September , the Martyr's month in Korean Catholic Church

The History of the Korean Catholic Church


By the grace of God, who wants to save all nations, Catholicism come to Korea around 220 years ago. At that time, ambassadors of Jo-sun ( the ancient name of Korea) who visited Beijing in China, frequently met missionaries to get knowledge of Western culture.
They communicated with pen and paper and discussed scholarship and religion.
Some of them accepted Catholic books that the missionaries wrote in Chinese and studied them by themselves.
In 1784 , a scholar, Seoung-hoon Lee, was baptized as Peter in Beijing and returned to Korea. He organized the first Korean Catholic community, but the community was persecuted for the reason that they believed in God. They were exiled, all their properties were taken away and they even lost basic human rights. They suffered.
There are several reasons for the persecution.
First of all, the government regarded Catholicism as heresy because Catholics refused to serve either their ancestors or the King. In addition, the exclusivism of Confucianism , the unionism of politic and religion , party conflicts and political power, a principle of seclusion, exacerbated the persecution. As a result, the Catholic Church suffered for more than 100years just after it was accepted, and there were around 10 serious persecutions.
The Korean Catholic community started without any priest and, for a while, they could have only two Chinese priests. For 40 years, they had tried to practice Catholicism as a lay people’s community until a priest, Mo-bang , came to Korea in 1836. He was the first French missionary (Société des Missions trangères de Paris) in Korea.
For 40years the lay people’s community had tried hard to have priest or bishop and visited Beijing many times even though it took more than 6 months to get there those days. They were eager to have the sacraments’ blessing and appealed to the Pope and the bishop of Beijing.
It was very dangerous to help the missionaries who came to Korea, but many Korean lay people were brave enough to keep to their faith . They served those priests with zeal and were ready to die at any moment.
As a believer, persecution is a real victory for the church. It means, not only the Church grows through persecution but also our freedom of belief is the realization of the blood of many martyrs.
Finally in 1886, the Korean Catholic Church got the freedom of belief. By this time, after 100years’ persecution, there were more than 10,000 martyrs who were “By martyrdom a disciple is transformed into an image of his Master by freely accepting death for the salvation of the world -- as well as his conformity to Christ in the shedding of his blood” (Lumen Gentium 42) .
Among them, 103 martyrs ( 11 clergymen and 92 lay people ) were sanctified by John Paul 2nd in 1984 , the 200th year of the Korean Catholic Church.