The Inspiring Korean Martyrs

Sts. Andrew Kim Tae-gŏn, Paul Chŏng Ha-sang, and Companions

(September 20 - The Korean Martyrs)

The Korean Church was founded by laypeople, which is peculiar reality. Scholars left to visit China and then brought back books from the West translated into Chinese in the end of the 1700s. The first consecrated missionaries in 1836 arrived and found that there were already practicing Catholics in Korea. This small Korean community had gone to Beijing to be baptized after becoming convinced of the truth of the Faith from the books they read. Over the ensuing fifty years or so, the Sacraments were offered by two priests from China. When canonizing the first Korean Catholic priest, St. Andrew Kim Taegon, Pope St. John Paul II made note that there were 10,000 Korean martyrs in less than a century (especially in the years 1791, 1801, 1827, 1839, 1846, and 1866.

Today we celebrate Saints Andrew Kim Taegon and Paul Chong Hasañg who were leaders of the Catholic Church in Korea.

St. Andrew Kim Taegon parents were Korean nobility, and his parents converted to Catholicism when Andrew was 15-years old. He traveled a thousand miles to study for the priesthood and he became the first native Korean priest. He was tortured and beheaded in 1846 during the persecution of Christians under the Joseon Dynasty. According to the 1859 book The New Glories of the Catholic Church, St. Andrew Kim’s final words were:

“This is my last hour of life, listen to me attentively: if I have held communication with foreigners, it has been for my religion and my God. It is for Him that I die. My immortal life is on the point of beginning. Become Christians if you wish to be happy after death, because God has eternal chastisements in store for those who have refused to know Him.”

Paul Choñg Hasang was a Korean Catholic lay leader and son of the martyr Augustine Jeong Yak-Jong and the nephew of a philosopher and convert. Hasand became the servant of a government interpreter. Through this connection, he traveled to Beijing multiple times. He asked the bishop of Beijing to write to Pope Gregory XVI and ask for more priests. The bishop asked for a diocese to be established in Korea which came to fruition in 1825. When Bishop Laurent-Marie-Joseph Imbert and two priests arrived in Korea, the bishop was taken with Hasang’s virtue and intellect. He taught him Latin and theology and intended to ordain him.

Hasang was captured by the government and provided a written statement defending the truth of the Catholic Faith to the judge. The judge told him that there was merit to what he wrote but the king forbids the Christian religion and so Hasang’s duty was to renounce it. He replied that he was a Christian and will be one until death. He was tortured but remained calm throughout. Finally, at the age of 45, he tied to a cross on a cart and met his death.

Pope St. John Paul II canonized Taegon and Hasang on May 6, 1984 with a memorial on September 20, along with 103 of their companions and fellow martyrs.

The Blood of the Martyrs is the Seed of the Church

The early Church writer Tertullian once quipped that the “blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Where one Christian is killed for the Faith, two or more will be converted in their place. This happened in the early Church and explains how Christianity spread so quickly under persecution. The power of a man dying for what he believes in, especially if he is tranquil and accepting of his fate, is a powerful testament. Certainly, people can become convinced of almost anything, even if they are mistaken. But the power of these “seeds” comes in the ubiquity of their witness. Men and women of every age of the Church and in every place have faced death rather than renounce Jesus Christ. This is not universal mistake; instead it shows the powerful reality of the encounters with the Risen Christ that these men and women experienced in life and the communion in His Death they shared in their martyrdom.

To go to your death for the Faith requires grace. Any admixture of doubt and despair would lead to the natural human reaction of a desire to remain alive. Instead, we hear example after example of those facing their death with the inexplicable joy that only Christ can offer.

The word martyr is Greek for “witness.” May we all witness to the joy and truth of Jesus Christ and remain connected as a branch on the vine, bearing much fruit. As Jesus reminds us:

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also.”