
