elated at having defeated an army from China, the foremost power in East Asia, but Konishi Yukinaga grew despondent over the fall of 1592 as it became clear that no reinforcements would arrive from Japan. The fleet of Admiral Yi Sun-sin was preventing any Japanese ships from landing, while the attacks of the Korean Righteous Army guerrillas left the Japanese forces in northern Korea largely cut off from the forces in southern Korea. At conference in Hanseong, Konishi told Ukita Hideie that he was not certain if Pyongyang could be held if the Chinese were to attack again with greater numbers. During the later half of 1592, the Ming sent investigation teams into Pyongyang to clarify the situation. The Ming became fully aware of the situation and made the decision for a full reinforcement by September 1592. With the victory in Ningxia, the Chinese finally had the forces available for Korea, and Li Rusong, the general who crushed the Ningxia revolt was sent to expel the Japanese from Korea. By then it had become clear that this was a situation much more serious than something that could be handled by local forces. Thus the Ming Emperor mobilized and dispatched a larger force in January 1593 under the general Li Rusong and Imperial Superintendent Song Yingchang, the former being one of the sons of Ming dynasty's Liaodong military magistrate Li Chengliang and the latter being a bureaucratic officer (Ming military law stipulated that any military officer would have an accompanying bureaucrat appointed by the Imperial Court acting as the general's superior). According to the collection of letters left by Song Yingchang, the strength of the Ming army was around 40,000, composed mostly of garrisons from the north, including around 3,000 men with experience against Japanese pirates under Qi Jiguang. Li wanted a winter campaign as the frozen ground would allow his artillery train to move more easily than it would under the roads turned into mud by the fall rains. On 5 January 1593, Wu Weizhong led an advance force of 3,000 men across the Yalu River into Korea, followed by two battalions of 2,000 men each later the same day. At Uiju, King Seonjo and the Korean court formally welcomed Li and the other Chinese generals to Korea, where strategy was discussed. Thailand, a longtime faithful tributary state of the Chinese dynasties, offered to directly attack Japan to intervene in