Nanjung ilgi (War Diary), Imjin jangcho (Drafts of the Imjin War Reports) and Letters by Yi Sun-sin

Seven volumes, one for each year of the war, written by Yi Sun-sin himself. He failed the military examination at twenty-eight when his horse went down under him, passed four years later, and came to the war as a competent officer with a gentleman's education — he wrote poetry, and it shows in the prose. The diary is not a war record in the usual sense. Battles are in it, but so are the weather, the state of the rice, quarrels with subordinates, the price of provisions, his own illnesses, and the day he learned his mother had died — all in the same level, unadorned sentences. The designation covers the dispatch drafts and a volume of his letters as well. Together they are the fullest first-person account of the war from any side, and the reason so much of it can be reconstructed hour by hour.

Original Text

Where it is

Region

Asan, Chungnam

Designation

National Treasure · 국보