Talk:Imjin War

Requested move 16 December 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. I do not see any opposition towards renaming this to Imjin War, even in the case of a split. (closed by non-admin page mover) Skarmory (talk • contribs) 01:10, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

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Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598) → Imjin War – Far more common name for the conflict according to Google Ngram https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Imjin+War%2C+Japanese+Invasion+of+Korea&year_start=1800&year_end=2022 also much more natural sounding than the current title which has to be disambiguated with a date. Gazingo (talk) 22:42, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Support. Imjin War is more common than this descriptive but unnatural formulation. JArthur1984 (talk) 00:11, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Weak support as per WP:COMMONNAME. Imjin War does seem to be used more often. A good number of sources do however refer to it by "Japanese invasions of Korea", so it isn't too uncommon. OutsideTheGates (talk) 01:23, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Weak support per above; note that the ngram should probably be case insensitive and could include plural, but that doesn't change much [1]. seefooddiet (talk) 09:18, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Comment: The naming here is a little perculiar. The Imjin War(or 'wars') was a series of two separate but linked invasions (Imjin War / Chongyu War) which are collectively referred to as the "1592–1598 Japanese invasions of Korea" or just as "Imjin War".

Now, considering that the article has been tagged with {{very long}}, would it be possible to separate the article into Imjin War and Chongyu War (or Jeongyu War, if the RR happens to be the commonname)? Or perhaps create those two articles as separate and leave this one to serve as a encompassing overview for both wars, like French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars? -- 00101984hjw (talk) 03:31, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

I still need to think but I think having one article for both invasions makes more sense. The invasions were too strongly interrelated to make splitting like that helpful. Very long tag could be addressed by tightening up the writing. seefooddiet (talk) 05:49, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm not even sure if Chongyu War is a real term or something invented by the article. Neither spelling produces any results on google Ngram. I can't find a single book that describes just one invasion without describing the other. Gazingo (talk) 23:13, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Real term ("정유재란"), attestation on the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture. Romanized using McCune–Reischauer. seefooddiet (talk) 23:25, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

I think for now, we should move this article to "Imjin War". From there, someone could propose splits or trimmings to address the length of the article.

It may be the case that a separate article for Chongyu War may be appropriate, per 00101984hjw's comment. Also worth noting that the kowiki has a separate article for Chongyu War: ko:정유재란. seefooddiet (talk) 23:27, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't speak Korean so could you tell me more about the Korean wiki's state? How are the articles structured with regards to the first invasion, second invasion, and the overall conflict? Gazingo (talk) 02:39, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Imjin War is main article and covers both invasions. Lead para affirms our understanding here, that "Imjin War" can refer to either the overall war (both invasions) or just the first one. The Imjin War article has a section on the Chongyu War that's brief and WP:SUMMARY style. The Chongyu War article goes into more depth.

I think we could follow the same pattern. seefooddiet (talk) 03:00, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

I agree that that would be for the best, though we are getting out the realm of the move discussion. Gazingo (talk) 05:18, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Factual errors

"Japanese swords, which were sometimes collected in the battlefield from dead Japanese soldiers, would inspire some of the basic designs of later Korean swords such as the hwando." Is wrong, when you read another article about Korean swords - which is linked in the text. In that wiki-page, the author points out, that the Hwando was made in Korea before the war. 2A05:F6C2:AFEB:0:A133:7317:8AD7:B739 (talk) 09:00, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Split proposal

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)

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)

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)