Hideyoshi launched some 158,000 troops against Korea in 1592, took Seoul within three weeks and Pyongyang soon after, and was checked by Korean naval victories under Yi Sun-sin, by local righteous armies and by Ming intervention; a second invasion in 1597 was confined to the southern provinces and ended with his death in 1598. The war was fought largely on Korean soil and its effects on the population were severe: cities and palaces burned, agriculture ruined and famine and epidemic following the armies. Japanese commanders sent home noses and ears taken from the dead as proof of service, interred at the Mimizuka mound in Kyoto, and carried off Korean captives in large numbers, some sold on to Portuguese traders, others settled in Japan as artisans; between 20,000 and 100,000 are estimated to have been taken. Korean sources describe massacres of civilians at Jinju in 1593 and in the southern provinces in 1597-98. No reliable death toll exists for either side; figures of a million or more Korean dead appear in popular accounts without a documentary basis.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi's armies invaded Chosŏn Korea twice, devastating the peninsula and carrying tens of thousands of Koreans to Japan as captives before withdrawing after his death
Chosŏn household registers are known to be severe undercounts (they record roughly 4 million), and modern Korean historical demography (Kwon Tae-hwan, Tony Michell) reconstructs a population of roughly 9-14 million in the late sixteenth century. A round 10 million is the commonly used working figure; the war and the epidemics and famine that followed are thought to have cut it substantially.
No defensible total. Korean, Japanese and Ming sources describe heavy losses among soldiers and civilians, including the massacre of the population of Jinju in 1593, but none permits a count; the figures of a million or more Korean deaths that circulate in general accounts have no documentary basis, and specialist work has not replaced them with a reliable number.
The massacre of civilians at Jinju and in the southern provinces, the taking of noses and ears as trophies interred at the Mimizuka, and the abduction of craftsmen, scholars, women and children to Japan are documented in Korean court records, Japanese commanders' reports and Buddhist and missionary accounts discussed in the Royal Historical Society survey.
South Korea, Japan, North Korea