The Japanese were not really bandits

The bandit groups that have emerged for the longest time in Korean history are Japanese pirates

The Japanese invasion of the Korean Peninsula has a long history, and it has continued for 1,500 years from the early Silla period to the mid-Joseon period

When you think of a Japanese word, you only think of a shabby and shabby figure with only the top and the bottom taken off

However, if you look at the records of Japanese pirates who entered the late Goryeo Dynasty, you can see the opposite of the Japanese pirates portrayed like that

Battle of Huangshan, where Goryeo Army and Japanese pirates fought in 1380, says the commander of the Japanese pirates, Azibaldo, wore armor all over his body, leaving no space for arrows, and the Japanese invasion of Goryeo in 1377 was armed with armor that covered his hands and feet, and then ran forward on horseback, according to the Goryeosa

Other records of the Goryeo Temple also show that Baegum 裵儉, a Goryeo officer under the command of the Jeolla provincial head of state Ji Yong 池湧奇, managed to save his life by complaining, “No country in the world kills an envoy,” and the Japanese escorted Baegum to the Iron Age 鐵騎

The ironware mentioned here refers to a horse with iron armor or a cavalry who fights on such horses. In fact, Japan was engulfed in a civil war called the Northern and Southern Dynasties when Japanese pirates invaded in the late Goryeo Dynasty. According to Taepyeonggi, a librarian who recorded the civil war, horses were covered with chain armor

In other words, it is appropriate to see Japanese pirates as not just a band of drab bandits, but an elite combat unit that even had heavily armed cavalry, where both humans and horses wore armor