The Origin of the Roman Catholic Church in Korea: An Examination of Popular and Governmental Responses to Catholic Missions in the Late Chosôn Dynasty (review)

Although there are several other scholarly works which examine the history of the first century of the Roman Catholic Church in Korea (the late eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth), this work uniquely places specific emphasis on the conflict of values between the Neo-Confucian establishment of late Chosôn Korea who held filial piety as a core value, and Roman Catholic Christians who strove to avoid the practice of idolatry. Based on the author's Harvard doctoral dissertation, the book principally uses Korean primary sources, including state documents, rather than Western sources (i.e., Roman Catholic documentary material produced in the late nineteenth century for the beatification of the early Korean martyrs) as has been the case heretofore. The story which the author describes is well known in its general outlines, but no other author has discussed the conflict of values in the detail which is provided here, nor have Korean sources been so extensively used before in an English-language work. Without question, this book is the one book which any scholar not conversant with the Korean language should turn to for detailed, primary information about the early Church—how early converts dealt with the question of the conflict of values, how they faced martyrdom. The extensive information given about the early converts is complemented by a further wealth of detailed material, including substantial quotations, giving the views of Korean government officials and Confucian scholars about the early Catholics and their teachings. These extended quotations vividly show the abhorrence with which Christianity was held because it was perceived to contravene the core Confucian value of filial piety, and thus undermined the moral pillars of society. An important contribution made by the author is the full discussion of the close family ties and interconnected social relations which bound together the first generations of Catholics. No other author writing in English has provided the level of genealogical analysis as has Dr. Choi. Complementing this written information in the text is a unique series of genealogical tables illustrating the family ties between the various converts. The chapters of the book follow the accepted periodization of the first century of Korean Catholicism, but the work ends with a comparison of the great persecutions of 1801 and 1866. Given that much of early Catholic history in Korea is a history of persecution, the analysis of the differences between these two persecutions is an important contribution of the book.

Unfortunately, this valuable book suffers from several defects. Generally the level of proofreading is poor, with a particular lack of editorial correction of sentences and phrasing which are not natural English. This fault makes it difficult at times to catch the author's exact meaning. The valuable genealogical tables are reproduced in a poor font, are much too small to read with ease, and are not printed in a dark ink. Curiously, the appendix is simply a repetition of a portion of a chapter in the book. Why was this not caught editorially? It is also curious that there is no index to this book even though there is a good glossary with Chinese characters which could have formed the basis of an index.

For all its defects, this book is an important contribution to understanding the first phase of Christianity in Korea, and is valuable to scholars wanting to make comparisons with the Catholic Church in other Asian nations.