King Seonjo

June 12, 1592 · 500 total casualties

The speed is the story: 450 kilometres in three weeks against a state that had been at peace for two hundred years. But the burning of the slave registers by Koreans, before any Japanese soldier arrived, says something else — the dynasty had lost its people's loyalty before it lost its capital. Seonjo's flight nearly ended the Joseon dynasty then and there, and he was still considering crossing into China when the news came from the sea.

January 8, 1593 · 12,000 total casualties

The moment the war became a world war. The Ming came because Korea was the shield of Beijing — Hideyoshi had announced he was coming for China and they believed him. Chinese artillery answered Japanese arquebuses, and the strategic balance flipped. It also nearly bankrupted the Ming: the campaign cost roughly ten million taels, a debt the dynasty never recovered from and which historians still cite among the causes of its collapse fifty years later.

August 28, 1597 · 10,000 total casualties

The only Korean naval defeat of the war, and it took a court intrigue to arrange it. In one night Korea threw away five years of Yi's work and the sea route was open again — Japan's second invasion could be supplied. The court, with nothing left, released Yi from prison and reappointed him to command the thirteen surviving ships.