Paul KeenanA recent discovery sheds fresh light on Catholicism’s growth in Korea, writes Paul Keenan
Question: “Since you have abandoned the beautiful customs and ritual of your country and accepted the treacherous ways of the foreigner, even if you were put to death 10,000 times, would the punishment not be too light?”
Answer: “How can you compare suffering the death penalty with going to Hell after death? Which is the worse?”
This extract from official records details the interrogation in 1839 of Korea’s Saint You Chin-gil Augustine (1791-1839), shortly before his martyrdom at Seoul’s Small West Gate.
A testament to faith, the story of St You Chin-gil is a single example from the 103 martyrs persecuted by agents of the Korean kingdom in 1839, and that year is just one of a number of persecutions of Christians launched on the fledgling community by defenders of the territory’s Confucian belief system; there was a major purge of Christians previously in 1791, while another attempt to root out the Faith would take place in 1846.
Incidences
Such incidences of persecution, and indeed the names of those who paid the ultimate price are today well known courtesy of the detailed archives held at the Vatican. Such records led to the compiling of those to be canonised by Pope John Paul II in 1983 (the 103 of 1839) – the first canonisations ever to take place beyond the precincts of Rome – and the beatifications last August by Pope Francis (124 martyred at various times in the 18th and 19th Centuries).
However, a new documental discovery in Korea itself has led to excitement among academics of Korean Christianity while bringing a renewed focus on Korea as an altogether unique country in terms of evangelisation.
According to a small report on the UCAnews website in the last week, a set of papers, penned in the Korean language has taken on immense importance for scholars who have come to realise that the documents are the very basis of the Vatican’s own records of the growth of the Faith in the country.
Set down by St Hyeon Seok-mun, another martyr, the papers are a compilation of eyewitness accounts of those with first-hand experience of the martyrs of 1839 and 1846. It is now accepted that said records are the basis of the Latin and French translated documents stored in the Vatican Archives.
In the greater scheme of things, said discovery should register little more than a blip beyond academia, given that the names, experiences and history, are already well known. But that is to miss the point.
At the time of St Hyeon Seok-mun’s efforts towards a religious record for Korea, the first European priests were barely two decades in the country. And the very reason they were present was because Koreans themselves had so endured manhunts and persecution to preserve their ‘adopted’ faith that Rome could no longer overlook the strength of lay evangelisation taking place on the peninsula.
It is not overstating the case to say that the true importance of the native language records now being pored over lies in their cementing the history of Korea’s evangelisation from within, by ordinary Koreans themselves who, without a missionary’s zeal and teaching, embraced the Faith and kept it burning until the very celebration of the Eucharist arrived.
The period in question is a dizzying 42 years – between 1780 and 1822 (with the arrival of the first European priests) and finds its roots in the class of Koreans educated for diplomatic service to Beijing since earlier times. While ostensibly insular in outlook in the late 16th Century, Korea dispatched ambassadors and translators to the Chinese court, where a fortuitous intersection with foreign missionaries occurred.
It is recorded that in the earliest years of the 17th Century, one diplomat, Yi Kwangiong, returned to Seoul with various publications from the wider world, among them books written by the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci.
What Yi brought, others embraced, not least those existing in a hierarchical monarchy who were attracted to the egalitarian message communicated by this Christian faith.
By 1780, lay practice of Christianity was a reality, tolerated until 1791 with the first wave of persecution, through the years already cited and a later crackdown in 1866-67. Among those killed in 1846 was Fr Kim Taegon, Korea’s first native Catholic priest, ordained less than a year before he was beheaded but fully 65 years after the lay faithful had secured the Faith’s toehold in the kingdom.
Not the first priest to be killed in the purges, Fr Kim would not be the last either, and it would be remiss not too mention those missionary martyrs who died in building upon what the laity had secured. Not least among them are those Irish who suffered the consequences of the Korean War of 1950-53, notably Columbans Fr Francis Canavan, Fr Anthony Collier, Fr Patrick Reilly, Fr Thomas Cusack and Fr John O’Brien. These last two died along with Irish-American Columban Msgr Patrick Brennan. Another Irish-American Columban to be killed was Fr James Maginn, completing a list of seven who are included in a list of modern martyrs being now promoted by the Korean bishops’ conference for beatification.
Such a move would no doubt offer cause for celebration among Korea’s 5.4 million Catholics, a number accounting for just over 10% of the South’s overall population today.
It can only be estimated how many know, through the official records, the prescient words of Bishop Saint Laurent-Joseph-Marius Imbert, who before his own martyrdom in 1839 wrote of those killed before him: “With difficulty, we reclaimed the bodies at dawn… we buried the bodies of the martyrs at a place I had prepared earlier… now we have many protectors in Heaven. When the day of religious freedom comes to Korea, as I know it will, these bodies will be a precious heritage.”