The history of Christianity in Korea is like the history of Christianity in most other countries, full of persecution and those willing to lay down their lives as Our Lord did.
Arriving in the late 18th Century, the Catholic faith had some 10,000 martyrs over the course of the 19th century across Korea, most of them incredible violent.
The Confucian authorities had begun to seize Catholic paraphernalia as early as the 1780s, as a precursor to extensive persecutions.
Yun Ji Chung Paul was from a noble family in Korea, but he quickly became enamoured with the Catholic faith, which was growing in popularity through translations of spiritual books printed from Chinese. After his cousin had taught him about the faith, Paul was baptised in 1787. He quickly began to run afoul of the traditional religion of Korea, by converting his mother who received a Catholic funeral.
He was eventually put on trial alongside his cousin James Kwon Sang-yeon, both of whom were sentence to death. They were beheaded for refusing to perform ancestral rites, leading to the Bishop of Beijing sending a priest to perform the first Mass in the Kingdom of Joseon where the killings had taken place.
When he was being brought to be martyred, records show that he was ‘smiling as if he was on his way to a party’.
His last words were ‘Jesus, Maria’.
Now, DNA testing has matched up three bodies with those of Paul and his brother (who was martyred afterwards) and James.
The Diocese of Jeonju has said, ‘We have found the remains of those who first set the history of martyrdom for our church, which was founded on the blood of the martyrs’.
Despite being a relatively small proportion of the population, around 11%, Korean Catholics have achieved immense successes in recent, years, producing cardinals and missionaries. There have also been two Catholic presidents.
