Battle of Noryang

Battle of Noryang
Part of the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598)
Part of a Naval Battle Scroll from the Imjin War.
Date 16 December 1598 Location Noryang Strait, off the coast of Namhae Island Result Tactical Joseon-Ming victory
Belligerents
Japan as governed by the Council of Five Elders	China Korea
Commanders and leaders
Shimazu Yoshihiro Tachibana Muneshige So Yoshitoshi	Chen Lin Yi Sun-sin † Deng Zilong †
Strength
500 ships (Annals of the Joseon Dynasty)	83 panokseons 63 Ming warships less than or about 150 total allied ships
Casualties and losses
200 ships sunk, 100 ships captured, 13,000 soldiers killed (Annals of the Joseon Dynasty).	500 soldiers and sailors.

Battle of Noryang
Korean name
Hangul	노량대첩
Hanja	露梁大捷
Transcriptions Revised Romanization Noryang taecheop McCune–Reischauer Noryang taech'ŏp
Japanese name
Kanji	露梁海戦
Transcriptions Romanization Roryō kaisen

Transcriptions
Revised Romanization	Noryang taecheop
McCune–Reischauer	Noryang taech'ŏp

Transcriptions
Romanization	Roryō kaisen

The Battle of Noryang, the last major battle of the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598), was fought between the Japanese navy and the combined fleets of the Joseon Kingdom and the Ming dynasty. It took place in the early morning of 16 December (19 November in the Lunar calendar) 1598 and ended past dawn.

The allied force of about 150 Joseon and Ming Chinese ships, led by admirals Yi Sun-sin and Chen Lin, attacked and either destroyed or captured more than half of the 500 Japanese ships commanded by Shimazu Yoshihiro, who was attempting to link-up with Konishi Yukinaga. The battered survivors of Shimazu's fleet limped back to Pusan and a few days later, left for Japan. At the height of the battle, Yi was hit by a bullet from an arquebus and died shortly thereafter.

Due to setbacks in land and sea battles, the Japanese armies had been driven back to their network of fortresses, or wajō (和城), on the southeastern Korean coast. However, the wajō could not hold the entire Japanese army, so, in June 1598, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the Taikō who instigated the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598), and also the acting Japanese Lord of War, ordered 70,000 troops of mostly the Japanese Army of the Right to withdraw to the archipelago. On 18 September 1598, Hideyoshi unexpectedly died at Fushimi castle. The Japanese forces in Korea were ordered to withdraw back to Japan by the new governing Council of Five Elders. Due to the presence of Joseon and Ming ships, the Japanese garrisons in the wajō could not retreat and stayed in the relative safety of their forts.

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