Shrine of the Martyrs of Korea (Jeoldusan, Seoul)

From the "silkworm mount" to the "mount of decapitation"

The promontory originally bore a peaceful name: Jamdubong (잠두봉), the "silkworm-head peak", because its shape, seen from the river, recalled a silkworm raising its head.^[5] It was a popular promenade spot, overlooking the Han River from a steep cliff. The persecution of 1866 gave it its other name, kept in Catholic memory: Jeoldusan (절두산, 切頭山), literally "mount where heads are cut off".^[6][7]

The shrine stands today in Hapjeong-dong, in the district of Mapo, on the north bank of the Han, immediately next to the Yanghwajin Foreigners' Cemetery where the first Protestant missionaries and Western diplomats rest.^[8] The cliff, once isolated outside the city, is now enclosed within the metropolis of Seoul, skirted by the riverside expressways, a few steps from Hapjeong metro station.^[9]

Why here? The 1866 persecution and the French expedition

In 1866, the regent Heungseon Daewongun unleashed the most violent of the Korean persecutions, the Byeong-in persecution. After the execution of nine French missionaries of the Paris Foreign Missions Society, France sent a punitive naval expedition which sailed up the Han River as far as Yanghwajin, quite close to Jamdubong.^[10] For the Korean authorities, the intrusion of foreign ships by way of the river was a humiliation: according to the account reported by the Korea Times, it was then decreed that the waters of the Han, soiled by this coming, had in some way to be washed clean by the blood of the Catholics, followers of the doctrine come from the West.^[11]

That is how the silkworm cliff became a place of execution. Christians were led there, beheaded at the edge of the precipice, and their bodies thrown into the river, so that no burial could become a place of worship.^[12] Estimates of the total number of martyrs of 1866 range from three thousand to ten thousand; for Jeoldusan itself, the shrine's custodians hold to a cautious figure of about 177 executed, of whom only twenty-nine are documented — twenty-four identified by their baptismal name, age, occupation and date of death, and five remaining unknown.^[13][14]

This story — the persecutions of 1791, 1801, 1839, 1846 and 1866, the martyrdom of the French and Korean priests — belongs to the dossier of the persecutions and to the biography of the saints, treated elsewhere.^[15][16] Here, only one thing matters: the place comes from the blood — it is because Christians died on this cliff that a shrine was raised there.

The transformation of the place of torment into a modern shrine took place within a decade, as the hundredth anniversary of the 1866 persecution approached.

Purchase of the land and the 1962 monument

After the Korean War, the Catholic Church undertook to acquire the cliff of Jeoldusan, from 1956 onward, to shield this place of memory from Seoul's galloping urbanisation.^[17] In 1962, a first monument to the martyrs was raised there, officially marking the promontory as a land of Christian witness.^[18][19] The gesture belonged to a broader rediscovery of the Korean martyrs, carried by the beatifications of 1925 (seventy-nine martyrs) and of 1968 (twenty-four further martyrs).^[20]

An architecture competition for the centenary

As the centenary of the 1866 persecution approached, the Church of Korea organised a public competition for the design of the church to be raised on the cliff. The requirement was demanding: the project had to preserve the original state of the site, without disfiguring the martyrs' rock.^[21] The winning design was that of the Korean architect Lee Hee-tae (1925–1981), professor and one of the most active Catholic church designers of his time.^[22][23]

The 1967 opening

The church and the memorial hall were opened in October 1967, for the hundredth anniversary of the 1866 persecution.^[24][25] From the outset, the building was conceived as an inseparable whole: a church for prayer, a memorial and a museum for remembrance, a crypt for the relics. The following year, in 1968, the martyrs' relics were solemnly enshrined beneath the church, completing the making of the place into a living reliquary.^[26][27]

The church of Jeoldusan is one of the most recognizable in Korea. Far from imitating a European church, Lee Hee-tae sought a properly Korean form, attuned to mourning and to the country.

The silhouette of a gat

The building has a singular round architecture, set at the top of the cliff facing the river.^[28][29] Its roof recalls a gat (갓), the traditional Korean hat once worn by scholars and at funerals; its pillars recall those of traditional Korean palaces.^[30] The whole, stripped bare, comprises, in the official description, "only the space necessary for the church's function, without superfluous installations or decorations".^[31] This sobriety is itself a tribute: nothing must distract from the martyrs' rock.

A building facing the river

The church directly overlooks the Han River, from the top of the very cliff on which the condemned were beheaded.^[32] Visitors standing on the forecourt take in at a glance the waters into which the bodies were thrown: the architecture does not hide the place of torment, it frames it. In 1997, the value of the site was recognised by the Korean state, which listed it as Historic Site No. 399.^[33]

On the lower level of the church stands the Museum of the Catholic Martyrs of Korea, also opened in 1967 for the centenary. It is one of the country's most important religious museums, rich in about five thousand pieces, gathered for the most part through donations.^[34]

From founding books to instruments of torment

The museum keeps major pieces of the history of Korean Catholicism. There can be seen the treatise of the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci, De Deo verax disputatio (the True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven), which served as the first introduction to the Catholic faith in the Joseon kingdom; the journals of Father Thomas Choe Yang-eop, the second Korean priest after Saint Andrew Kim Taegon; and the testimony of Pierre Park Soon-jip, a precious document which made it possible to identify some of the martyrs of the 1866 persecution.^[35] Beside these archives, maps, biographies of martyrs and sacred objects of the persecuted stand alongside the instruments of execution and torture used against the Christians — sabres, planks, shackles — making the visit a gripping descent into the history of martyrdom.^[36][37]

The crypt of the relics

Beneath the church, the crypt has enshrined the martyrs' relics since 1968; the shrine today keeps about three thousand of them.^[38] Among them, pilgrims venerate a relic of Saint Andrew Kim Taegon (1821–1846), the first Korean priest, beheaded at the age of twenty-five during the 1846 persecution — not at Jeoldusan, but at the Saenamteo execution ground.^[39][40] Bringing his memory to Jeoldusan makes the shrine a national centre gathering devotion to all the Korean martyrs, beyond the 1866 site alone.

On the esplanade around the church unfolds a veritable open-air memorial walk. A large bronze statue of Saint Andrew Kim Taegon welcomes pilgrims there, tutelary figure of the first priest and patron of the Korean clergy, surrounded by stelae, a commemorative pagoda and monuments dedicated to the martyrs.^[41][42] The forecourt, open to the river, extends the church: there people pray, meditate the Way of the Cross, and contemplate the cliff. It is there, in the open air, that the crowds gather on days of great pilgrimage, when the round church can no longer hold them.

John Paul II at Jeoldusan (1984)

The most glorious moment of the shrine was the coming of John Paul II in 1984. Arriving in Korea on 3 May 1984, the Pope made Jeoldusan his first stop, coming to pray on the martyrs' rock as soon as he reached Seoul.^[43][44] Three days later, on 6 May 1984, he canonized one hundred and three Korean martyrs at a giant Mass on the Yeouido esplanade in Seoul — ninety-three Koreans and ten Frenchmen of the Paris Foreign Missions Society.^[45] For the first time in modern history, a canonization was taking place outside Rome, on the very land of martyrdom.^[46] Before the new saints, the Pope greeted the young Korean Church:

"From this good seed was born the first Christian community in Korea, a community unique in the history of the Church by reason of the fact that it was founded entirely by lay people. This fledgling Church, so young and yet so strong in faith, withstood wave after wave of fierce persecution." — John Paul II, homily for the canonization of the 103 martyrs of Korea, Yeouido, 6 May 1984^[47]

The following year, in 1985, Mother Teresa of Calcutta in turn came to pray at Jeoldusan, adding to the shrine the lustre of her own holiness.^[48]

Francis and the network of Seoul's high places

Jeoldusan does not stand alone: it belongs to a network of high places of martyrdom spread across Seoul. The shrine of Seosomun, at the old west gate of the capital, is where the greatest number of canonized and beatified martyrs were executed; Saenamteo, on the Han, is where Andrew Kim Taegon was beheaded in 1846; Yakhyeon houses Korea's first Western-style church.^[49][50] In 2014, Pope Francis came to Korea for this network of memory: on 16 August 2014, he prayed at the shrine of Seosomun, then beatified one hundred and twenty-four martyrs — Paul Yun Ji-chung and his companions — on the great square of Gwanghwamun, before an immense crowd.^[51] Although Francis did not go to Jeoldusan itself, his visit consecrated the whole network of shrines of which Jeoldusan remains the centrepiece.

The national shrine of the martyrs

Jeoldusan is today regarded as the national shrine of the martyrs of Korea, a pilgrimage goal for the whole country and for many foreign visitors.^[52] People come there for Mass, for the open-air Way of the Cross, for prayer before the relics and for a visit to the museum. The blood of the martyrs is presented there, in Tertullian's phrase often repeated about Korea, as the seed of Christians: the Korean Church, born of lay people and tempered in persecution, has become one of the most vibrant in Asia.^[53]

September, month of the martyrs

The Church of Korea devotes the month of September to the memory of the martyrs, with pilgrimages to the high places of witness — Jeoldusan, Seosomun, Saenamteo, Solmoe, Haemi.^[54] The liturgical feast of Saint Andrew Kim Taegon, Saint Paul Chong Hasang and their companions, fixed on 20 September, is the summit of this national devotion, celebrated with particular fervour at the shrine of Jeoldusan.^[55]

Graces and the sobriety of the Church

Like every great place of martyrdom, Jeoldusan gathers accounts of graces obtained through the intercession of the martyrs. But the shrine does not rest on a collection of wonders: its strength lies in the historical reality of the martyrdom, attested by the archives, the relics and the testimonies kept in the museum. People come there to honour witnesses, not to chase the marvellous — a sobriety that belongs to the very character of the place.

Jeoldusan is neither a Gothic cathedral nor a Roman basilica: it is a Korean cliff, a "mount of decapitation" from which the martyrs' blood flowed into the Han River. Everything there leads back to the Church's most ancient continuity: building the altar on the site of the witness, praying above the relics, making the stone a reliquary. The church shaped like a mourning hat says that the Gospel has taken on Korea's flesh; the museum says that this martyrdom is not a legend but a documented history; the crypt says that life given has become a source.

John Paul II's words in 1984 sum up the shrine's vocation: to remember a Church "founded entirely by lay people" and tempered in persecution, so that Asia's young Christianity may draw from it the strength of a witness stronger than death. That is what the pilgrims who come to pray on the banks of the Han seek there every September: not wonders first, but the certainty that, on this rock, the blood of the martyrs has become seed.^[56]

Related Ignispedia articles

• The Church in Korea — the history of Korean Catholicism, the persecutions of 1791 to 1866 and the biography of the canonized martyrs.
• Uganda Martyrs Shrine — the other great shrine built on a place of martyrdom, at Namugongo near Kampala.
• La Vang Shrine — the great Marian shrine of Vietnam, another Asian land marked by persecution.
• Our Lady of Naju — a contemporary Korean Marian phenomenon, judged non-supernatural by the Church.
• Why venerate relics? — the Catholic doctrine of relics and of shrines built over the tomb of witnesses.

Main sources

• Jeoldu-san, en.wikipedia.org — location on the Han River, foundation in 1967 for the centenary of 1866, relics (about 3,000), visits of John Paul II (1984) and Mother Teresa (1985).
• The Jeoldusan Martyrs Shrine, english.seoul.go.kr — origin of the name (Jamdubong / Jeoldusan), architecture competition, architect Lee Hee-tae, sobriety of the building, Historic Site No. 399 listing (1997).
• Korean Catholic Martyrs' Museum, The Korea Herald — 1967 opening, architect professor, about 5,000 objects, Matteo Ricci's treatise, Choe Yang-eop's journals, Park Soon-jip's testimony, 177 executed / 24 identified.
• Jeoldusan Martyrs' Shrine, The Korea Times — gat-shaped silhouette, 1866 context (French expedition, "purifying the Han with blood"), purchase of the land, 1962 monument, 1967 church, John Paul II's visit.
• Korean Martyrs, en.wikipedia.org — persecutions of 1791–1866, 103 martyrs canonized on 6 May 1984 at Yeouido, 124 beatified on 16 August 2014 at Gwanghwamun, Andrew Kim Taegon.
• Vatican.va — homily of John Paul II for the canonization of the 103 martyrs of Korea (6 May 1984).