한반도에서 일본으로 건너간 신라해적

Abstract

In the mid 7th century, Shilla that had been relatively less powerful succeeded in the unification of the Korean peninsula with the help of the T’ang nation. But since then, Shilla was internally divided to worsen the public sentiment, break down political stability and fall lives of the public into plight. As a consequence, some people of the country crossed national borders for their livelihood. In particular, they used to commit looting under the mask of trade with Japan. This made Japan think even worse of Shilla. According to Japanese history, there were Shilla pirates, usually dubbed as Shillagu, who looted Japan as they refuged or came over from the southern part of the Korean peninsular to Japan amid political and social turbulences in the periods of Unified Shilla and post-Three Kingdom Nations following the collapse of the unified country. Japanese historical records put that many Shilla refugees or thefts who damaged a lot by piracy were organized group members, so it is presumed that they were involved with local powerful clans of Shilla. By the way, there’s few Korean historical records about Shillagu that pirated the coast of Japanese islands. The purpose of this study was to identify what Shilla pirates were by examining how they pirated Japanese coastal areas and by reviewing Japanese literature on Shilla pirates and the then East Asian view of piracy.