We’ve all heard the cliche, right? “A single person can change the world.” We’ve heard it, probably, since we were kids, but to be honest, I never really believed it. The world is so big, there are so many people in it, and a single person is just so small, so insignificant. Oddly, not until very recently did I begin to think differently. Not until reviewing a familiar historical event and finding myself running a sort of mental “what if” exercise. Suddenly it occurred to me just how much a single human being at a specific place and time can affect the world, and it’s caused me to reconsider my disbelief.
All right, so what could cause this change in what was otherwise a long-held belief . . . or disbelief as it was in my case? While there are likely a number of examples throughout history of talented individuals who found themselves in the right place at the right time, rarely does the substitution of one such person with his polar opposite have a potentially dramatic impact on the affairs of the world. Locally, maybe, a single battle, perhaps, but the world?
My example (unsurprisingly, I know) comes from May 1592, when the First Japanese Division made landfall and captured the Korean port of Busan, kicking off six years of warfare on the peninsula. Japanese Daimyo Konishi Yukinaga led the First Division’s 18,700 veteran samurai and ashigaru. Ordered to wait for the arrival of warships to escort his transports from Tsushima Island to Korea, Konishi took a huge risk in making the move without any escort. His force arrived at Busan Harbor, causing panic amongst the local populace and garrison. After spending the night aboard their unarmed ships, the Japanese stormed the Korean defenses and occupied the city the next morning. Unescorted, 400 transports remained all night in an enemy harbor, unmolested, and delivered the first wave of invaders to the Korean Peninsula, inaugurating the most embarrassing chapter in the annals of Korea’s Yi Dynasty.
If only the Koreans had a fleet nearby, they might have prevented such a disaster from befalling them. Oh wait, they did! The military base of the “Kyongsang Left Fleet”—a reference to one of two fleets guarding Kyongsang Province—was located at Kijang, within sight of Busan Harbor and under the command of Admiral Pak Hong. Pak watched in terror as the enemy fleet filled first the horizon and then the bay. He kept watching all night and into the next day as the enemy vessels discharged their deadly cargoes and Busan was violently assaulted. What did Pak do as the senior naval commander on the scene, charged by his king with protecting the southeastern coast of his nation against just this sort of attack? He promptly scuttled his fleet, burning all military stores at the base and 100 naval vessels, including at least 50 of the large, cannon-equipped battleships known as panokseon. Having committed the mother of all epic fails, Pak and his men then escaped into the hills and retreated north.
Think about it for a second. Imagine the mayhem 50 cannon-packing panokseon could have wreaked upon the fleet of transports chilling out in the bay. Contemplate, if you will, one of those rare moments in life when a single decision makes you a hero or a zero forever after. Admiral Pak chose poorly, dooming Busan to an unchallenged amphibious assault, and his nation to a long, devastating war.
But what if . . . ? A mere 137 kilometers to the west, the commander of the Jeolla Left Fleet, Admiral Yi Sun-shin was blissfully unaware of the attack on Busan. Admiral Yi was, at this point, a virtual nobody. Granted, he’d performed admirable service along the Manchurian border fending off incursions by Jurchen raiders, but his candor kept getting him in trouble with the politicians, and so he languished in relative obscurity. In fact, he owed his current position more to the political good fortune of his friend Yu Song-nyong—who’d risen to the King’s inner circle—than any recognition of Yi as a capable military professional. That said, Yi knew what he knew and knew what he didn’t know, and worked hard to reduce the latter, studying naval texts until late into most evenings prior to the war. He wasn’t a professional sailor, but he would become one of the most successful naval commanders in the history of the world.
Never heard of him? I’m not surprised. I’ve lamented the West’s poor knowledge of Eastern history more than once on this blog, but to not know of Yi Sun-shin is borderline criminal! What other naval commander, in all of world history, can claim to have captured or destroyed over 300 enemy vessels over the course of six years without losing a single one of his own? Aggressive but never foolhardy. Fearless and always willing to set the example for his sailors. Imprisoned by his King for a trumped-up political offense IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WAR, then re-instated and once again handed command after his successor lost the fleet. This was a real-life action hero and someone you just gotta read about!!!
So imagine, if you will, how the situation changes if Admiral Yi were given command of Kyongsang Left Fleet instead of our boy Admiral “Wet’s Himself” Pak. At the battle of Myeongnyang in 1597 Admiral Yi would attack 133 Japanese warships with only 13 panokseon and win an incredible victory. Does anybody out there think he would have hesitated—with 50 battleships at his disposal—to lay waste to Konishi’s 400 transports spending a leisurely evening in the bay? Does any of the First Division even reach Busan (alive) the following morning?
What effect would such an historical counter-factual have had? Difficult to say with any certainty, of course, but you can bet word getting back to Tsushima Island that the First Division never even made it to Busan would have had quite the effect on the Second and Third Divisions. To say nothing of the Japanese fleet! Do they even set sail, or do they re-think the whole operation? If they sail anyway, what does Admiral Yi do to them when they arrive, especially if joined by the other half of the Kyongsang Fleet?
There exists the very real possibility that the simple substitution of this one commander for the other scraps the entire Japanese invasion of Korea. This would elevate these hypothetical naval battles of 1592 to legendary status, right up there with the Spanish Armada, and would have left the Korean mainland untouched, sparing up to a million lives. Ming China, no longer weakened by the effort to help Korea expel the invaders might have survived a bit longer, perhaps even beating back the Manchu invasion that historically ended the dynasty. For that matter, without the devastation, occupation, abductions, and slave labor that accompanied the Japanese land campaign in Korea, do the two people still share such a deep animosity today?
One guy in the right place at the right time allows us to consider a very different world than the one we know. Without fantastic land-based success in Korea in 1592, do the Japanese still focus their sights on the peninsula at the end of the 19th Century, or do they instead remember how many soldiers went for a one-way swim and reconsider? Does Japan still annex Korea in 1910 leading to the occupation of Manchuria and war with China? Without that war and the need for resources required to keep it going, does Japan ever join the Axis Powers in World War II and attack the U.S. at Pearl Harbor? If not, then there is no post-war occupation of Korea, no division of the peninsula, no Korean War, and no North Korea threatening to launch nuclear-tipped missiles today.
One human—granted, one with exceptional character, focus, and drive—could, apparently make a difference. A BIG difference, it would seem. In the end, Admiral Yi ended up being the very real savior of his nation anyway, blocking re-supply by sea to Japanese armies further north and dooming them to a slow death by attrition. But what if he’d been stationed at THE right place at THE right time?
So why does any of this matter to you and me? It comes down to a simple question, I guess: Did Yi Sun-shin know in January of 1592 that he would save his nation over the course of the next six years? I’m guessing he had no clue, and couldn’t have imagined that his larger-than-life statue would one day stand tall and dignified in Seoul, that visitors would flock to the site of his former headquarters, that children would be taught his name in hushed and revered tones. He had no idea, I suspect, that what was about to happen would define him for going on 420 years.
So where will you be next year? What awaits you in the coming months? What challenges will you face next week? Regardless of what comes your way you will each time have to decide whether to be an Admiral Pak or an Admiral Yi. Burn your ships and run away from difficulty, or wade in, get dirty, fight the good fight, and maybe, just maybe, make something truly special happen in your life or the lives of the people around you.
Look to the example of Yi Sun-shin. He’s proof one person can indeed change the world.
M. G. Haynes