Commentary 22/10/26 Korean Church began as an indigenous lay movement

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Korean Church began as an indigenous lay movement

Long before Second Vatican Council and Apostolicam Actuositatem, the idea of a lay apostolate was put into practice here

South Korean people pose for a picture near Myeongdong Catholic Cathedral in Seoul on Dec. 24, 2011. The place where the Cathedral stands today was where the small community of Catholics was consolidating when the first persecutions began centuries ago. (Photo: AFP)

By Cristian Martini Grimaldi

Published: October 26, 2022 03:03 AM GMT

As a statue of Saint Andrew Kim Tae-gon, Korea’s first priest-martyr, will be installed in a niche outside Saint Peter's Basilica commemorating the 200th birth year of the saint, it is unlikely that many faithful who will read the statue’s description will know how really unique the spreading of Christianity in Korea was in the first place.

We are not talking about the fact that the rulers of the Joseon dynasty viewed Christianity as an alien, subversive faith that defied Buddhism and threatened the local authority, but a similar judgment was held by the rulers of Japan and China.

What is unique about the Church in Korea is that it was born and developed under the initiative of lay people, not missionaries. In fact, many years had to pass before a stable clergy was even present in the territory. Nonetheless, the preaching of the gospel continued and communities prospered despite suffering brutal persecution.

Long before the Second Vatican Council and the decree on the apostolate of secularism, Apostolicam Actuositatem (1965), the idea of a lay apostolate was already being put into practice in Korea. This makes the Korean Church an exceptional case in the world.

"The chain reaction that started it all was the arrival of the Jesuits in China"

Years before the arrival of missionaries, the role of Korean intellectuals was in fact to take note of the existence of an unknown foreign religion, to the point of spreading its precepts in their own country.

The chain reaction that started it all was the arrival of the Jesuits in China. Among them, the best-known is certainly Matteo Ricci.

Ricci was in fact one of the first to translate into Chinese not only several catechetical texts but many works of science and literature.

Precisely these hundreds of translated works attracted the interest around the “religion of the Western missionaries,” so much so that the first baptisms began. By 1608, there were three hundred Christians in Peking and two thousand throughout the kingdom.

In 1603, these texts were also introduced in Korea thanks to Yi gwang-jeong, a Korean diplomat on a mission to Beijing, the first to implant a seed of the new knowledge into the homogeneous and Confucius-centric Korean cultural fabric — knowledge that then fell into the one broad category of "Western knowledge translated into Chinese."

It is interesting to note here that 200 years later Andrew Kim was arrested, tortured and condemned to death for refusing to recant his faith all by the decree of the government. The same government in its diplomatic mission to China had brought the “alien” religion in the first place.

"On the other side of the world, another revolution was taking place"

And so following the diffusion of these texts among the literary elites, what had already happened in China happened in Korea — Catholicism began to intrigue scholars and began to be studied in depth. Soon the existence of god, the concepts of the immortality of the soul, and divine providence became a matter of discussion in literary circles, especially those that met in the Jueo temple in Seoul.

But it was only later that Catholicism ceased to be an academic subject to become a full-fledged religious reality. It was 1784. The French Revolution would break out five years later, but in the meantime, on the other side of the world, another revolution was taking place, this one, however, unlike the first, was destined to last a long time.

Peter Yi seung-hun was the first Korean baptized. He literally had to go to look for the sacrament across the border (in Beijing) and to administer it was the French Jesuit Jean-Joseph de Grammont. In fact, contrary to what had already happened in China and Japan, in Korea, there was still no presence of priests.

The first Korean faithful used to gather in the houses of the literati lyBeyok and Kim-Beom-u (the latter's house was located right on the site where today stands the Mye-ongdong Cathedral in Seoul). But at that point, just when the small community was consolidating with the contribution of the new and young faithful, the first persecutions began.

At least 100 years, out of 230, of the history of the Korean Church are in fact marked by the discrimination and martyrdom of many thousands of people. The faithful were hunted down, forced to disavow their faith, and finally killed as we saw happened to Andrew Kim.

Persecutions threatened and eliminated the founders of that first community of Christians, but despite the hostility and contempt on the part of society and the government, the few remaining faithful managed to reorganize themselves. They took refuge in the countryside, in more remote areas where they found a way to spread the precepts of the Gospel in those lands. It was from here that Christianity reorganized and grew stronger. In times of crisis, providence had shown them the way to successfully pass on the doctrine to subsequent generations.

*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.