Seoul
Capital of Korea under the Joseon kings. Yi Seung-hun returned here from Beijing in 1784 and baptized the first members of the Korean church, and Christians were executed outside its gates in 1801.
Seoul was the capital of the Korean kingdom (Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, vol. 1, p. 19). A missionary writing from Beijing in 1784 reckoned the journey by land between the two capitals at about three months (Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, vol. 1, p. 19). Yi Seung-hun came back to Seoul from Beijing in the spring of 1784 with Christian books (Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, vol. 1, p. 19), and the Chinese priest James Zhou Wen-mo, who entered Korea at the end of 1794, lived hidden in the city from 1795 (Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea, 124 Korean Martyr Blesseds, no. 2, James Zhou Wen-mo). Yi Seung-hun and five others were beheaded outside its West Gate on 8 April 1801 (Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, vol. 1, p. 121). See Korean Scholars Found a Church.
What happened here
- 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.