전근대 동아시아 수상전(水上戰)의 양상과 공민왕 13(1364)년 이작도(伊作島) 해전의 실상

The Truth of The Naval Battle of Izakdo(Izak island) in the Year of 1364

In the year of 1364, the king Gongmin 13th year, Goryo army encountered miserable defeat by ‘Waegu, japanese pirates, in the Naval Battle of Izakdo(Izak island) which is located in western sea of Korean peninsular, yellow sea. The reasons of the miserable defeat were as follows : 1. The discord of the channel of command 2. The quality of commander 3. The performance of Naval Battle of soldiers. The Naval Battle was proceeded as follows : Each soldiers started to shoot an arrow a little way off. And as the ships got closer to each other, they started to spear each other. Boats tipped after contact with each other, the members of Waegu armed with swords and jumped onto Goryo army’s ships and the hand – to hand combat begun. One of reasons of Goryo army’s lost was that their performance of using swords like arrows, spears and long swords on board ship was inferior to Waegu. The soldiers who had mobilized in the Izakdo battle were land troops like cavalry or infantry. On the other hand, Waegu members are the nautical. Also since there were big differences between the conditions of the Ground Combat and Naval Battle such as the tidal current, seasickness etc. Goryo soldiers were miserably defeated. After the defeat, the Goryo court knew that it was a no use to rebuild the Navy since they could not even fight against the Waegu in the Naval Battle. So there were so many members of Goryo court who opposed to rebuild their Navy, and therefore Goryo court did not try to rebuild their navy.