Saints Andrew Kim Taegŏn, Paul Chŏng Ha-sang and Companions

Saints Andrew Kim Taegŏn, Paul Chŏng Ha-sang and Companions are 103 martyrs killed for the faith in Korea between 1838 and 1867. The Roman Martyrology counts among them three bishops and eight priests; the rest were lay people: married and unmarried, old, young, and children. The Church commemorates them together on September 20.

At the end of the eighteenth century, Korean scholars began to study Christian books brought from China, and in 1784 one of them was baptized in Beijing. John Paul II stressed that this community, unique in the history of the Church, was founded entirely by lay people. For half a century the faithful had only two priests from China, and only briefly. Fearing foreign influence, the authorities persecuted the Christians in 1791, 1801, 1827, 1839, 1846, and 1866. In less than a hundred years about ten thousand believers were killed.

Paul Chŏng was born in 1795. In 1801 his father, Augustine Chŏng Yak-jong, and his elder brother Charles were killed; both are now Blessed. The Martyrology says that Paul led the community for twenty years in times of persecution. Many times he journeyed to Beijing to ask for priests, and with Augustine Yu Chin-gil and others he wrote to the Pope for the same purpose. In 1831 Gregory XVI established a vicariate apostolic in Korea.

In 1836 the first missionaries of the Paris Foreign Missions Society arrived. Paul helped bring Bishop Laurent Imbert into the country, and the bishop wished to ordain him a priest. During the persecution of 1839 Paul wrote a defense of the faith for the officials. He was arrested together with his mother, Cecilia Yu So-sa, and his sister Elizabeth. Bishop Imbert and the priests Pierre Maubant and Jacques Chastan gave themselves up to the persecutors to save the faithful; they were beheaded on September 21. The next day Paul and Augustine Yu were beheaded.

Andrew Kim came from a family of many martyrs; his father, Ignatius Kim Che-jun, was killed in 1839. In 1836 Father Maubant sent the fifteen-year-old Andrew to study in Macau. In 1845 he was ordained a priest in Shanghai. He returned to his country and secretly visited the communities. In 1846, while he was looking for a sea route for further missionaries, he was arrested. Asked whether he was a Catholic, he answered that he was. He was beheaded on September 16, 1846, at Saenamteo on the Han River; he was 25 years old.

In 1866 Bishops Siméon Berneux and Antoine Daveluy, five French priests, and many lay people were killed. The youngest of the 103 saints was thirteen-year-old Peter Yu Tae-ch'ŏl, the son of Augustine Yu. Pius XI beatified 79 martyrs in 1925, among them Andrew and Paul, and Paul VI another 24 in 1968. John Paul II canonized them all in Seoul on May 6, 1984. Augustine Yi Kwang-hŏn and Companions on May 24, Francis Ch'oe Kyŏng-hwan on September 12, and Cecilia Yu So-sa on November 23 also have memorials of their own.