As a result of the war, the coastal defense capabilities of China and Korea were significantly reduced, and the people living in Tsushima, Iki, and Gotō Islands in Kyushu suffered extreme poverty.

During his visit, Kyushu governor Imagawa Sadayo suppressed the wokou, returning their captured property and people to Korea.

[13] The History of Goryeo has a record of sea battles in 1380 whereby one hundred warships were sent to Jinpo to rout Japanese pirates there, releasing 334 captives.

[22] With maritime trade outlawed, China's navy was reduced, and as a result, they could not combat increased smuggling, which led to wokou control over the southeastern coast.

[25] Because of the extent of corruption in the Ming court, many Chinese officials had relations with the pirates and benefited from the piracy, making it difficult for central authorities to control.

He was assigned to "punish the bandits and guard the people", which meant taking on the wokou attacking the Ming east coast.

The pirate-warlord Limahong attempted and failed to invade Manila and afterwards set up a temporary pirate state in Caboloan (Pangasinan) before the Spanish expelled him.

Professor Takeo Tanaka of University of Tokyo proposed in 1966 that the early wokou were Koreans living on these outlying islands.

In the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty, the compiled section for King Sejong relates that a vassal named Yi Sun-mong (Korean: 이순몽; Hanja: 李順蒙, 1386–1449) told his monarch "I hear that in the late Goryeo kingdom period, wokou roaming (our country) and the peasants could not withstand them.

Some of our peasants imitatively wore Japanese clothing, formed a group and caused trouble... in order to stop all evils, there is nothing more urgent than the Hopae (personal identification system)".

Moreover, the thrust of Yi's speech concentrates on how national security was deteriorating and how it required special attention; it is possible he made use of unreliable information to support his point.

[36] The current prevailing theory[38] is that of Shōsuke Murai, who demonstrated in 1988 that the early wokou came from multiple ethnic groups rather than one singular nation.

[37] Murai writes that the wokou were "marginal men" living in politically unstable areas without national allegiances, akin to the Zomia thesis.