Talk:Imjin War

Summarize Timeline Top Qs Fact Check

Propose splitting off the second invasion section into a new article called Chŏngyu War. Article is over 24,000 words right now; well over the WP:SIZERULE of 15,000 for basically mandatory splits. For some more context, see the above move discussion. seefooddiet (talk) 20:48, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

@Seefooddiet I think it makes more sense to cover the invasions together, as I'd imagine the vast majority of readers (as do most sources I've seen) view the two invasions as one event, and will accordingly read about both together. It's more efficient for those readers if the information is covered in one article with 24k words rather than two with 24k+some thousands of words of necessary redundancies between them. WP:SIZERULE is for readability, and we shouldn't follow it if it'll make information less readable. Kaotao (talk) 05:42, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure I fully agree. 24,000 is just too long; a split needs to be made somewhere. Do you have an alternate idea for where we could split or do something else to get the length of the article down? seefooddiet (talk) 06:01, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

@Seefooddiet I don't think there's anything that comes close to the Chongyu war in splitability, and splitting that section wouldn't have a significant impact on readability. The section for the Chongyu war is only about 3,300 words long, half the size of the background section. and a quarter of the Imjin war section, which already consists mostly of summaries. I think copyediting is the only solution. Kaotao (talk) 06:38, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Yea lets do that ~2026-14140-53 (talk) 01:47, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

If sources treat them as one event, why not split it into articles focused on the major campaigns / battles / events / treaties that comprise the wars? LeChatiliers Pupper (talk) 17:10, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

@LeChatiliers Pupper It already has been. Most of this article is comprised of proportionate summaries of battles with their own articles. Kaotao (talk) 17:14, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I’ve been reading about this war and many sources treat it as a single event, but I’ve also seen it commonly called Imjin Wars, maybe making it plural like that could help Bagabondo (talk) 13:12, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

Maybe in addition to an article dedicated to the second invasion called Chŏngyu War, there can also be an article for the first invasion called Imjin War (1592–1593). Then this current article can serve as a high-level overview. _dk (talk) 10:24, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't think this is the solution. Kaotao raises a fair point and I need to think about it. seefooddiet (talk) 10:29, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

I do agree with Kaotao that the two invasions should be covered together and that copyediting is the solution, but this article is entirely too long and the fact of the matter is that any copyedit will have to significantly pare down the article. See, for example, how the Napoleonic Wars article (which is still very long) is split into subarticles about War of the Third Coalition, Peninsular War, War of the Fifth Coalition, and so on. _dk (talk) 10:46, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm thinking we have two possible actions that could even be taken together:

1. Split off an article for the first and second invasions. Imjin War would be the parent to both articles and only contain high-level overviews. Would need to think of an adequate title for the first invasion; I'm not sure if Imjin War (1592–1593) is the best but it may be. The second invasion would be Chŏngyu War.
2. Remove a significant chunk of the unsourced writing. I think this would be uncontroversial. There's a lot of it and at that volume it's daunting to expect people to try and source.

seefooddiet (talk) 10:53, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

@Seefooddiet I'm not sure if I agree with the first action. The Imjin and Chongyu war sections are already summaries, and to summarize those summaries would make the information of the actual wars in this article superficial. If someone's powering through 6k-8k words before getting to the actual meat of the article, I doubt they'd be sated by a summary of a summary; then we'd have the same issue of determined readers (the only ones for whom word count matters) reliably being inclined to read the new split-off articles, which would have to have a higher word count than the sections they came from.

Splitting both off is probably the most effective way of getting this article's word count, but I'm not sure if hitting the 15k mark would be worth it. This is a very different case from the Napoleonic Wars article, since 6 of its sections have their own article, and this article has two splittable ones, one of which would be a quarter of the size of the other. If the two sections, especially the second, could be fleshed out considerably, it might be more prudent to split them, but that doesn't seem likely; Korean Wikipedia's article on the Chongyu war is rather short.

As for action 2, good idea, including the "significant chunk" qualifier; a lot of important information, such as the first mention of the hwacha, is unsourced. Kaotao (talk) 19:26, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm still uncertain, will do more thinking. I'm not sure I fully agree but I understand where you're coming from.

Side note, but the Korean Wikipedia is often a pretty poor metric for how we should cover things. It's pretty underserved because the community is split due to the prevalence of Namuwiki. Many critically important Korea-related topics on it are actually really underserved. seefooddiet (talk) 20:30, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

I'd like to say even a "summary of a summary" serves an important purpose since not all readers are interested in reading all there is to know down to the details due to time constraints and attention spans. The interested reader would have the choice to dive into the subarticles as many levels as they like, and this is usually the way Wikipedia deals with long and complicated conflicts. _dk (talk) 22:21, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

I partially agree with this. I also think the total volume of text on a thing spread across articles is less of a worry and not necessarily restricted by Wikipedia guidelines. But I think Kaotao's point has some merit too. seefooddiet (talk) 22:42, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

@Underbar dk I suppose that is a useful niche. My main concern was that any summaries would end up functioning as pitfalls for readers willing to read through the very lengthy background section, but maybe I overestimated how consequential that would be compared to the potential benefits. I'm willing to agree to the two invasions being split off. Kaotao (talk) 00:13, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Im inclined to agree with you. The article is already too big for long time judging by edit history. But i think cleaning up the uncited should be the top priority, then we can decide which should be split into new article and which not Simple non combat (talk) 07:05, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I would not split the article. "Imjin War" is the only search term that everybody (well, me) knows and looks up. It is just a practical matter, folks! G41rn8 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 00:58, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

I would say the name of the article is not an obstacle for a split given enough disambiguation. See for example Eighty Years' War and its subarticles Eighty Years' War, 1566–1572, Eighty Years' War, 1572–1576, Eighty Years' War, 1576–1579, and Eighty Years' War, 1579–1588. _dk (talk) 21:09, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

I've started to pare down the article per the suggestion from this thread. One thing I notice when I move the details of individual battles to the articles of the battles in question, is that the individual battle articles are often less detailed than what we have here in this article. I think a detailed treatment of battles is WP:undue for this article, and I now feel that we can significantly trim down this article by offloading a lot of the details to the individual battle articles. See, for example, the level of detail and number of cites the article Battle of Hansando has compared to the corresponding section on this present article. _dk (talk) 14:13, 16 December 2025 (UTC)

TIL I've been using WP:UNDUE when I actually wanted to reference WP:summary style. I believe this Wikipedia guideline is especially relevant to what I was advocating to pare down and split this article. _dk (talk) 15:09, 16 December 2025 (UTC)

I think one of the major problem regarding the aricle's length lies on Military section. I suggest for creation of a new article from this section in particular Simple non combat (talk) 21:03, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

I thought it may have been inappropriate to comment here, but this would be my preferred solution. I do think the first and second conflicts should be presented together. I think this article is so long, however, that my preference there would need to be abandoned. I think the military sections, and the first and second wars should be split off into a total of three separate articles, ideally, with this serving as the parent article. Pietrus1 (talk) 06:11, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes,but appatently other editors which more Active than me in this article seems insisted on keeping birth war in same page. Simple non combat (talk) 08:17, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

I read the discussion there, but the only alternative to that is likely extreme trimming (in addition to splitting off the military section). I don't love that. Would you support splitting off the smaller sections of the article instead? Some are long enough to justify child articles. Pietrus1 (talk) 09:08, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Please comment on this diff. I do think trimming like this would be the alternative: diff

Pietrus1 (talk) 17:01, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

I did it on the military section because it may simply be moved anyhow. Pietrus1 (talk) 17:03, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

What i need to say anymore? If there are another consensus gathering about separate the article or not. My answer is simply agree with it. But need to ask another too Simple non combat (talk) 18:30, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Just putting it there for transparency. Pietrus1 (talk) 21:24, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Summarize Timeline Top Qs Fact Check

Given the length of this article, I felt that the unused sources listed should be moved off the page or deleted. I decided to just move them to this talk page after some discussion:

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• Kim, Ki-chung (Fall 1999), "Resistance, Abduction, and Survival: The Documentary Literature of the Imjin War (1592–8)", Korean Culture, 20 (3), Korean Cultural Service: 20–29, ISSN 0270-1618, LCCN 81642804
• Lewis, James B. (2005-11-02). Frontier Contact Between Choson Korea and Tokugawa Japan. Routledge. ISBN 978-1135795986. Retrieved 20 July 2016.
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• Neves, Jaime Ramalhete (1994), "The Portuguese in the Im-Jim War?", Review of Culture, 18, Macau Cultural Institute: 20–24, ISSN 1682-1106
• Niderost, Eric (June 2001), "Turtleboat Destiny: The Imjin War and Yi Sun Shin", Military Heritage, 2 (6): 50–59, 89
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• Park, Yune-hee (1973), Admiral Yi Sun-shin and His Turtleboat Armada: A Comprehensive Account of the Resistance of Korea to the 16th Century Japanese Invasion, Shinsaeng Press, OCLC 2440345
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• Yi, Min-woong (2004), Imjin Wae-ran Haejeonsa: The Naval Battles of the Imjin War [임진왜란 해전사] (in Korean), Chongoram Media [청어람미디어], ISBN 978-8989722496, LCCN 2005551019, OCLC 57219223, OL 19200973M
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Pietrus1 (talk) 22:17, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

good idea, Lets see how others thought too. Simple non combat (talk) 08:18, 7 May 2026 (UTC)