Li Rusong
Chinese general
Li Rusong (1549–1598) was a Chinese general of Korean descent from Tieling, Liaodong during the Ming Dynasty. He was a Ming army commander in the first half of the Imjin War that took place in the Korean Peninsula. Upon the request of the Korean King Seonjo of Joseon, Wanli Emperor of Ming sent reinforcements to support the Korean military in its war effort against the Japanese invasion masterminded by Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
His father, Li Chengliang, was also a Ming general, who defended Liaodong from the Jurchens. According to the Annals of King Seonjo of the Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty, Li Rusong's 5th generation ancestor Li Ying (李英, Yi Yeong) was a distant relative of Yi Jonyeon (李兆年, 이조년) and a member of the Seongju Yi clan of Goryeo that fled to Liaodong after committing murder.
Li Rusong was ultimately captured and executed when the Mongols invaded Liaodong.
Military career
Li Rusong first rose to fame in early 1592, when he managed to defeat a major rebellion at Ningxia. The Ming army had been unable to move the rebels holed up in the city for the first six months, but after Li arrived the city fell within three months. Li was able to divert the waters of the Yellow River directly into the city, which led to its fall. He was immediately appointed the chief general of the expedition into Korea after this; he led a force of some 36,000 into Korea in the last few days of 1592.
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This entry incorporates text from “Li Rusong” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.