Korean Scholars Found a Church

Christian books written in Chinese by European missionaries were brought home to Korea by the embassies that went each year to Beijing (Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, vol. 1, pp. 14–15). Charles Dallet’s history of 1874, which for this period follows the memoirs of Bishop Daveluy, themselves for the most part a literal translation of Korean documents (Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, vol. 1, p. 13, note), tells how in 1777 a group of scholars, Yi Byeok among them, withdrew to a mountain temple to study, examined these books, and began to pray morning and evening and to set apart every seventh day (Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, vol. 1, pp. 14–15).

In the winter of 1783 Yi Byeok’s friend Yi Seung-hun was to accompany his father, an envoy, to Beijing, and Dallet reports that Yi Byeok urged him to go to the church there, question the European teachers and bring back books (Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, vol. 1, pp. 16–17). A missionary at Beijing, M. de Ventavon, wrote on 25 November 1784 that the Korean ambassadors had visited the church at the end of the previous year; that the son of one of them, twenty-seven years old and a good scholar, read the books he was given and resolved to become a Christian; and that before leaving, with his father’s consent, he was baptized by M. de Grammont and named Peter (Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, vol. 1, pp. 18–19 (letter of M. de Ventavon, 25 November 1784)).

Yi Seung-hun came back to Seoul in the spring of 1784 with books, crosses and images, and Yi Byeok studied them and began to teach others (Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, vol. 1, pp. 19–20). Yi Seung-hun then baptized Yi Byeok, who took the name John the Baptist, and Kwon Il-sin, who took the name Francis Xavier (Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, vol. 1, p. 22). The Catholic bishops of Korea date the beginning of their church from this baptism and say that it was established by Koreans themselves and not by European missionaries (Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea, History, ‘Development of the Early Catholic Church in Korea’, sections 1–2) (Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea, History, ‘Dawn of Catholicism in Korea’, foreword).

Early in 1785 a convert was arrested, tortured and exiled, and Dallet records that under pressure from their families Yi Seung-hun burned his books and Yi Byeok gave way; Yi Byeok died in 1786 (Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, vol. 1, pp. 26–28). About 1787, having no priests, the leaders chose a bishop and priests from among themselves, Yi Seung-hun among them, who preached, baptized, heard confessions and celebrated mass (Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, vol. 1, pp. 30–31). In 1789 their reading made them doubt that this was valid; they stopped, and Yi Seung-hun and Kwon Il-sin wrote to the bishop of Beijing in a letter that Paul Yun Yu-il carried, disguised as a merchant (Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, vol. 1, pp. 31–33). The bishop judged what they had done to be illegitimate but done in good faith, and promised a priest (Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea, History, ‘Development of the Early Catholic Church in Korea’, sections 1–2). The Chinese priest James Zhou Wen-mo entered Korea in December 1794 (Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea, 124 Korean Martyr Blesseds, no. 2, James Zhou Wen-mo).

In 1790 the bishop of Beijing forbade Catholics to perform the ancestral rites, and Paul Yun Ji-chung, whom Yi Seung-hun had baptized in 1787, burned his family’s ancestral tablet and was beheaded at Jeonju on 8 December 1791 (Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea, 124 Korean Martyr Blesseds, no. 1, Paul Yun Ji-chung). Yi Seung-hun was beheaded with five others outside the West Gate of the capital on 8 April 1801; Dallet judges that he died without retracting his denials of the faith (Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, vol. 1, pp. 121–122). At the canonization of Korean martyrs in Seoul in 1984 John Paul II called this first community unique in the history of the Church because it was founded entirely by laypeople (John Paul II, Homily at the canonization of the Korean martyrs 3).