Ambivalent Enmity in the Last Days of the Imjin War (1592-99): The Case of Mao Guoke

Wing Kin Puk (Associate Professor, Chinese University of Hong Kong) will share his thoughts on ambivalent enmity during the Imjin War in Korea:

It is a well-known fact that belligerents keep fighting and negotiating with each other at the same time. However, in certain historical contexts, negotiation seems unacceptable. For the Imjin War, or the Korea War in the 16^th century, the Ming government insisted that it was brought to an end by the glorious victory of the Ming force. But Japanese and Korean archives revealed a more complicated fact: Ming frontline commanders and their Japanese counterparts negotiated a truce and exchanged hostages accordingly, while keeping fighting till the end. This Webinar talk covers the intriguing and interesting story of one of the Ming hostages: Mao Guoke. As a middle-ranking Ming officer, Mao Guoke was “dressed up” as the younger brother of his senior commander Mao Guoqi and sent to Japan as a hostage. He returned to China after almost two years (1598–1600), expecting to be received as a hero but was dismissed as more of a “self-made hero.”