Wokou (; Japanese: Wakō; Korean: 왜구 Waegu), which literally translates to "Japanese pirates", were pirates who raided the coastlines of China and Korea from the 13th century to the 16th century. The wokou came from Japanese, Korean, and Chinese ethnicities which varied over time and raided the mainland from islands in the Sea of Japan and East China Sea. Wokou activity in Korea declined after the Treaty of Gyehae in 1443, but continued in Ming China and peaked during the Jiajing wokou raids in the mid-1500s, but Chinese reprisals and strong clamp downs on pirates by Japanese authorities saw the wokou virtually disappear by the 1600s. History There are two distinct eras of wokou piracy. The early wokou mostly set up camp on the outlying islands of the Japanese archipelago in the Sea of Japan, as opposed to the 16th century wokou who were mostly non-Japanese. The early wokou raided the Japanese themselves as well as China and Korea. The first recorded use of the term wokou (倭寇) is on the Gwanggaeto Stele, a stone monument erected in modern Ji'an, Jilin, China, to celebrate the exploits of Gwanggaeto the Great of Goguryeo (r. 391–413). The stele states that "wokou" ("Japanese robbers") crossed the sea and were defeated by him in the year 404. The term wokou is a combination of the Chinese terms Wō (倭), referring to either dwarfs or pejoratively to the Japanese, and kòu () "bandit". Early wokou The origin of the term wokou dates back to the 4th century, but among wokou's activities which are divided into two academic periods, the pirates called "early wokou" were born from the Mongol invasion of Japan. As a result of the war, the coastal defense capabilities of China and Korea were significantly reduced. Also, as a result of the war, people living in Tsushima, Iki, and Gotō Islands in Kyushu suffered extreme poverty. For these reasons, wokou gradually intensified their looting on the coasts of China and Korea. Jeong Mong-ju was dispatched to Japan to deal with the problem, and during his visit Kyushu governor Imagawa Sadayo suppressed the early wokou, later returning their captured property and people to Korea. In 1405 Ashikaga Yoshimitsu sent twenty captured pirates to China, where they were boiled in a cauldron in Ningbo. According to Korean records, wako pirates were particularly rampant roughly from 1350. After almost annual invasions of the southern provinces of