The Imjin War

0 dead

Japan gained nothing. Six years, 158,000 men committed, perhaps 100,000 Japanese dead, a ruined Korea, a bankrupted China — and not one square metre of territory. Hideyoshi died with his armies stuck on the coast, and his dynasty was extinct within seventeen years. The one thing the invasion reliably transferred was skill: the abducted Korean potters who founded Satsuma and Arita ware.

13 dead

Thirteen ships against at least 133 at Myeongnyang, two months after his own government had tortured him and stripped him of rank. He won and lost nothing. Across at least twenty-three engagements in six years, outnumbered nearly every time, Yi Sun-sin was never once defeated — a record no other admiral in history comes close to.

38,000 dead

Hideyoshi's commanders were paid by the nose. Barrels of them were salted and shipped to Japan as proof of kills, taken from soldiers and civilians alike, and buried in Kyoto under the Mimizuka — the 'ear mound' — which still stands and which Korean visitors still come to see. It is the most physically durable thing the invasion produced.

60,000 dead

Jinju is the war's moral low point and the one with no military logic at all. Hideyoshi had been humiliated when the fortress held in 1592, so in 1593 — during peace negotiations, with nothing strategic at stake — he ordered it taken and everyone inside killed. Ninety-three thousand Japanese against 6,000 defenders and 60,000 civilians who had crowded in behind the walls.

1,000,000 dead

The civilian figure is the least certain number here and probably the most important. Korea may have lost around a million people from a population of roughly ten million — but most died of famine and epidemic rather than violence, after cultivated land fell by something like two thirds and the armies ate what was left. Nobody counted them. Estimates rest on tax registers and cadastral surveys taken before and after, which is why they vary so widely.