‘In their madness they chase the wind’: The Catholic Church and the Afterlife in Late Chosŏn Korea

¹ Interestingly Daoism, the third of the three ‘pillars’ of religion in China, did not develop as a distinct tradition in Korea, although it influenced both geomancy and magic: Grayson, J. H., Korea: A Religious History, 2nd edn (London, 2002), 51–52 ; Yim, Suk-jay, Janelli, R. L. and Janelli, Dawnhee Yim, ‘Korean Religion’, in Kitagawa, J. M., ed., The Religious Traditions of Asia (London and New York, 1989), 333–46 , at 333.

² Deuchler, M., The Confucian Transformation of Korea: A Study of Society and Ideology (Cambridge, MA, 1992), 27, 126–28, 286–87 ; Grayson, , Korea, 83, 103–04, 112–13 ; Walraven, B., ‘Popular Religion in a Confucianized Society’, in Haboush, JaHyun Kim and Deuchler, M., eds, Culture and the Slate in Late Chosŏn Korea (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 160–98 , at 161.

³ Grayson, , Korea, 120–23, 137–38 ; Walraven, , ‘Religion’, 160, 167.

⁴ Deuchler, , Transformation, 13, 302 ; Palmer, S.J., Korea and Christianity: The Problem of Identification with Tradition (Seoul, 1986), 44.

⁵ Grayson, , Korea, 139 ; Walraven, , ‘Religion’, 197.

⁶ D. L. Baker, ‘Tasan’s World: Korea on the Eve of a Monotheistic Revolution’ (type script), 4. I am grateful to Dr Baker for providing me with a copy of this paper and for allowing me to cite from it.

⁷ Baker, D. L., ‘A Different Thread: Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy, and Catholicism in a Confucian World’, in Haboush, Kim and Deuchler, , eds, Culture, 199–230 , at 210–12; idem, ‘A Confucian Confronts Catholicism: Truth Collides with Morality in Eighteenth Century Korea’, Korean Studies Forum 6 (1979-80), 1–44 , at 6.

⁸ On ancestral rites, see, in this volume, Paul Rule, ‘The Chinese Rites Controversy: Confucian and Christian Views on the Afterlife’, 280–300.

⁹ Grayson, , Korea, 102.

¹⁰ Walraven, , ‘Religion’, 163–64.

¹¹ Ching, J., ‘East Asian Religions’, in Oxtoby, W. G., ed., World Religions: Eastern Traditions (Toronto, 1996), 346–467 , at 396; Yao, Xinzhong, An Introduction to Confucianism (Cambridge, 2000), 201.

¹² Dallet, C., Histoire de l’église de Corée, précédée d’une introduction sur l’histoire, les institutions, la langue, les moeurs et coutumes coréennes: avec carte et planches, 2 vols (Paris, 1874; repr. Seoul, 1975), 1:cxli;Deuchler, Transformation, 197.

¹³ Dallet, Histoire, 1: cxliii.

¹⁴ Baker, , ‘Confucian’, 11 ; idem, ‘The Martyrdom of Paul Yun: Western Religion and Eastern Ritual in Eighteenth Century Korea’, Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch 54 (1979), 33–58 , at 44–47; Ch’oe, Ki-bok, ‘La rencontre du confucianisme et du catholicisme en Corée: Les conséquences de la “querelle des rites”’, trans. ŭng-yŏl, An, Revue de Corée 16(1984), 21–41 , at 33–34, 36–37.

¹⁵ Walraven, , ‘Religion’, 164, 166.

¹⁶ Ibid. 175–76, 189–91.

¹⁷ Ibid. 170–71, 182.

¹⁸ Ibid. 167.

¹⁹ Harvey, P., An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices (Cambridge, 1990). 37–39. 47–48, 61–62.

²⁰ Amore, R. C. and Ching, J., ‘The Buddhist Tradition’, in Oxtoby, , ed., Eastern Traditions, 214–345 , at 268–69.

²¹ Lee, Younghee, ‘Hell and Other Karmic Consequences: A Buddhist Vernacular Song’, in Buswell, R., ed., Religions of Korea in Practice (Princeton, NJ, 2007), 100–11 , at 103; Walraven, B., ‘Eighteenth-Century Buddhist Beliefs and Practice in Yŏmbul pogwŏnmun ’, in Sancho, I. et al., eds, Proceedings of the 30th Anniversary Conference of the Association for Korean Studies in Europe (Dourdan, 2007), 81–84 , at 83.

²² Deuchler, , Transformation, 197–98 ; Le, , ‘Hell’, 104.

²³ Amore, and Ching, , ‘Tradition’, 306 ; Harvey, , Buddhism, 133.

²⁴ The advent of this age was dated to fifteen hundred years after the death of Gautama Buddha, and for Korean and Japanese Buddhists the ‘period of the latter-day Dharma’ (Japanese: mappō) had begun in 1052; the calculations made by the Chinese Pure Land patriarch, Tao-ch’o, however, dated its inception to 549: Harvey, , Buddhism, 153, 162 ; Lancaster, L., ‘Maitreya in Korea’, in Sponberg, A. and Hardacre, H., eds, Maitreya, the Future Buddha (Cambridge, 1988), 135–53 , at 141.

²⁵ Amore, and Ching, , ‘Tradition’, 274–75 ; Harvey, , Buddhism, 131.

²⁶ Ch’en, K.K.S., Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey (Princeton, NJ, 1964), 338–39.

²⁷ Walraven, , ‘Beliefs’, 82–83.

²⁸ Min, Kyong-suk, Catholic Socio-Religious Survey of Korea, Part I: Findings of Content Analysis, The Spiritual Ethos of Korean Catholicism, 2 vols (Seoul, 1971), 1: 34–35 . Initially dependent on the Diocese of Beijing, Korea became a Vicariate Apostolic of the Société des Missions Étrangères de Paris in 1831, and French missionaries began to enter the country from 1836.

²⁹ Gibson, R., A Social History of French Catholicism, 1789–1914 (London, 1989), 15, 22–23, 26–28, 242, 245–48 ; Min, , Survey, 1:9–14, 18.

³⁰ Dallet, , Histoire, 2: 169.

³¹ Ibid. 2: 164, 235–38.

³² Ibid. 2: 115.

³³ Baker, , ‘Confucian’, 12 ; idem, ‘Paul Yun’, 46, 48, 53.

³⁴ Yi, Wŏn-sun, ‘The Sirhak Scholars’ Perspectives of Sŏhak in the Late Chosŏn Society’, trans. Kim, Yun-sŏng, in Yu, Chai-shin, ed., The Founding of Catholic Tradition in Korea (Mississauga, Ont., 1996), 45–102 , at 54–55, 59, 61–65.

³⁵ Walraven, , ‘Beliefs’, 82, 84 ; idem, ‘Religion’, 185–88, 197 . It is possible that up to two-thirds of the laity were women: Sawa, Masahiko, Mikan Chōsen Kirisutokyōshi [A History of Korean Christianity (Unfinished Work)] (Tokyo, 1991), 60.

³⁶ Baker, , ‘Different Thread’, 220, 230 ; idem, ‘Paul Yun’, 49.

³⁷ Baker, , ‘Paul Yun’, 48, 51, 53–55.

³⁸ Annales de la Propagation de la Foi 11 (Lyon, 1838–39), 353; Dallet, Histoire, 1: 55, 103, 136, 305, 321; 2: 64, 236.

³⁹ Dallet, Histoire, 2: 144, 146, 149, 163–64, 200.

⁴⁰ See for example, ibid. 2: 171, 193–94, 198.

⁴¹ Ibid. 2:194.

⁴² Ibid. 2: 193, 226,328.

⁴³ Ibid. 2: 139–40, 170, 198.

⁴⁴ Brown, P. R. L., The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (London, 1981), 62, 70, 72–73, 80 ; Dallet, , Histoire, 2: 236.

⁴⁵ Sŭngjŏngwŏn, [The Royal Secretariat [of the Chosŏn kingdom]], Sŭngyŏngwŏn Ilgi [Diary of the Royal Secretariat] (Seoul, 1975), 117: 945, 952 ; Seoul, Mission de, Documents relatifs aux martyrs de Corée de 1839 et 1846 (Hong Kong, 1924), 7–9, 49, 54–55.

⁴⁶ Seoul, Mission de, Documents, 3 ; Sŭngjŏhgwŏn, , Ilgi, 117: 917 ; Dallet, , Histoire, 2: 137.

⁴⁷ Ching, J., Confucianism and Christianity: A Comparative Study (Tokyo, 1977), 87.

⁴⁸ Harvey, , Buddhism, 203. This tradition, however, appears most pronounced within Vietnamese Buddhism, and the example generally cited is that of the self-immolation of Buddhist monks protesting against the Diem regime in 1963: Amore and Ching, ‘Tradition’, 329–31; Fitzgerald, F., Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (New York, 1972), 129–34.

⁴⁹ Baker, , ‘Paul Yun’, 55 ; Min, Survey, 13.

⁵⁰ Seoul, Mission de, Documents, 1-2 ; Sŭngjŏngwŏn, , Ilgi, 117: 917 . The Chinese, mi ran sui feng, translated as ‘ils suivent le vent’, conveys the sense of following a trend or a fancy. I am grateful to Kejun Yan, formerly of the London School of Economics, for explaining the meaning of this phrase.

⁵¹ Seoul, Mission de, Documents, 3 ; Sŭngjŏngwŏn, , Ilgi, 117: 917.