This is the accepted version of the journal article: Baihui Duan; Clements, Rebekah. «Fighting for Forests : Protection and Exploitation of Kŏje Island Timber during the East Asian War of 1592-1598». Environmental History, Vol. 27 Núm. 3 (2022). DOI 10.1086/719781 This version is available at https://ddd.uab.cat/record/274946 under the terms of the license Fighting for Forests: Protection and Exploitation of Kŏje Island Timber during the East Asian War of 1592–1598 BAIHUI DUAN, Autonomous University of Barcelona REBEKAH CLEMENTS, Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) and Autonomous University of Barcelona Warfare drove depletion of forests and forest management in the early modern world, as states required increasing control over timber resources to support their growing militaries. East Asia was no exception. Scholars have shown how the Chosŏn Korean state tightened control over forests via its navy during the seventeenth century, following invasions by the Japanese hegemon Toyotomi Hideyoshi between 1592 and 1598. This devastating conflict between China, Korea, and Japan was the largest war of the sixteenth-century world. The vast size of the Japanese invasion fleets, the naval battles that were fought along the Korean coastline, and the building of fortresses throughout the occupied parts of the peninsula meant timber was of paramount significance during the war. The Korean island of Kŏje was of particular strategic importance both for its location on the southern coast facing Japan and for the high-quality pine lumber produced there. This article explores the exploitation and protection of the forest environment of Kŏje during the war, focusing on a four-month period at the start of 1597 when tensions came to a head. The case of Kŏje shows the efficacy of direct management of forests by naval forces, as well as the results of a clash between early modern Chinese, Japanese, and Korean state cultures of timber control. The management of Kŏje’s timber by the Chosŏn navy dur- ing the war also helps explain why it was the navy that was later given admin- istrative responsibility for managing forests in the postwar period. Electronically Published on May 27, 2022. Environmental History, volume 27, number 3, July 2022. © 2022 Forest History So- ciety and American Society for Environmental History. All rights reserved. Published by the University of Chicago Press on behalf of American Society for Environmental History and the Forest History Society. https://doi.org/10.1086/719781 416 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY  27.3  JULY 2022 The early modern world saw the evolution of various state timber man- agement strategies to meet growing demands for wood. Among these demands, the supply of old growth timber suitable for shipbuilding to support warfare and naval exploration was a particular concern. Broadly speaking, it is possible to delineate three approaches to timber acqui- sition used by early modern states, although the reality was often a mixture: (1) direct management of forests by state officials; (2) tim- ber purchased as a market commodity; and (3) the acquisition of tim- ber resources from a captured territory. The Venetian Republic is re- garded as an early adopter of the first approach, having developed a coherent set of forest management policies in the fifteenth century, fol- lowed by the Spanish Crown, whose role in protecting forests changed from arbiter, balancing the interests of local groups, to that of forest manager, protecting the crown’s interest in shipbuilding.1 Ming China (1368–1644), long thought to have been lax in matters of forest man- agement, has recently been shown to have had a complex system of timber regulation, which it managed through its role as tax collector, tariff levier, and codifier of property rights, and England and the Dutch Republic likewise purchased timber from private sellers as their ship- building needs increased from the mid-seventeenth century onward.2 France, Spain, and England, to name but a few, all acquired timber from their colonies, with varying degrees of sustainability.3 The case of Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) Korea is particularly in- teresting in this context.4 The Chosŏn state became directly involved in timber management in the early decades of the fifteenth century, and, unusually, naval officials played a central role in the state admin- istration of timber directly, which had profound implications for both the successful procurement of timber resources and the long-term pro- tection of Korea’s forest environment.5 Furthermore, as ships sailing on voyages of discovery left Europe for different parts of the globe, the English and Spanish navies vied for local sea power, and battles be- tween Iberian and Ottoman powers raged in the Mediterranean, the largest conflict of the sixteenth-century world took place in East Asia, on Chosŏn soil and in the waters just off its coastline. This war, known variously as the Imjin War or Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s Invasions of Korea, involved 500,000 combatants from China, Korea, and Japan.6 The two main invasion fleets of the war, launched by the Japanese hegemon Hideyoshi in 1592 and 1597, consisted of 120,000 and 140,000 men, re- spectively, and are believed to be the largest successful overseas landings Fighting for Forests 417 ever accomplished by that point in world history.7 By way of compar- ison, the Spanish Armada a few years earlier in 1588 involved no more than thirty thousand men.8 Military efforts on such a scale required vast amounts of timber, making the old-growth forests on the Korean island of Kŏje strategically important. The resulting conflicts over timber on Kŏje illuminate not only the results of direct management of timber by naval forces but also a clash between different state approaches to forest management among the three combatant countries: China, Korea, and Japan.9 In the Japanese case, the absence of a centralized state or navy and the fact that the dai- myos had only just begun to exert control over forests led to timber “management” strategies that were often haphazard. The Ming state, however, managed timber reserves by regulating the private market for wood via taxation and property rights, and, as we will observe, the direct management of Kŏje’s timber was not of immediate concern to the Ming negotiators. Before the Imjin War, in sixteenth-century Korea, government interest in the control of timber for capital edifice construction had waned as national priorities turned toward the ex- pansion of settled, field-based agriculture; however, the navy’s interest in timber remained strong, and naval garrisons continued to protect their timber reserves, a situation that intensified with Hideyoshi’s inva- sions.10 Thus, as we will show, of all the parties with an interest in Kŏje’s timber during the war, it was the Korean military who was most effective at protecting the island’s reserves, although its efforts were hampered by wider concerns for the peace negotiations and lack of in- terest in timber by the Ming and Chosŏn authorities. Skirmishes over Kŏje’s timber resources occurred throughout the six and a half years of the war but reached a critical point in the spring of 1597, when Japanese soldiers were caught attempting to loot timber in violation of a recent agreement not to trespass on the island. Hideyoshi’s soldiers were captured by Chosŏn naval forces stationed on Kŏje, and his generals attempted to negotiate an agreement that would allow them access to log; during these negotiations they contin- ued to make incursions into Kŏje’s forests as the Chosŏn side awaited advice from representatives of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), who were overseeing the state-level peace negotiations. The Japanese attempts to secure access to Kŏje at this time were ultimately unsuccessful because of the effective management of the island’s timber resources by the Chosŏn navy, although the Japanese were able to make small incursions 418 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY  27.3  JULY 2022 by exploiting the reluctance of the Chosŏn naval negotiators on Kŏje to disrupt the wider peace process. The collapse of state-level negotiations in the Fourth Month of 1597 led to the resumption of open war and fur- ther degradation of the environment on Kŏje Island itself and on the southern coast of the Korean peninsula.11 In contrast to much of the en- vironmental damage caused by the war, the involvement of three state parties in the 1597 Kŏje timber negotiations left behind detailed histor- ical records, which makes this a useful case study for shedding light on the exploitation and protection of Korean timber during the war and on the management of timber in early modern warfare. Although Hideyoshi’s invasions are becoming increasingly known outside East Asian history circles, few studies have turned their attention to the environmental impact of this conflict.12 Territorial aggrandize- ment had been an inherent part of Hideyoshi’s regime since its establish- ment in 1582, and the pursuit of land outside of Japan was an extension of this as well as a means of reducing domestic threats to Hideyoshi’s au- thority.13 Before Hideyoshi came to power, Japan had been wracked by more than a century of civil war, as a central power vacuum gave regional lords the freedom to raise armies in their domains and compete for resources. As Conrad Totman notes, although there were gestures in the direction of woodland management by some daimyos, Japan’s forest history before the seventeenth century was still largely characterized by exploitation, with little concern for preservation of site or restoration of yield.14 The conquest of Korean territory therefore offered a source of agricultural and arboreal wealth for plunder, and the conquest of foreign dominions kept Japan’s daimyo lords and their militaries occupied abroad. Hideyoshi’s first invasion was launched in 1592, ostensibly with the aim of occupying the Korean peninsula in order to use it as a foot- hold to conquer Ming China. When the advance of the Japanese troops was halted in 1593 by a combination of Korean naval and guerrilla resis- tance, the harshness of the Korean climate, and Chinese military inter- vention, the Japanese armies settled down to the business of maintaining their hold over the Korean territory they had acquired and exploiting its human and natural resources, before a second large-scale invasion was launched in 1597 ending with Hideyoshi’s death in 1598.15 Aside from its considerable human costs, the Imjin War gravely damaged Korea’s arable land, forests, waterways, and animal populations. Historians are still debating the overall impact of the war, but eye- witness accounts from Japanese and Korean primary sources describe Fighting for Forests 419 similar types of environmental damage: locals fled, leaving empty towns with burnt and unkept fields; valuable pine trees were cut down to build ships and Japanese fortresses.16 In 1595, the army commander of Western Kyŏngsang Province (Kyŏngsang udo pyŏngma chŏltosa), where Kŏje was located, reported that “Japanese pirates appear con- tinuously around coastal areas . . . leaving the mountains severely burnt; killing, and robbing without any fear of repercussion.”17 The Japanese priest Keinen, writing two years later in 1597, likewise la- mented the havoc wreaked by battles along the southern coastline: “Everything was totally destroyed, houses, wildness, mountains, and forests were all burnt, on fire with clouds of black smoke, people flee- ing and children crying.”18 The damage to forests and fields by fire was due not only to destruc- tion at the hands of the invading armies or from the battles that ensued but also to Korean peasants torching their own fields. Estimates of the percentage of Korean arable land that was ruined vary from around 66 percent up to a possible 80 percent.19 There is currently insufficient data to estimate the extent of the damage to forests, although anecdotal accounts suggest it was considerable. State forests were decimated, and Hideyoshi’s troops even cut down trees within the large reserves around the tombs of the Chosŏn kings, which had been protected for centuries.20 Surveying the damage after the war, Chief State Coun- cilor Yu Sŏngnyong, who had commanded Chosŏn’s military opera- tions during the latter stages of the conflict, noted that “the mountains and valleys lack trees . . . and so no one can block the landslides.” He observed that “the forests were bare” warning that “trees for timber were wasting away.”21 Recent trends in environmental history have provided new perspec- tives on the history of warfare, including the environmental impact of wars on the Korean peninsula.22 Research on the history of Korean for- ests and forest administration in wartime, including late colonial Korea and following World War II, reflect the interest in this subject in envi- ronmental history more broadly.23 Studies of Korean forests in the pre- and early modern era, however, usually take either Hideyoshi’s invasions or the Manchu invasions of 1627 and 1636 as their point of departure, concentrating on the postwar periods rather than the wars themselves, due in part to the difficulties of obtaining primary sources from these chaotic periods of upheaval. Research has therefore focused on the Chosŏn government’s policy of songgŭm (restrictions on pine trees) 420 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY  27.3  JULY 2022 or song jŏng (policies on pine trees) during the late Chosŏn period fol- lowing either the Japanese or Manchu invasions.24 John S. Lee has shown that in Korea, like the rest of Eurasia, the rise of the early mod- ern state was accompanied by mounting demand for timber and an ex- pansion of state management of forest resources—namely, Korean red pine (Pinus densiflora) and black pine (Pinus thunbergii).25 Focusing on the late seventeenth century, Lee also demonstrates how the Chosŏn military took on a key role in implementing forest policy following Hideyoshi’s invasions, positing that this was an expansion of the war- time functions of the naval garrison (sugunjin), in particular the provi- sion of forestry labor. Looking at the period before Lee, and focusing on the Imjin War, this essay argues that during the war the Chosŏn naval garrisons and the provincial naval headquarters (Kyŏngsang Usuyŏng) on Kŏje fulfilled the role of resource manager in response to Japanese requests of timber. The navy’s effective management of timber during the war hints at practical reasons why they were key implementers of forest policy in the postwar period: their local knowledge of forests and forest management, their long-term interest in the preservation of old-growth timber necessary for shipbuilding, and their experience protecting forests by force made the Korean military an ideal institution for protecting forests as the Chosŏn government rebuilt capital edifices and shored up their naval fleet after the war. The Significance of Kŏje Island Kŏje became a flash point for timber conflicts during the war because of its geographical, strategic, and environmental significance. With a sur- face area of 397 square kilometers, it is Korea’s second largest island, at its closest point only a few hundred meters from the southern coast of the peninsula and approximately eighty kilometers from the Japanese island of Tsushima (fig. 1). Unlike the northern part of the Korean pen- insula, which suffers from extreme temperature fluctuations, Kŏje is in the milder South below thirty-five degrees latitude; combined with its average yearly rainfall of 1,726 mm, this makes ideal growing condi- tions for temperate coniferous forests.26 Thus, geographically, Kŏje is important because it is a traffic hub between Korea and Japan; strate- gically, it is a perfect base for naval forces to berth before sailing to in- land waterways or southern littorals by sea; and environmentally, it is rich in trees, including pine, cypress, and palm.27 A report by Chosŏn’s Fighting for Forests 421 Figure 1. Map showing Kŏje, Tsushima, part of the Japanese archipelago, and part of the Korean peninsula. Credit: Baihui Duan. most senior military body, the Border Defense Council (Pibyŏnsa), noted this during the Imjin War: “Located in Yŏngdŭng and Okp’o, Kŏje’s forests grow as if they could reach the sky and the shade of grasses and trees provide ideal cover from enemy eyes.”28 Such rich environmental resources meant that by the time of Hideyoshi’s invasions, the southern coast of Korea, including Kŏje, had been disturbed by pirate attacks from East Asian corsair networks for more than a century.29 Pirates targeted Kŏje’s forests for firewood in addition to extracting plunder from the towns and settlements on the island.30 At the beginning of the sixteenth century, military officials ordered the naval garrisons to place piles of tree trunks along Kŏje’s coastline to hide the navy’s ships; Kŏje timber was also harvested and used to build wooden fences to deter invaders.31 Such encounters meant that military officials stationed on Kŏje gained experience in border defense and timber management in cooperation with local magistrates. Because of the distance between Kŏje and the central Chosŏn government in Hansŏng (Seoul), which slowed communica- tions, local forces were responsible for making prompt responses to threats and managing the island’s timber. This is the same pattern that 422 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY  27.3  JULY 2022 we observe during the Japanese invasions at the end of the sixteenth century, with the military taking the leading role. The Japanese Military Presence on Kŏje Kŏje’s proximity to the Japanese island of Tsushima shortened the transportation distance for armies coming from Japan, which was par- ticularly important during the Imjin War, since Japan had almost no history of naval warfare, and its ships were not suited to long ocean voyages. Thus, Hideyoshi’s forces were garrisoned on Kŏje and in the nearby coastal cities of Pusan, Chukdo, and Kimhae (fig. 2). There were four Japanese fortresses on Kŏje. The first three were built be- tween 1592 and 1593 during the first wave of the Japanese invasion on the northern part of the island in Yŏngdŭng Bay (which had been noted for its rich forests in the Border Defense Council report above), Changmun Bay, and Songjin Bay.32 As part of the negotiations be- tween Japan, Chosŏn, and the Ming, Japanese forces withdrew from these fortifications between 1594 and 1595. A fourth Japanese fortress, Figure 2. Map of Kŏje Island and surrounding areas showing locations of fortresses, garrisons, and major cities. Credit: Baihui Duan, adapted from Shin Yunho, “Imjin waeran shigi samdo sugun yŏn’gu [A study on Samdo Sugun during the Imjin War]” (Ph.D. diss., Gyeongsang National University, 2019), 78–81. Fighting for Forests 423 in Waesŏngdong on the southwest of the island, was completed during the second invasion period in 1597, after negotiations broke down.33 In addition to the island’s strategic advantages, the presence of high-quality pine timber on Kŏje was a significant motivating factor for the occupying Japanese. The Japanese period of civil war before the Korea campaign had brought home the logistical importance of timber and led to daimyos exploiting forests and exerting increasing control over this resource in Japan during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.34 Stationary military forces have the potential to cause more damage to forest environments than mobile ones, because of their clear-cutting, daily consumption needs, and defense against local resis- tance, and records show that Japanese armies in Korea exploited tim- ber to produce gunpowder, arrows, and wooden armor.35 The Japa- nese soldiers also used the timber they had felled to build massive fortifications surrounded by stone and to make ramparts with wooden palisades, the ruins of which remain on Kŏje to this day.36 The need to source timber for shipbuilding was another important motivating factor behind Japanese attempts to maintain a presence on Kŏje.37 In 1594, the sound of their logging on the island was so loud that a report by the Korean Border Defense Council commented, “It sounds as if the heavens are shaking. They must be preparing timber for warships for attacks from the sea.”38 The Japanese need for timber was particularly acute in 1597, when the Kŏje timber conflicts dis- cussed in this article took place. Japan lost over two hundred ships in major naval battles during the first invasion, and so they required high-quality timber to repair their fleets and to prepare for the second invasion, which was launched in 1597.39 Both before and during the war, the ship timber used by the Korean side in the western part of Kyŏngsang Province came from Kŏje, and commanders of the Chosŏn military were well aware of the dangers of allowing the daimyos unfettered access to the island’s resources. Chief State Councilor Yu Sŏngnyong repeatedly reported to the court on this danger. In a report for the king written in 1593 he expressed con- cern about the occupation of Kŏje because of the disturbance to locals, and to flora and fauna, as well as the potential military threat, noting that if the Japanese built a large number of ships, then they could gain control over the western coastline of the peninsula.40 In 1595, Yu again voiced worries about Kŏje. On this occasion he agreed with a report by the legendary Korean admiral Yi Sunsin: “Japanese soldiers are not 424 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY  27.3  JULY 2022 unaccustomed to maritime wars. They were only defeated by our navy because their ships came across far seas and they could not produce ships strong enough to carry large cannon. Now the Japanese have been on Kŏje, rich in timber, for a long time . . . if they follow our models and make many covered-deck ships with cannons, then it will be difficult to fight against them.”41 Apprehensions at the court continued into 1596 when Yu again pointed out the poor quality of the Japanese ships and the dangers of allowing them to regain control over Kŏje, which would allow the pro- duction of better vessels. After concluding that the number of Chosŏn Korean troops in the area was insufficient, the court sent Kim Ungsŏ as a military commander to the south of Kyŏngsang Province in 1595, where Kŏje was located, in order to coordinate military efforts there and negotiate with the Japanese.42 Korean Naval Facilities on Kŏje The Chosŏn navy was considerably better equipped than its Japanese counterpart and had a history of direct management of timber re- sources in order to build its ships. As Lee has shown, the forestry pol- icies of the early Chosŏn state until the middle of the sixteenth century were driven by the need for naval timber and the construction of cap- ital edifices. State policies had therefore privileged certain tree species, Pinus densiflora and Pinus thunbergii, and the ecosystem of the coastal coniferous forest where they grew.43 As early as 1407, the Chosŏn gov- ernment ordered all magistrates throughout Korea to plant pine trees for naval timber.44 Among the pine tree policies promulgated early in 1448, and which continued to function even in the early seventeenth century, eleven mountain areas on Kŏje were protected in order to provide the kind of old growth timber needed for shipbuilding.45 Such reserves required careful preservation since only pine trees over a hun- dred years old were suitable for building ships used by the Chosŏn navy, and Noh Seongryong and Bae Jaesoo have shown how naval com- manders in each garrison worked with local civilian magistrates to pre- vent illegal logging and to cultivate trees in barren areas.46 A county map from the nineteenth century shows the preservation of Kŏje’s for- ests as well as the locations of naval camps and civilian headquarters on the island (fig. 3).47 Fighting for Forests 425 Figure 3. Map of Kŏje Island. From a collection of maps of Kyŏngsang Province in 1872. Credit: Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies, South Korea. The Chosŏn naval presence on Kŏje was the main mechanism by which the protection of the island’s timber resources operated during the war. According to the Chosŏn state code of 1485, which was still in effect during the Imjin War and late into the nineteenth century, the Naval Command of West Kyŏngsang Province was located in the southern part of the island, while another four affiliated naval garrisons were situated along the eastern coastline, in Yŏngdŭngp’o Bay, Chisep’o Bay, Okp’o Bay, and Chorap’o Bay (fig. 3). The Naval Commander of West Kyŏngsang Province was in charge of the regional naval system, while 426 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY  27.3  JULY 2022 these garrisons were guarded by a port commander in charge of ten thousand households.48 During the war, the army commander Kim Ŭngsŏ was responsible for addressing potential threats to border secu- rity and resource looting by the Japanese daimyos, and it fell to him to negotiate with the Japanese for timber.49 In addition to these military offices there was the civilian administration of Kŏje county, which was located in the center of the island where a magistrate managed civil af- fairs. The Kŏje magistrates guarded the county headquarters when the military forces were absent from the island fighting at nearby locations in the early stage of the war and also provided additional assistance to naval troops when defending against the Japanese incursions for tim- ber on Kŏje.50 Each Chosŏn Korean naval garrison, including those on Kŏje, was responsible for constructing its own ships. They were also responsible for sourcing their own timber, and this provided the motivation for the protection and management of forests.51 During the Imjin War, naval forces from the three southern provinces, Kyŏngsang, Chŏlla, and Ch’ungch’ŏng, cooperated to fell trees for shipbuilding.52 Their boats and associated staff were located at the shipyards surrounding the na- val garrisons, several of which are still shown on maps of Kŏje dating from later in the period (fig. 4).53 The Kŏje Timber Conflicts of 1597 The Kŏje timber conflicts in the spring of 1597 shed light on the role of timber during the war and demonstrate that of all the parties in- volved—the Japanese daimyos, the central Chosŏn government, the Chosŏn military, and the Ming dynasty—the Chosŏn military was the most effective in protecting Kŏje’s forests. The conflicts in 1597 oc- curred after a breakdown of state-level negotiations between Japan and the Ming dynasty in the autumn of 1596. The Ming dynasty, whose ar- mies had come to the aid of Chŏson Korea, was the politically, cultur- ally, and militarily dominant power in the region. Until the nineteenth century, the norms of international relations in East Asia were expressed in Chinese terms. Non-Chinese rulers such as the Chosŏn kings and the Japanese hegemon Toyotomi Hideyoshi were permitted to participate in this order if they ceremonially acknowledged themselves to be sub- jects of the Chinese emperor and received investiture as monarch of their countries.54 This posed no difficulty for the Chosŏn dynasty, Fighting for Forests 427 Figure 4. Map showing shipyards. Details of the map of Kŏje Island, 1872 (fig. 3). Credit: Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies, South Korea. which took pride in being ranked first among the Ming hierarchy of tributary states. Japan, however, had a history of rejecting the symbol- ism of Chinese superiority, and Hideyoshi was no exception.55 The ne- gotiations between Japan and the Ming for the division of Korean ter- ritory and the withdrawal of Japanese troops collapsed in 1596 when Hideyoshi refused to accept the unequal status accorded to him by Ming envoys, which was expressed in the types of diplomatic gifts they brought and the titles they used in their diplomatic correspondence. Dis- satisfied with what the Ming envoys offered, the lack of a high-ranking Korean hostage, and the Ming insistence on a full withdrawal, Hideyoshi dismissed the ambassadors and announced to his daimyos on the sev- enth day of the Ninth Month of 1596 that the negotiations had failed. Aware of the breakdown in negotiations back in Japan and worried about a preemptive strike by the joint Ming and Chosŏn forces in Korea, on the fourteenth day of the Second Month of 1597, Hyōjirō, a Japanese envoy involved in the peace negotiations, met with Japanese generals including Katō Kiyomasa, Konishi Yukinaga, and Terazawa Hirotaka to discuss their chance of success against the combined Chosŏn and Ming forces.56 They agreed to sign a sworn statement pledging that they would not attack first, and that any Japanese troops who violated certain 428 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY  27.3  JULY 2022 boundary areas in Korea were to be beheaded. The sworn statement was presented to the Korean authorities and specified several locations, including Kŏje Island: “We pledge not to violate the boundary of Kŏje, Ch’ilwŏn, Ch’ŏwŏn, Chinhae, Ham’an, Chinju, Kosŏng, and Sach’ŏn until the reply of the Ming dynasty comes. From now on, anyone who goes deeper inland . . . can be caught without advance warning.”57 Hideyoshi’s daimyos initially obeyed this agreement. On hearing of an armed skirmish between his subordinates and the Chosŏn navy in which fourteen soldiers died on the twenty-second day of the Second Month of 1597, Konishi Yukinaga accepted that it was the fault of his men and ordered that the captured Chosŏn soldiers should be sent back as soon as possible.58 In this case, it is clear that Yukinaga knew about the specified places and the restricted areas of the agreement. Nonetheless, as discussed below, the Japanese daimyos, including Yuki- naga, later claimed that the borders defined in the agreement were ambiguous and used this ambiguity as an excuse for violating the agree- ment. The daimyos also took advantage of the slow communications between Kŏje and the Ming-Chosŏn command, and they exploited the fact that the Chosŏn navy’s ability to respond with a show of strength was hampered by the need to consider the diplomatic implications of taking action against Japanese loggers. After the local boundary agreement had been made on the four- teenth day of the Second Month of 1597, Hideyoshi, separately and without knowledge of the agreement, launched the second large- scale Japanese invasion of the Korean peninsula, consisting of some 140,000 soldiers in over two hundred ships, on the twenty-first day of the Second Month.59 Immediately after this, there were two Japanese in- cursions to acquire Kŏje timber in breach of the boundary agreement. The first incursion took place early in the Third Month of 1597. Fifteen soldiers belonging to the army of Yukinaga went to Okp’o Bay on Kŏje to harvest timber and were captured by Chosŏn naval forces. These captured Japanese soldiers exploited the Chosŏn navy’s reluctance to disrupt the state-level negotiation process between Japan, Chosŏn, and the Ming by claiming that they were not Japanese “pirates” but en- voys, under the charge of Yukinaga, and they offered an official letter as proof of this claim. As a result, the Chosŏn representatives concluded that killing Yukinaga’s men would be counterproductive, since the Ming emperor’s envoy, Shen Weijing, was also in the South at the time to facilitate negotiations. The Chosŏn forces therefore released the Fighting for Forests 429 Japanese soldiers, and they arrived back in Pusan, where the Japanese military leaders were garrisoned.60 Despite their previous narrow escape or perhaps because they an- ticipated that a similar tactic could be used a second time, fifteen Jap- anese loggers from Yukinaga’s camp set off again for Okp’o Bay, but before arriving they landed at Kimunp’o Bay, another verdant harbor on Kŏje, on the eighth day of the Third Month. During this second in- cursion, the Japanese forces were accompanied by two other ships, one from Angolp’o and another ship with thirty-two soldiers belonging to the army of the daimyo Toyo Shigemori. They met Hyōjirō, the Jap- anese envoy, en route and asked him to write a second official letter stating that they were his subordinates who required timber from Okp’o Bay and requested Chosŏn’s permission to log. Yet, on this oc- casion this letter did not save their lives. The newly appointed Korean naval commander in chief, Wŏn Kyun, feared that this incursion might develop into a larger naval battle and therefore mobilized his ships on nearby islands together with local magistrates. With the aid of county magistrates from Kŏje Island, Angolp’o, and Kosŏng, the Chosŏn navy killed all of the Japanese soldiers on this occasion.61 The Chosŏn Navy’s Role in Timber Negotiations In addition to providing the manpower to protect Kŏje’s timber during the Japanese incursions detailed above, to defend their interests, the Chosŏn military also had to enter into delicate negotiations with the Japanese side, even while waiting for advice from the Ming dynasty and the Chosŏn court. As pressure to provide ships for the second wave of fighting grew, Hideyoshi’s daimyos sent a strongly worded letter to the Chosŏn army commander responsible for Kŏje, Kim Ŭngsŏ, on the twelfth day of the Third Month of 1597. In this letter, Toyo Shigemori threatened retaliation in response to the prohibition of logging on Kŏje and the deaths of his soldiers. Kim Ŭngsŏ avoided direct conflict by means of obfuscation and a delaying tactic. Ŭngsŏ stated that the Ko- rean troops who encountered the Japanese had mistaken them for pi- rates, a plausible fiction, given Kŏje’s long history of pirate troubles. The pretense that his troops had not knowingly attacked Japanese sol- diers made it diplomatically problematic for the Japanese to retaliate and bought Ŭngsŏ some time. The Japanese military forces stood down and both sides agreed to wait for orders from the Ming dynasty.62 430 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY  27.3  JULY 2022 However, the Japanese were still in want of timber, and this forced Hideyoshi’s daimyos to return to Kŏje for a second negotiation. On the twenty-third day of the Third Month, Hyōjirō went as Hideyoshi’s en- voy to Ŭngsŏ’s camp on Kŏje to renegotiate the rights of the daimyo armies to acquire wood from the island. Hyōjirō attempted to argue that the boundaries of the agreement, which had previously banned logging on Kŏje Island, were unclear. Chosŏn understood the boundary in the agreement as meaning Kŏje’s geographical coastline, whereas the daimyos now claimed that it referred to the outline of the Chosŏn naval garrisons on the island. In this way, the redefinition of the boundary be- came a key component of the negotiation process. With the goal of ac- quiring permission to log outside the newly defined boundary area of the naval garrisons on Kŏje, Hyōjirō also attempted to force a compro- mise by blaming the conflicts on the Chosŏn navy. He explained that Japanese soldiers merely came to collect driftwood on Kŏje and that the killings that occurred during the second incursion were not worthy of a military citation from the court. By defining the incursions as a non- military situation, the Japanese envoy Hyōjirō was attempting to paint the Chosŏn navy’s response as excessively heavy-handed.63 Indeed, the question of whether the response to the second Japa- nese timber incursion on Kŏje counted as a military victory for the commander in charge, Wŏn Kyun, had been a cause for debate at the Chosŏn court, revealing different attitudes toward the protection of Kŏje’s timber. Some held that Wŏn Kyun deserved a reward for his bravery, because he captured three Japanese boats and took forty- seven heads; others argued that killing Japanese illegal loggers was meaningless and would only cause further violence and jeopardize the wider negotiations. In the end, the court decided in favor of a re- ward for Wŏn Kyun on the grounds that the Japanese soldiers who logged on Kŏje could be classified into a specific category of thieves on the basis of the military code for granting rewards.64 However, this ambiguous status accorded to the Japanese loggers was then exploited by the Japanese side during the negotiations for Kŏje’s timber. Echoing the court’s concerns, Hyōjirō also threatened the Chosŏn navy with the possibility that their inability to agree on a compromise could lead to further conflict, which would imperil the state-level ne- gotiations between Japanese and Ming forces in Korea. The Japanese diplomats Terazawa Hirotaka and Toyotomi Shigenobu had traveled to Korea in the Third Month of 1597 to reopen state-level negotiations Fighting for Forests 431 with Chosŏn and the Ming. Hyōjirō argued that the news about the killings of Japanese loggers would be a barrier to these state-level peace negotiations. After five years of warfare, which had devastated the Ko- rean peninsula, the possibility of ending the conflict would have been a powerful motivating factor for the Korean side. In this way, the naval garrison on Kŏje was caught between its own need to preserve the forest environment in order to have sufficient timber for its ships and the wider concerns of the peace process. Nonetheless, Hyōjirō’s efforts failed in the face of the Chosŏn navy’s determination to guard the island’s timber above all else, lead- ing to the collapse of the second round of negotiation on Kŏje.65 Hyōjirō returned to Toyo Shigemori’s fortress in vain, leaving behind an official letter, in which the Japanese general Yukinaga threatened further action if access to Kŏje’s timber was not granted.66 Yukinaga was particularly motivated to push for access to Kŏje because he had withdrawn his troops from the island in 1595 as part of the peace pro- cess, ignoring his fellow daimyo’s suggestion that he leave a small force behind to observe the Chosŏn navy.67 In the eyes of the other Japanese commanders, this made Yukinaga the one responsible for their lack of access to timber and prompted him to push further by leaving the let- ter and by later writing a letter directly addressed to the Chosŏn court, which is discussed below. The effectiveness of the Chosŏn navy’s protection of Kŏje’s timber throughout the negotiation process may be contrasted with that of the Ming dynasty, who served as a mediator in the negotiations. As noted above, the first round of negotiations between Toyo Shigemori and Kim Ŭngsŏ ended in a deadlock as both sides awaited the Ming dynasty’s response. On the twenty-fifth day of the Third Month, the Ming vice- minister asked the Korean envoy Kwŏn Hyŏp to come and discuss the Kŏje conflicts.68 However, the Ming were less concerned with pro- tecting the timber resources of one Korean island than with the larger issue of bringing stability to the peninsula and halting the Japanese inva- sion. The Ming officer therefore argued that killing a small number of Japanese loggers on Kŏje was an ineffective deterrent and that this could inflame the situation further. He advised the Chosŏn military not to kill Japanese soldiers but to tolerate them while preparing their defences against Hideyoshi’s second invasion. The Chosŏn military forces were exhausted, and their provisions were running out, so the Ming envoy concentrated on the immediate military situation without considering 432 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY  27.3  JULY 2022 the need to preserve timber resources.69 Moreover, it should be noted that, in Ming China, timber for state purposes was bought from private sellers, and forests were not directly managed by government officials.70 This, as well as the immediate strategic concerns of the peace process, may also account for why the Ming officials did not concern themselves with protecting Kŏje’s timber resources. Likewise, the Chosŏn court proved a less effective negotiator than the military representatives present on Kŏje. When the timber negoti- ations entered a stalemate in the Fourth Month of 1597 as the three sides failed to reach any agreement, the Japanese continued to press for timber, and Yukinaga presented their petition directly to the Chosŏn court on the ninth day of the month—the final Japanese at- tempt to negotiate for timber on Kŏje.71 In this letter Yukinaga contin- ued the pretense that the boundaries agreed in the sworn statement of the fourteenth day of the Second Month of 1597 actually meant the outline of Chosŏn’s fortress on Kŏje Island, which left part of the island accessible to loggers. As the recipients of Yukinaga’s letter, the Chosŏn court began to participate directly in the timber negotiations but needed to first inves- tigate the situation, thus delaying any formal outcome. The Supreme Commander of the Military was dispatched to ascertain whether the military commander on Kŏje, Kim Ŭngsŏ, had come to a private agree- ment with Yukinaga regarding Japanese timber harvesting on the is- land. The Chosŏn court was often unaware of what was happening in remote areas, and this was particularly true in wartime. On this oc- casion, the investigation also functioned as a delaying tactic, and in the end Yukinaga received no official reply.72 As a result of the collapse of state-level negotiation over timber re- sources in the Fourth Month, the Japanese launched a series of naval attacks from the Sixth Month of 1597, among which Kŏje Island was an important target.73 Japanese forces soundly defeated the Chosŏn navy at the Battle of Ch’ilch’ŏllyang on the northern part of Kŏje on the fifteenth day of the Seventh Month of 1597. The Chosŏn lost over 160 warships in this battle and suffered numerous casualties, including the navy commander Wŏn Kyu.74 By reoccupying Kŏje, the Japanese forces had better naval access to the West, but the battles had caused incalculable environmental degradation on the southern coastline of the Korean peninsula.75 The Japanese were to remain on Kŏje until Yi Sunsin won the naval battle of Myŏngnyang on the sixteenth day Fighting for Forests 433 of the Ninth Month in 1597 and the Chosŏn navy again exercised con- trol over the southern coastline of the Korean peninsula. The Efficacy of Naval Timber Management The Imjin War represented not only a clash between three states but, arguably, an encounter between three state cultures of environmental resource management and wartime logistics. Given the size and signif- icance of the Imjin conflict, the study of how all three combatant states approached resource management has implications for our under- standing not only of the war itself but its place in the early modern his- tory of the environment in wartime. Kŏje’s forests were caught be- tween Chinese, Japanese, and Korean state approaches to timber. In the Japanese case, there was no centralized state or navy, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi and his daimyos had only just begun to exert systematic con- trol over forests. The Ming state, however, recognized the need to man- age timber resources but relied on regulating the private market for wood via taxation and property rights. Thus, the direct management of Kŏje’s timber was not of immediate concern to the Ming negotiators. Then there was the Chosŏn navy, which had long been involved in Ko- rean state forest management. The case of Kŏje clearly shows that of all the parties involved, it was the Korean military who was most effective at protecting the island’s timber reserves. This was because of the local knowledge of naval officials and their long-term interest in retaining ac- cess to old-growth forest resources, since pines of one hundred years or more were necessary for constructing their ships. Kŏje thus stands as an early modern example of a state system of timber management operat- ing to protect old growth forests in wartime because of the direct in- volvement of naval officials in forestry practices. However, while the Chosŏn navy was able to defend forests by force, the need to take into account wider considerations of the state-level peace process during negotiations rendered their protection of Kŏje’s forests less effective. After the end of the war and the retreat of Hideyoshi’s forces in the Eleventh Month and the Twelfth Month of 1598, the ecology of the Korean peninsula faced far-reaching challenges. There was the need to rehabilitate agricultural land and to mitigate the demands placed on already damaged forests by shipbuilding and the reconstruction of capital edifices. Because of renewed government interest in a strong navy and the need to rebuild the capital, stricter government control 434 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY  27.3  JULY 2022 was therefore exercised over timber management in the richly forested southern coastal areas of Korea, including Kŏje. Military institutions became a key vehicle for widening state control over pine forests in the postwar period, and the naval garrison in particular served as the implementer of government policy on forests.76 The example presented here of how and why the navy attempted to protect timber on Kŏje during the war explains this trend toward naval administration in the post-Imjin and late Chosŏn periods, as the navy, which had localized knowledge, an interest in maintaining old growth forests, and experi- ence defending timber by force, was given the task of managing Chosŏn’s forests in peacetime. Baihui Duan is a postdoctoral researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She is currently researching the history of epidemics in premodern East Asia. She is the author of “Clothing, Food, and Dwelling: Western Views of Korean Life in the Early Nineteenth Century,” European Journal of Korean Studies 18 (2019): 127–52. Rebekah Clements is an ICREA research professor in East Asian history at the Au- tonomous University of Barcelona. She is the director of the European Research Council project “Aftermath of the East Asian War of 1592–1598” (grant agreement no. 758347), https://aftermath.uab.cat. Notes We would like to thank James B. Lewis for his comments and advice. Thanks are also due to the anonymous readers for their thorough review. Funding for this research came from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement no. 758347). 1. Karl Appuhn, A Forest on the Sea: Environmental Expertise in Renaissance Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); John T. Wing, Roots of Em- pire: Forests and State Power in Early Modern Spain, c. 1500–1750 (Leiden: Brill, 2015). 2. Ian M. Miller, Fir and Empire: The Transformation of Forests in Early Modern China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020); Robert Greenhalgh Al- bion, Forests and Sea Power: The Timber Problem of the Royal Navy, 1652–1862 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926); Jason W. Moore, “‘Amster- dam Is Standing on Norway’ Part II: The Global North Atlantic in the Ecological Revolution of the Long Seventeenth Century,” Journal of Agrarian Change 10 (2020): 202. 3. Paul Walden Bamford, Forests and French Seapower, 1660–1789 (Toronto: Uni- versity of Toronto Press, 1956); Wing, Roots of Empire; Albion, Forests and Sea Fighting for Forests 435 Power; John F. Richards, “Landscape Change and Energy Transformation in the British Isles,” in The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); J. R. McNeill, “Woods and Warfare in World History,” Environmental History 9 (2004): 388– 410. 4. Names of places and people in Korean follow the McCune-Reischauer romaniza- tion system, in Japanese the revised Hepburn system, and in Chinese Pinyin. Names are given in the East Asian order of surname followed by given name or names, and dates follow the lunar calendar. 5. John S. Lee, “Protect the Pines, Punish the People: Forests and the State in Pre- industrial Korea, 918–1897” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2017), chap. 3. 6. James B. Lewis, ed., The East Asian War, 1592–1598: International Relations, Vi- olence, and Memory (London: Routledge, 2015), 1–6; Kenneth M. Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail: Ming China and the First Great East Asian War, 1592–1598 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), 6–8. 7. Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail, 5. 8. Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker, The Spanish Armada, rev. ed. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 10. 9. For a similar comparison but from a later period, see Osamu Saito, “Forest His- tory and the Great Divergence: China, Japan, and the West Compared,” Journal of Global History 3 (2009): 379–404. 10. Lee, “Protect the Pines, Punish the People,” 91 and 122–26. 11. Following standard practice, premodern dates in this article follow the lunar cal- endar and are given as “the first day of the First Month” rather than “January 1st.” The lunar month is usually four to six weeks later than its counterpart in the Gre- gorian calendar. Years are given using the equivalent Gregorian year rather than the Japanese, Chinese, or Korean year, which was numbered by royal reigns/eras and hence differed between the three states. 12. See Masato Hasegawa, “War, Supply Lines, and Society in the Sino-Korean Borderland of the Late Sixteenth Century,” Late Imperial China 37 (2016): 109– 52; Conrad D. Totman, The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Preindustrial Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Lo Lee-hsin, “Fengchen Xiuji qinlue Chaoxian: Ri, Chao, Ming sanguo junzhongzhi jiyi, qingsouyu tongxun” [Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s invasions of Korea: Diseases, information, and communi- cations among the armies of Japan, Korea, and the Ming dynasty], Guoli zhengzhi daxue lishi xuebao 47 (2017): 117–58. 13. Kitajima Manji, “The Imjin Waeran: Contrasting the First and the Second Invasions of Korea,” in Lewis, The East Asian War, 1592–1598, 73. See more research on mul- tiple reasons for the Japanese invasion: Kenneth R. Robinson, “Violence, Trade, and Impostors in Korean-Japanese Relations, 1510–1609,” in Lewis, The East Asian War, 1592–1598, 42–70; Nakajima Gakusho, “The East Asian War and Trade be- tween Kyushu and Southeast Asia in the Late Sixteenth Century: Centered on Katō Kiyomasa’s Trade with Luzon,” Chinese Studies in History 52 (2019): 23–41. 14. Totman, The Green Archipelago, 4 and 54. 436 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY  27.3  JULY 2022 15. For an overview of the conflict in English, see Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Ser- pent’s Tail; Lewis, The East Asian War, 1592–1598; Samuel Hawley, The Imjin War: Japan’s Sixteenth-Century Invasion of Korea and Attempt to Conquer China (Seoul: Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch, 2005), 35–55; Stephen Turnbull, Toyotomi Hideyoshi: Leadership, Strategy, Conflict (Oxford: Osprey, 2010). 16. For discussions of the significance of the war, see, e.g., Jahyun Kim-Haboush, The Great East Asian War and the Birth of the Korean Nation (New York: Colum- bia University Press, 2016); Kim Sŏngu, Chosŏn chunggi kukka wa sajok [State and aristocracy in the mid-Chosŏn dynasty] (Seoul: Yŏksa pip’yŏngsa), 376– 78; Martina Deuchler, Under the Ancestors’ Eyes: Kinship, Status, and Locality in Premodern Korea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asian Center, 2015), 96–102. 17. Sŏnjo sillok [The veritable records of King Sŏnjo] 65:16B (1595.7.8). See also, Sŏnjo sillok 68:36A (1595.10.27); Sŏnjo sillok 56:27A (1594.10.11). Throughout this article, citations from the Chosŏn wangjo sillok [The veritable records of the Chosŏn dynasty, 1413–1865] are given in the following format: names of kings, volume numbers, and page numbers, followed by lunar calendar dates in parentheses. The edition used is Chosŏn wangjo sillok [The veritable records of the Chosŏn Dynasty] (Kwach‘ŏn, South Korea: Kuksa p’yŏnch’an wiwŏnhoe, 2005), http://sillok.history.go.kr (accessed December 4, 2020). Unless otherwise noted, all translations in the article are the authors’ own. 18. Chōsen Nichinichiki Kenkyūkai, Chōsen Nichinichiki o yomu: Shinshūsō ga mita Hideyoshi no Chōsen shin’ryaku [Reading Diary of Chosŏn: Hideyoshi’s invasions as seen by a Pure Land Buddhist monk] (Tokyo: Hōzōkan, 2000), 14–15. 19. Lee, “Protect the Pines, Punish the People,” 127. The original sources for this statistic are the Chŭngbo munhŏn pigo [Reference compilation of documents, ex- panded edition] (Seoul: Tongguk munhwasa, 1959), 141:1, and the Sŏnjo sillok 34:8A (1601.8.13); see also Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail, 288. 20. Sŏnjo sillok 92:14A (1597.9.11). 21. Lee, “Protect the Pines, Punish the People,” 134. 22. See Mark D. Hersey and Ted Steinberg, eds., A Field on Fire: The Future of En- vironmental History (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2019); Richard P. Tucker and Edmund Russell, Natural Enemy, Natural Ally: Toward an Environ- mental History of Warfare (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2004). Re- lated to the Korean peninsula, see also David Fedman, Seeds of Control: Japan’s Em- pire of Forestry in Colonial Korea (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020); John S. Lee, “Postwar Pines: The Military and the Expansion of State Forests in Post-Imjin Korea, 1598–1684,” Journal of Asian Studies 77 (2018): 319–32; David Fedman, “Wartime Forestry and the ‘Low Temperature Lifestyle’ in Late Colo- nial Korea, 1937–1945,” Journal of Asian Studies 77 (2018): 333–50; Lisa M. Brady, “Sowing War, Reaping Peace: United Nations Resource Development Programs in the Republic of Korea, 1950–1953,” Journal of Asian Studies 77 (2018): 351–63, and “War from the Ground Up, Integrating Military and Envi- ronmental Histories,” in Hersey and Steinberg, A Field on Fire, 250–62. Fighting for Forests 437 23. Fedman, “Wartime Forestry”; Brady, “Sowing War.” Some studies have dis- cussed wartime resource management of timber. See Patrick J. Caffrey, “Trans- forming the Forests of a Counterfeit Nation: Japan’s ‘Manchu Nation’ in North- east China,” Environmental History 18 (2013): 309–32; and Chris Pearson, “‘The Age of Wood’: Fuel and Fighting in French Forests, 1940–1944,” Environmental History 11 (2006): 775–803. For an overview of forest studies on a global scale, see also John R. McNeill, “The State of the Field of Environmental History,” An- nual Review of Environment and Resources 35 (2010): 363. 24. Kim Taegil, Chosŏn hugi ugŭm, sulgŭm, songgŭm yŏn’gu [Studies on restricted policies for cows, alcohol, and pine trees in the late Chosŏn dynasty] (Seoul: Kyŏngin Muhwa Press, 2006); Kim Hochong, “Chosŏn hugi ŭi sallim poho chŏngch’aek” [Policy of forestry protection in the late Chosŏn dynasty], Inmun kwahak yŏn’gu 2 (1999): 101–28; Bae Jaesoo, “Chosŏn hugi songjŏng ŭi ch’egyewa pyŏnch’ŏn kwajŏng” [A study on the system and the development of pine policy in the late Chosŏn dynasty], Sallim kyŏngche yŏn’gu 10 (2002): 22–50; Kwŏn Sunku, “Chosŏn hugi pongsan chŏngch’aek” [An analysis of Pongsan policy in the late Chosŏn dynasty], Han’guk chŏngch’aek kwahak hoebo 11 (2007): 81–104; Yoo Seunghee, “Chosŏn hugi Hansŏngbu ŭi Sasan kwalli wa songgŭm chŏngch’aek” [A study on Hansŏngbu’s four mountains management and policy of forbidding the felling of pine trees in the late Chosŏn period], Ihwa sahak yŏn’gu 46 (2013): 223–54. 25. Lee, “Postwar Pines,” 329. For the European case, see, e.g., Appuhn, A Forest on the Sea; K. Matteson, Forests in Revolutionary France: Conservation, Community, and Conflict, 1669–1848 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); and Wing, Roots of Empire. 26. La Tong’uk, “Kyōsaitō no kankyō gaikan” [Environmental review of Kŏje Island], Wajō no kenkyū 1 (1997): 11–18. 27. Sŭngjŏngwŏn ilgi [ Journal of the royal secretariat] (Kwach‘ŏn, South Korea: Kuksa p’yŏnch’an wiwŏnhoe, 2005), 601:77b (1725.9.24), http://sjw.history.go .kr/main.do (accessed October 10, 2020). Kŏje timber was of high quality even within the fertile southern coastal areas, and it was common to use the large pine trees there for military ships and the main rafters of houses throughout the entire Chosŏn dynasty. Today there are up to six hundred types of plants on the island, including Fatsia japonica, cycads, pomelo, orange trees, and others. See La Tong’uk, “Kyōsaitō no kankyō gaikan.” 28. Sŏnjo sillok 55:28A (1594.9.19). 29. Chung jong sillok [The veritable records of King Chungjong] 11:10B (1510.4.11). See also Peter D. Shapinsky, Lords of the Sea: Pirates, Violence, and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014). 30. Sejong sillok [The veritable records of King Sejong] 5:5A (1419.8.11). 31. Chung jong sillok 11:43B (1510.5.24); Sejong sillok 1:9B (1418.8.19). 32. Ōta Hideharu, “Bunroku no eki ni okeru Shimazu Yoshihiro no dōkō to Wajō fushin” [Shimazu Yoshihiro’s movements and construction of Japanese fortresses during the first invasion of Korea], Chiiki sōgō kenkyū 34 (2007): 81. 438 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY  27.3  JULY 2022 33. There is some debate as to precisely when the fourth fortress, Waesŏngdong, was built. See Lo Lee-hsin, “Fengchen Xiuji qinlue Chaoxian qijian rijun zai Chaoxian bandao zhi zhucheng—yi Riben shiliao wei hexin” [City walls built in Korea by in- vading Japanese troops in the 1590s—focusing on Japanese historical materials], Hanxue yanjiu 30 (2012): 115–17; Shin Yunho, “Imjin waeran shigi samdo sugun yŏn’gu” [A study on Samdo Sugun during the Imjin War] (Ph.D. diss., Gyeongsang National University, 2019), 78–81. Although Shin located five naval garrisons on his map, the wartime functionality of the fifth garrison of Yulp’o kwŏngwan is controversial, since its location was not specified in the state code (Kyŏngguk Taejon [Great code for the management of the state] [Seoul: Yŏgang ch’ulp’ansa, 2001]). 34. Morimoto Masahiro, Gunju busshi kara mita sengoku gassen [Sengoku warfare from the perspective of logistics] (Tokyo: Yōsensha, 2008). For information on forest management and forest predation in premodern Japan over the longue durée, see Totman, The Green Archipelago. 35. Pearson, “‘The Age of Wood,’” 793; Sŏnjo sillok 111:12B (1599.4.17); Sŏnjo sillok 43:15A (1593.10.22). For example, the daimyo Sō Yoshitoshi (1568–1615), who was garrisoned on Kŏje from the Sixth Month of 1597 during the second invasion of Korea, had his troops construct their fortress and numerous houses in a clear- ing where many trees were cut down and stones were collected. Sŏnjo sillok 97:21B (1597.6.14); Kitajima Manji, Toyotomi Hideyoshi Chōsen shinryaku kankei shiryō shūsei [Collected primary sources relating to Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s inva- sion of Korea] (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2017), 3:557–59. 36. Similar forms of destruction also took place in Europe where, by the 1500s, the destructive power of weapons such as guns and cannons had grown rapidly, in response to which fortifications became more elaborate. See Richard P. Tucker, “War and the Environment,” in A Companion to Global Environmental History, ed. J. R. McNeill and Erin Stewart Mauldin (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 234–35. 37. For Japan’s forestry situation due to shipbuilding, see Totman, The Green Archi- pelago, 67; and Sanbō Honbu, Nihon senshi: Chōsen’yaku (Honhen fuki) [Military history of Japan: The Chosŏn campaign] (Tokyo: Kaikōsha, 1924), app. 122. 38. Sŏnjo sillok 47:28A (1594.1.30). 39. On the naval battles, see Yi Min’ung, “The Role of the Chosŏn Navy and Major Naval Battles during the Imjin Waeran,” in Lewis, The East Asian War, 1592– 1598, 120–40. 40. Sŏnjo sillok 43:9B (1593.10.16). 41. Sŏnjo sillok 61:51B (1595.3.18). 42. Sŏnjo sillok 61:13B (1596.11.7); Sŏnjo sillok 43:30B (1596.1.23). 43. Lee, “Protect the Pines, Punish the People,” 91. 44. Lee, “Protect the Pines, Punish the People,” 68. 45. Sejong sillok 121:39B (1448.8.27). 46. Sejong sillok 5:5A (1419.8.11); Noh Seongryong and Bae Jaesoo, “Chosŏn hugi songjŏng ŭi chŏn’gae kwajŏng kwa t’ŭksŏng: Kukpang munje rŭl chungshim ŭro” [Development and character of policies for pine tree management in the late Fighting for Forests 439 Chosŏn dynasty: Focusing on defense issues], Asea yŏn’gu 63 (2020): 46; Lee, “Protect the Pines, Punish the People,” 73–77. 47. In 1872, the Chosŏn government ordered that national maps be drawn up. A total of 459 maps were completed at this time and are preserved in the archives of the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies. 48. Shin Yunho, “Imjin waeran shigi samdo sugun yŏn’gu”; Sŏng jong sillok [The ver- itable records of King Sŏngjong] 217:20A (1488.6.29). 49. The position of army commander ( pyŏngma chŏltosa) is outlined in the military section (Pyŏngjŏn) of the state code. According to the code, the primary respon- sibilities of the position were military training and national security. When con- fronted with a foreign invasion, the military commander should “immediately take appropriate measures and in case of any emergency, he has the authority to mobi- lize the military to take measures and then report to the central court afterwards.” 50. Sŏnjo sillok 27:23A (1592.6.28); Sŏnjo sillok 94:15A (1597.11.10). There were two magistrates on Kŏje during the war: the first was killed while fighting against the Japanese forces in 1593, and another replaced him. Sŏnjo sillok 23:10A (1593.8.4). 51. Han Sungil, “16 segi chung-hu pan yŏnhae kunhyŏn ŭi chŏnsŏn paech’i wa unyong” [The deployment and operation of warships in coastal counties in the sixteenth century], Chiyŏk kwa yŏksa 42 (2018): 254. 52. Yi Sunsin, Nanjung ilgi [War diary of Admiral Yi Sunsin] (Seoul: Han’guk kojŏ pŏnyŏkwŏn, 2001), 3, second day of the Ninth Month, 1595, https://db.itkc.or .kr/dir/item?itemId5MO#/dir/node?dataId5ITKC_MO_0232A_0080_010 (ac- cessed December 4, 2020). 53. Park Byŏngju, “Kwisŏn ŭi kŏnjo changso e taehayŏ—ssangbong chosŏnso rŭl chungshim ŭro” [Places for turtle ship building—focusing on the Ssangbong ship- yard], Kunsa 5 (1982): 181–93; Kwon Soonkang and Lee Hoyeol, “Kyŏngsangdo nambu chiyŏk yŏnhae kunhyŏn kwa sugun yŏngjin ŭi sŏnso e kwanhan yŏn’gu” [Study on the shipyard of the coastal counties and the naval castle in the southern Kyŏngsang-do], Kŏnch’uk yŏksa yŏn’gu 28 (2019): 10. 54. John King Fairbank, “A Preliminary Framework,” in John King Fairbank, ed., The Chinese World Order: Traditional China’s Foreign Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 1–19; Harriet T. Zurndorfer, “Wanli China versus Hideyoshi’s Japan: Rethinking China’s involvement in the Imjin Waeran,” in Lewis, The East Asian War, 1592–1598, 197–235. 55. Ronald P. Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Devel- opment of the Tokugawa Bakufu (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), 170–71; David C. Kang, East Asia before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 54–81. 56. Hyōjirō is also known as Yōshitsura. On peace negotiations during the war, see Akiko Sajima, “Hideyoshi’s View of Chosŏn Korea and Japan-Ming Negotia- tions,” in Lewis, The East Asian War, 1592–1598, 104–5; Sŏnjo Sillok 85:14B (1597.2.23). 57. Sŏnjo Sillok 85:14B (1597.2.23). 58. Sŏnjo Sillok 85:14B (1597.2.23). 440 ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY  27.3  JULY 2022 59. Kitajima, Toyotomi Hideyoshi Chōsen shinryaku kankei shiryō shūsei, 3:447–54. 60. Sŏnjo sillok 86:24A (1597.3.25). 61. Sŏnjo sillok 86:23A (1597.3.24); Sŏnjo sillok 86:24A (1597.3.25). See also Kitajima Manji, Hideyoshi no Chōsen shinryaku to minshū [The general populace and Hideyoshi’s invasions of Korea] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2012), 171–72. 62. Sŏnjo sillok 86:24A (1597.3.25). 63. Sŏnjo sillok 86:24A (1597.3.25). 64. Sŏnjo sillok 86:24A (1597.3.25). 65. Sŏnjo sillok 86:24A (1597.3.25). 66. Sŏnjo sillok 86:27B (1597.3.30). The letter was written in the names of Yukinaga and Yanagawa Shigenobu on the fifteenth day of the Third Month in 1597. 67. Sŏnjo sillok 82:7A (1596.11.2). 68. Kwŏn Hyŏp, Sŏktanggong Yŏnhaengnok [Diary of Sŏktanggong on the trip to Bei- jing] (Seoul: Han’guk kojŏ pŏnyŏkwŏn, 2001), twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth days of the Third Month of 1597, https://db.itkc.or.kr/dir/item?itemId5GO#/dir/node ?dataId5ITKC_GO_1413A_0010 (accessed December 4, 2020). He went to Ming China three times, in 1553, 1597, and 1618. 69. Kwŏn Hyŏp, Sŏktanggong Yŏnhaengnok, seventh, twenty-fifth, and twenty-sixth days of the Third Month of 1597. 70. Miller, Fir and Empire, 162. 71. Concerning these conflicts on Kŏje Island, Kitajima Manji has also argued that they became an excuse for Hideyoshi’s daimyos to expand the scale of their cam- paign beyond Kyŏngsang Province into neighboring Chŏlla Province. Kitajima, Hideyoshi no Chōsen shinryaku to minshū, 171–72; Sŏnjo sillok 87:31B (1597.4.19). 72. Sŏnjo sillok 87:31B (1597.4.19). 73. Kitajima, Hideyoshi no Chōsen shinryaku to minshū, 171–72. 74. Lee Weohee, “Chŏngyu chaeran’gi Ch’ilch’ŏllyang haejŏn ŭi p’aein punsŏk: Chŏnjaeng ŭi wŏnch’ik chŏkyong ŭl chungshim ŭro” [Analysis on the cause of defeat in the Ch’ilch’ŏllyang engagement: Focused on the application aspects of the principles of war], Kunsa yŏn’gu 139 (2015): 289–317. 75. Chōsen Nichinichiki Kenkyūkai, Chōsen nichinichiki o yomu, 14–15. 76. Lee, “Postwar Pines,” 328. See also Noh and Bae, “Chosŏn hugi songjŏng ŭi chŏn’gae kwajŏng kwa t’ŭksŏng,” 64–78.