believed that Hideyoshi's invasion would be just an extension of the previous pirate raids that had been repelled before. As for the military situation in Joseon, the Korean scholar official Ryu Seong-ryong observed, "not one in a hundred [Korean generals] knew the methods of drilling soldiers": rising in rank depended far more on social connections than military knowledge. Korean soldiers were disorganized, ill-trained, and ill-equipped, and they had been used mostly in construction projects such as building castle walls. Problems with Joseon defense policies There were several defects with the organization of the Joseon-era Korean military defense system. One example was a policy that stated that local officers could not individually respond to a foreign invasion outside of their jurisdiction until a higher ranking general, appointed by the king's court, arrived with a newly mobilized army. This arrangement was highly inefficient since the nearby forces would remain stationary until the mobile border commander arrived on the scene and took control. Secondly, as the appointed general often came from an outside region, he was likely to be unfamiliar with the natural environment, the available technology, and manpower of the invaded region. Finally, as a main army was never maintained, new and ill-trained recruits conscripted during war constituted a significant part of the army. The Korean court managed to carry out some reforms, but they remained problematic. For example, the military training center established in 1589 in Gyeongsang Province recruited mostly men either too young or too old to be good soldiers, augmented by some adventure-seeking aristocrats and slaves buying their freedom, because able-bodied men of the right age, targeted by the policy, had higher priorities such as farming and other economic activities. The dominant form of the Korean fortresses was the sanseong ("mountain fortress"), which consisted of a stone wall that continued around a mountain in a serpentine fashion. These walls were poorly designed with little use of towers and cross-fire positions (usually seen in European fortifications), and were mostly low in height. It was a wartime policy for these fortresses to serve as refuge castles and for everyone to evacuate to one, with those who failed to do so being assumed to be collaborators with the enemy; however, the policy never held any great effect because the fortresses were out of reach for most refugees. Troop strength Toyotomi Hideyoshi mobilized his army at Nagoya Castle, located in the old Hizen