Paul Chong Hasang

Life

Chong Hasang was born in 1795 in the Yanggeun area of Gyeonggi Province, the second son of Chong Yak-jong (Augustine) and Yu So-sa (Cecilia). Sources differ on his exact birthplace; some name Majae, while others name Bunwon. He was a nephew of Chong Yak-yong. During the Sinyu Persecution of 1801 (a large-scale campaign in which the royal court arrested and executed Catholics), his father and his elder brother, Chong Cheol-sang, were executed. After the family's property was confiscated, he lived in hardship with his mother and his sister, Chong Jeong-hye (Elizabeth), depending on relatives for support. According to tradition, those relatives shunned him because he refused to abandon the faith.

During the Gihae Persecution of 1839, he was arrested and interrogated several times. On September 22 of that year, he was beheaded outside Seosomun Gate together with the interpreter Yu Jin-gil. He was forty-four years old. His mother and sister also lost their lives in the same persecution.

Ministry and Achievements

• Campaign to obtain clergy: Because persecution had left the church without a single priest, he believed that clergy were essential to rebuilding it. After his first journey to Beijing in 1816, he is reported to have traveled to Beijing nine times, joining Korean diplomatic missions as a servant, in order to ask the Bishop of Beijing to send missionaries.
• Letter to the pope: In 1825, together with Yu Jin-gil and others, he sent a letter to the pope in the name of the Korean faithful, requesting that clergy be sent. The letter was translated into Latin and delivered in 1827 to the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (the curial department responsible for missions). It is credited with contributing to the establishment of the Vicariate Apostolic of Korea (a type of jurisdiction established in mission territories) in 1831.
• Assisting the entry of missionaries: He helped the Chinese priest Father Yu Bang-je (Pacifico Liu), the French missionaries Father Maubant and Father Chastan, and Bishop Imbert enter Korea secretly. He studied for the priesthood under Bishop Imbert, but persecution prevented his ordination.
• Sang Jaesang Seo: Anticipating his arrest, he wrote in advance a statement addressed to the prime minister. A short text of some two thousand characters, it explains Catholic teaching and argues that the persecution was unjust. The Catholic Church regards it as the first apologetic work (a writing in defense of the faith) written by a Korean.

Influence on the Korean Church

The Catholic Church regards Chong Hasang as a leading example of the laity guiding the church and maintaining contact with the outside world during a period without clergy. In 1981 his remains were moved and enshrined at Hanam and at the Cheonjinam shrine. Each year on September 20, the Catholic Church celebrates the Solemnity of Saint Andrew Kim Taegon, Saint Paul Chong Hasang, and Companions, Martyrs. His name appears in the title because he is regarded as the representative saint of the laity. Protestantism, by contrast, does not venerate or canonize saints (canonization being the church's formal declaration of a person as a saint) and therefore does not honor him as a saint. Protestant accounts treat him as a historical figure within the history of the Catholic Church in Korea and the persecution of Catholics in Joseon.

Assessment

The Catholic Church esteems him as a leader who rebuilt the church and led the effort to establish the Vicariate Apostolic of Korea, and it regards the Sang Jaesang Seo as a reasoned defense of the faith in the face of persecution. He was beatified in 1925, and in 1984, during the bicentennial of the Catholic Church in Korea, John Paul II canonized him in Korea as one of the 103 Korean Martyrs. The Joseon court of the time, however, regarded the secret importation of Western missionaries as a grave crime in violation of the kingdom's prohibitions. Yu Jin-gil, who was interrogated alongside him, countered that the missionaries had been brought in only because they were indispensable to the rites of the faith and that there had been no intention of overthrowing the state.