Admiral Yi has been credited with inventing the Ironclad warship, designed his own cannon, and took the tactics and strategies from Sun Tzu's Art of War and the other Chinese classics and improved on them. In doing so, he saved his country and beat the renowned and ferocious Samurai of what would soon be  the Shogun's Japan.

Admiral Yi was more than just a fantastic military hero. He was was also a renowned athlete and scholar who during the war risked his rank and even his life in order to help refugees find homes and land to grow food. He led from in the midst of battle, and maintained the highest standards of honesty even in the land of Choson Korea, one of the most corrupt dynasties in Asia. 

Admrial Yi's biographer, the Priest Wonho, is an old man when asked to write of the great hero. Near death at a forest temple in the hills above the sea, he puts his story onto scrolls which after completion were then lost for 365 years. Found by accident, this surprising and previously unknown Buddhist's words have been verified by those of the Admiral himself (in his War Diary and his Memorials to Court), by the biography of the Admiral by his nephew, Yi Pun, and by many other sources.

It is time for those of us in the West to know what Koreans and even many Japanese and Chinese have known for centuries-- Admiral Yi Sun-Sin is a man fo the ages. He is a stalwart whose name deserves to rank with Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan the supreme conqueror, and Admiral Horatio Nelson. Along with these demigods of warfarre, Admiral Yi also ranks as one of the most superb leaders a soldier or sailor could ever hope to have as his (or, nowadays, her) leader.