Until Shinra fell, in 934 A.D., and united Corea rose on the ruins of the three kingdoms, the history of this state, as found in the Chinese annals, is simply a list of her kings, who, of course, received investiture from China. On the east, the Japanese, having ceased to be her pupils in civilization during times of peace, as in time of war they were her conquerors, turned their attention to Nanking, receiving directly therefrom the arts and sciences, instead of at second-hand through the Corean peninsula. They found enough to do at home in conquering all the tribes in the north and east and centralizing their system of government after the model of the Tangs in China. For these reasons the sources of information concerning the eighth and ninth centuries fail, or rather it is more exact to say that the history of Shinra is that of peace instead of war. In 869 we read of pirates from her shores descending upon the Japanese coast to plunder the tribute ships from Buzen province, and again, in 893, that a fleet of fifty junks, manned by these Corean rovers, was driven off from Tsushima by the Japanese troops, with the loss of three hundred slain. Another descent of “foreign pirates,” most probably Coreans, upon Iki Island, in 1019, is recorded, the strangers being beaten off by reinforcements from the mainland. The very existence of these marauders is, perhaps, a good indication that the power of the Shinra government was falling into decay, and that lawlessness within the kingdom was preparing the way for some mighty hand to not only seize the existing state, but to unite all Corea into political, as well as geographical, unity. In the far north another of those great intermittent movements of population was in process, which, though destroying the kingdom of Puhai beyond the Tumen, was to repeople the desolate land of Korai, and again call a dead state to aggressive life. From the origin to the fall of Shinra there were three royal families of fifty-five kings, ruling nine hundred and ninety-three years, or seven years less than a millennium.