If you’re in the UK — or near the UK — on Nov 14, Mingi Hyun will be giving a lecture on Admiral Yi Sun-shin’s navy and the naval warfare and technological development in early modern Korea at King’s College London.
The lecture is part of the Laughton Naval History seminars.
If you can, be sure to check it out.
17 Comments
I hope the guy doesn’t repeat the “ironclad” turtleboat myth.
speaking of naval power, robert, have you seen robert kaplan’s latest piece on the decline of US naval power in this month’s atlantic? a good read.
Wouldn’t he focus more on Pan-Ok class warships, current… ography, and use of cannons (rather than boarding) than the Turtle Ship? I guess Turtle Ships do count into the whole technology/innovation thing. (anti-boarding battling ram on sea)
I’d love to be the fly on the wall in that meeting. Wonder if a working paper will come out afterwards?
Bum is right. It was the panokseons and Admiral Yi’s strategy of using cannon bombardment vs. Japanese close and boarding tactics that were decisive. Interestingly what Yi was doing was fairly new. Even Europe (battle of Lepanto) at that time still had the mindset that boarding and grapling (i.e. land battles at sea) was the preferred method.
Regarding the turtleboat being iron clad. It wasn’t iron clad like a Merrimack or Monitor, but it’s not disproven that it didn’t have some sort of limited iron sheeting as protection. Anyways, interesting story how the Chairman of Hyundai back in the 60’s pulled out a Korean coin which had a picture of the turtle ship. He was in London asking for a loan to create Hyundai Heavy Industries. He went off about how Korea had an admiral that was as great as Nelson and even back in the late 16th century Korea had the know how and technology to create an “iron clad” cannon welding battleship. Well, that story impressed in the investors in London and Barclays cut him a check and the Korean ship building industry was born. It appears that the turtle ship (or the myth of it) did more for Korea then just help repel Japanese invaders…
I feel like an idiot… what’s it called when someone charts the currents, dead wind spots, & dangerous rocks? It’s not oceanography, because that’s charting the bottom of the ocean…
Anyways, interesting story how the Chairman of Hyundai back in the 60’s…
Everyone knows that story. There’s another anecdote where Chung Ju Yung, who never went to college, was asked what his major was:
The next day we were guided to a high level restaurant for the executives of banks. After initial greetings, as soon as we sat down the Vice President for Overseas Matters of Barclay’s Bank asked,
“Chairman Chung, was your major in university business administration or engineering?” For a short moment I was taken aback, but I calmly asked him in return,
“Did you see the business plan we submitted to your bank?”
He said he had seen it. I remembered that the day before while sightseeing I had seen a graduation ceremony at Oxford University, so I just said,
“Yesterday I took that business plan to Oxford University and after looking through it, they gave me a doctorate in Business Administration on the spot.” So the Vice President said while laughing,
“Even a person with a Doctorate in Business Administration from Oxford University could not make a business plan like that. You are far superior to them, although your major seems to be humor. Our bank will send your business plan together with your humor to the Export Credit Guarantee Department. We wish you good luck.”
#5 - Specifically, you’re referring to hydrography; persons who survey and map those things are hydrographers.
Those Chung Ju-yong stories are the modern equivalent of Davy Crockett tales of the wild frontier.
Sonagi,
http://books.google.com/books?.....kE#PPA3,M1
Thanks for the link, Wangon. Looks like Barclay’s didn’t actually cut Chung a $50 million check until he had lined up Greek investors and two buyers for his first ships.
@bum, If you’re interested in hydrography you may enjoy Erskine Childers’s classic The Riddle of the Sands.
And the fact that the $50 million loan was secured with an export credit from Korea’s import-export bank was probably the deal clincher, not Chung flashing the coin, but hey, don’t let me rain on your national mythology parade.
How did Chung learn to speak English so well?
Sonagi,
You know how important chemistry is in business relationships right? What more amusing story is there but turtleships on 5,000 won notes proving that Koreans have an “innate” ship building ability over a pint?…
Bingo! Nearly ALL foreign loans to Korea until the late ’80s were just that: loans to KOREA — sovereign or quasi-sovereign obligations guaranteed by the “full faith and credit” of the ROK, NOT by the creditworthiness of the nominal borrower, be it Hyundai, Lucky Goldstar, Samsung, et. al. (And even after explicit state guarantees of such loans began to diminish, there was a lingering perception that the govt would “do the right thing” if the shit hit the fan.) That’s one reason that the great wealth amassed by the controlling families amounts to theft — the real source of the original capital was the Korean taxpayer — and the controversies over the attempt by the original kleptocrats to transfer that wealth to their even less deserving offspring (usually by contravening the laws designed to prevent or at least mitigate the injustice of it) is such a hot button issue in Korea.
#4,
The powerful foreigners were inspired at the great capitalist leader’s patriotism? Sounds too good to be true. It sounds like propaganda to me. Knowing that the Park government worked hard to promote Yi Sung-shin and the turtle ships, and now I hear the coin story, you have to wonder if it wasn’t all a calculated move to sell the idea of a Korean shipbuilding industry to the general population.
PS. I read somewhere that Yi Sun-shin simply improved on an existing design for his turtle ship. The original design, which was supposedly over 100 years old and had been used for a brief moment by the Korean navy, was said to be by a guy named Park from Andong (if my memory serves me right).
“It was the panokseons and Admiral Yi’s strategy of using cannon bombardment vs. Japanese close and boarding tactics that were decisive. Interestingly what Yi was doing was fairly new. Even Europe (battle of Lepanto) at that time still had the mindset that boarding and grapling (i.e. land battles at sea) was the preferred method.”
Seems more like something worthy of praise…but try to explain military strategy to the lay person and they’ll shrug. Not the best story when you want to create a national hero that will rally people behind the industrial drive.