planned landing operations. Siege of Namwon After the disaster at Chilcheollyang, the allied defenses in the south began to quickly break down and the Japanese forces stormed into Jeolla Province. The garrison of Namwon became their next key target. Namwon was located 50 kilometres southeast of Jeonju. Correctly predicting a Japanese attack, a coalition force of 6,000 soldiers (including 3,000 Chinese troops under Yang Yuan and civilian volunteers) were prepared to fight the approaching Japanese forces. The Japanese laid siege to the walls of the fortress with ladders and siege towers. The two sides exchanged volleys with arquebuses and bows. Eventually the Japanese forces scaled the walls and sacked the fortress. According to Japanese commander Okochi Hidemoto, author of the Chosen Ki (Korean Record), the Siege of Namwon resulted in 3,726 casualties among the Korean and Chinese forces. The Korean forces and its leaders were almost entirely killed. When the gates were opened, many Koreans simply laid down on their knees, knowing the samurai would behead them, while others tried to flee north, where the samurai commanded by Katō Yoshiaki and Shimazu Yoshihiro were waiting and proceeded to cut down all Koreans with their katanas. The Japanese Buddhist monk Keinen who was traveling with the samurai described a scene of utter horror as the full moon illuminated the scenes of destruction with much of the town on fire, the formerly white walls of Namwon turned red with blood, and the wailing of the Koreans, knowing it was their time to die as the samurai gave no mercy, killing all. Only Yang Yuan managed to sally out after the walls were breached, with a handful of men, to return to Hanseong. He was later executed by the Ming court because of his defeat in battle. Traditionally, samurai collected the heads of those they killed, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi had insisted that the samurai sent him noses of those they had killed as proof that they were fighting. Okochi counted the heads of 3,725 Koreans killed that day, and removed their noses, which were pickled in salt and sent back to Japan. All of the noses of Koreans killed by the samurai are buried near the shrine to the Great Buddha put up by Hideyoshi in Kyoto, which as Turnbull noted "...they remain to this day inside Kyoto's least mentioned and most often avoided tourist attraction, the grassy burial mound that bears the