Who won the Battle of Noryang?
Joseon Korea and Ming China won the sea battle. Their combined fleet under Yi Sun-sin and Chen Lin destroyed or captured a large part of Shimazu Yoshihiro's fleet in the Noryang strait on 16 December 1598. But Konishi Yukinaga's trapped garrison escaped, Japan completed its withdrawal, and Yi was killed in the battle.1
Before dawn on the 19th day of the eleventh lunar month of 1598, 16 December in the Western calendar, the last great battle of the Imjin War was fought in the narrow strait between Namhae Island and the Korean mainland. Joseon and Ming fleets under Yi Sun-sin and Chen Lin caught a Japanese fleet sailing to rescue Konishi Yukinaga's garrison. The allies won, but Yi lay dead on his flagship.2
Part of Battles of Korea · Before: Myeongnyang, 1597 · Next: Inchon, 1950
Background: Hideyoshi's death and the order to go home
Japan invaded Korea in 1592 on the orders of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and renewed the war in 1597. By 1598 the second campaign had stalled, with the Japanese holding fortresses along the southern coast. Hideyoshi died in September 1598, and his commanders hurried to withdraw from the peninsula.3
Konishi trapped at Suncheon
The westernmost Japanese stronghold was the coastal fort near Suncheon, called Waegyo in Korean sources, held by Konishi Yukinaga. The Ming general Liu Ting attacked it from the land with about 13,600 men, while Chen Lin, with some 13,300 Ming sailors, and Yi Sun-sin closed the sea, according to the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture.4
Konishi tried to buy his way out: the encyclopedia says he bribed Chen Lin, who let a single courier boat through and then told Yi. The Veritable Records tell how, after four Japanese slipped out by boat one evening, Yi warned Chen that they had gone for help and that a large force would follow; Chen at first refused, then gave way when Yi pleaded in tears.5
The fleets and their commanders
Shimazu Yoshihiro, based at Sacheon, gathered ships from Sacheon, Namhae and Goseong. Yi Deok-hyeong, the minister who reported the battle to King Seonjo, wrote of over 300 ships; the encyclopedia gives over 500. The encyclopedia puts the allied fleet at over 200 ships.6
The night battle in the strait
The allied fleets rowed through the night and reached Noryang before dawn, just as the Japanese arrived. The encyclopedia's Imjin War entry credits Yi's fleet with breaking about half of the Japanese fleet. Yi Deok-hyeong reported wreckage and bodies covering the water so thickly that the sea seemed unable to flow.7
Deng Zilong's death
According to the official Ming History, Deng Zilong, then over seventy, crossed with 200 men to a Korean ship and charged; incendiary weapons thrown by mistake from another allied ship set his vessel alight, and the Japanese closed in and killed him. A 2024 account in Monthly JoongAng instead has Japanese soldiers board his ship, a Korean warship Yi had given him, and cut him down. Chen Lin's own flagship was then surrounded, and Yi forced his way through to relieve it.8
Gwaneumpo and the death of Yi Sun-sin
Driven back, part of the Japanese fleet fled into Gwaneumpo, a deep bay on Namhae Island. Pursuing it on the morning of the 19th, Yi was hit by a bullet. The court historian wrote that he was shooting arrows at the enemy himself when a Japanese ball struck him in the chest.9
So later Korean accounts give his last words, as quoted by the encyclopedia; Monthly JoongAng traces them to Yu Seong-ryong's memoir Jingbirok, and wordings vary. The court historian records none. Accounts differ on who carried on: the Veritable Records name an officer, Yi Mun-uk, who covered the body and beat the drum, the Imjin War entry Yi's nephew Yi Wan. People said, the court historian noted, that the dead Sun-sin had routed the living enemy.10
A 2009 Maeil Shinmun review of a book by Jang Han-sik lists unproven theories: that Yi, fearing King Seonjo's suspicion, chose death in battle; that he faked his death; and Jang's claim that the shot came from his own side. It notes that his nephew Yi Bun wrote only of a "flying bullet" and that the cause can no longer be established; the official record names an enemy bullet.11
Losses on both sides
Yi Deok-hyeong reported over 200 Japanese ships destroyed and several thousand men killed or wounded. The Ming side claimed 200 ships destroyed, 100 captured and about 500 heads, a report Monthly JoongAng credits to Chen Lin. As for the Japanese ships that got home intact, Monthly JoongAng cites 50 in Chinese records, 60 in Japanese ones, and a Japanese chronicle that, quoting Shimazu family records, puts the loss at half the men.12
Allied dead included the Joseon commanders Yi Yeong-nam, Bang Deok-ryong and Go Deuk-jang, and Yi Deok-hyeong's report counts ten men killed by bullets, Yi Sun-sin among them.13
Who really won the Battle of Noryang?
At sea the allies clearly won: Joseon and Ming ships destroyed or captured a large part of the Japanese fleet and killed many of its men. In strategic terms the result was mixed. Konishi's garrison escaped while the battle raged, Japan completed its withdrawal, and Korea lost its most successful admiral.
The Joseon and Ming side
The court historian praised Yi's loyalty and recorded that when news of his death spread, the people of the whole southwestern province wept. Ming histories gave the credit to Chen Lin. The Ming History has him intercept Shimazu, whom it calls Shi Manzi, and claims that he was killed; in fact Shimazu escaped with about 50 ships.14
The Japanese side
Shimazu's sortie was a relief mission answering Konishi's call for help, not an attempt to win a war Japan was already leaving. While the fleets fought in the strait, Konishi abandoned his fort, slipped out by sea round the south of Namhae Island and joined Shimazu at Busan, and from there the armies went home. For the lords who led these armies, see the greatest commanders of feudal Japan.15
Aftermath: the end of the Imjin War
Noryang was the last sea battle of the Imjin War, and with it the second invasion came to an end. Within weeks the remaining Japanese forces had sailed from Busan. In Japan, Hideyoshi's death opened a struggle for power among his former lieutenants that was settled at the Battle of Sekigahara.16
Memory: Korea, Japan and China
In Korea, Yi's body was first laid on Namhae Island, at the place where the shrine of Namhae Chungnyeolsa now stands; local scholars raised a thatched hall there in 1628 or 1633 (sources differ), and it received a royal name plaque in 1663. An empty grave behind it marks where the body rested before it was taken to the family burial ground in Asan.17
At Gwaneumpo, where he fell, his descendant in the eighth generation, Yi Hang-gwon, then naval commander, built the Irak-sa shrine and a memorial stele in 1832 on royal orders; a pavilion there bears the words "A great star fell into the sea". The site was listed as a historic site on 11 June 1973.18
Seen from Japan, Noryang was a costly episode of the withdrawal, its heavy losses admitted in Japanese records. In China, the Ming History remembers Deng Zilong as an old soldier who died fighting in Korea, and gives the victory to Chen Lin.19
The battlefield today
Two suspension bridges now cross the strait; the older one, the Namhae Bridge, is the thin line near the bottom of the 2008 astronaut photograph at the top of this page. On Namhae Island, Namhae Chungnyeolsa and the Gwaneumpo memorial with the Irak-sa shrine are the two main places of remembrance.20
