Yi Byeok
Korean scholar who studied Christian books from Beijing, sent Yi Seung-hun there to learn more, and was baptized by him in 1784 as John the Baptist. He taught many of the first converts and died in 1786.
Dallet, drawing on Korean records, calls Yi Byeok the chief instrument in bringing the gospel to Korea and tells how in 1777 he joined a group of scholars studying Christian books in a mountain temple (Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, vol. 1, pp. 13–15). When his friend Yi Seung-hun was to travel to Beijing in 1783, Yi Byeok urged him to seek out the missionaries and bring back books (Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, vol. 1, pp. 16–17). In 1784 Yi Seung-hun baptized him, and he took the name John the Baptist (Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, vol. 1, p. 22). The Catholic bishops of Korea treat his baptism as the starting point of their church (Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea, History, ‘Development of the Early Catholic Church in Korea’, section 1).
Dallet reports that after the first arrests of 1785 he gave way to his father’s pressure, and that he died of an epidemic in the spring of 1786, aged thirty-three (Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, vol. 1, p. 28); the year of his birth is reckoned from that age. See Korean Scholars Found a Church.
In the timeline
- 1784, firm dateKorean Scholars Found a Church
Korean scholars who had read Christian books from Beijing send one of their own with an embassy; Yi Seung-hun is baptized there in 1784, returns to Seoul and baptizes his friends. A church grows with no priest in the country, and meets persecution.