Wajo, Samurai Castles in Korea

Samurai Castles Still Dot the Korean Peninsula

In the 1590’s with Japan unified and mostly at peace, the unifier Toyotomi Hideyoshi found himself with thousands of battle hardened warriors in his service with no more battles to fight. Having conquered Japan, Hideyoshi decided that he would next conquer China by way of the Korean Peninsula. Between 1592 and 1598, the samurai twice invaded Korea, building Wajo, Japanese styled castles as they went. These Wajo — Wa being a slightly derogatory term for Japanese — castles were usually built at a distance of a day’s march of one another. Despite repeated attacks by superior numbers of Korean and Ming Chinese forces, they were unable to displace the samurai from their castles. Over 30 such samurai castles were built across Korea over the course of the two major campaigns.

A few years ago, I was part of a group of seven Japanese researchers touring the castle sites in Korea, looking at how they were built, what innovations were conceived, why they could withstand such heavy sieges, and how these castles’ construction affected future castle design and development in the following years in Japan. These are a few of the Must See Wajo, samurai castles in Korea.