Sinyu Persecution

Background

In late eighteenth-century Joseon, a community of faith arose around scholars of the Namin (Southerners), one of the political factions of late Joseon, who had embraced Catholicism. The court punished believers in the Eulsa Chujo incident of 1785 and the Jinsan incident of 1791. In the Jinsan incident, the abandonment of ancestral rites and the burning of ancestral tablets became the central issue, resulting in the first martyrdoms. After the Chinese priest James Zhou Wenmo entered the country at the end of 1794 and began his ministry, however, the church grew, and by around 1800 the number of believers is reported to have reached ten thousand.

King Jeongjo held that "if correct learning (jeonghak, that is, Confucianism) is made clear, heterodox learning (sahak) will disappear of its own accord," and he avoided large-scale persecution. Sahak, meaning "heterodox learning," was the term then used for Catholicism. Chae Je-gong, a chief state councillor of the Namin Sipa faction, also tacitly tolerated Catholicism. In 1799, however, Chae Je-gong died, followed by Jeongjo in 1800. When the eleven-year-old Sunjo ascended the throne, Queen Dowager Jeongsun, the second queen of King Yeongjo, assumed the regency (suryeom cheongjeong, in which a dowager queen conducts state affairs on behalf of a minor king), and the Noron Byeokpa faction seized power. The Byeokpa denounced Catholicism as a teaching that acknowledged neither parents nor king and undermined the moral order of human relationships.

Course of Events

• 10th day of the 1st lunar month, 1801: Queen Dowager Jeongsun issued a royal decree strictly prohibiting heterodox learning. She ordered that those who refused to change their minds even after admonition be punished under the law for traitors (yeongnyul). She also used the ogajaktong system, which grouped five households into a single unit, to compel the denunciation of believers; under this system of collective responsibility, if a believer was found in one household, the neighbors were also held accountable.
• 2nd lunar month: Demands for punishment continued; the censor Bak Seo-won, for example, requested that the leaders of heterodox learning be arrested and that believers be put to death. Most church leaders, including Jeong Yak-jong, were arrested, and Namin figures such as Yi Ga-hwan and Gwon Cheol-sin also fell victim.
• 3rd lunar month: Father Zhou Wenmo voluntarily presented himself at a government office and surrendered; he was later executed. Using this as a pretext, the ruling faction accused the late Chae Je-gong of having protected heterodox learning.
• 9th lunar month: Alexius Hwang Sa-yeong, who had been hiding in an earthen cave at Baeron in Jecheon, Chungcheong Province, was captured. He had intended to send Bishop Alexandre de Gouvea in Beijing a letter written on silk recounting the course of the persecution, the deeds of the martyrs, and plans for rebuilding the church. The letter also proposed ending the persecution, if necessary by enlisting the military power of Qing China or the Western nations. The court used this silk letter as evidence of treason, executed Hwang Sa-yeong, and intensified the persecution. An order stripping Chae Je-gong of his official titles was also issued around this time.
• 22nd day of the 12th lunar month: Queen Dowager Jeongsun promulgated the Tosagyomun (Proclamation for the Suppression of Heterodoxy), which defined Catholicism as heterodox learning, and thereafter prohibited further arrests of believers. The court sent envoys to Qing China to explain that it had executed Zhou Wenmo without knowing he was a Qing subject, and it transmitted the silk letter in a greatly abridged form.

Results and Impact

Many believers were executed or exiled in this persecution, though accounts of the number of victims vary among sources. Having lost its priest, the Catholic Church in Joseon sustained its community of faith through the laity alone for some thirty years, until the Gihae Persecution of 1839. Politically, the Namin faction, which had taken part in reforms under Jeongjo, was severely weakened. In 1802, when the daughter of Kim Jo-sun of the Sipa faction became Sunjo's queen, the political landscape shifted back toward the Sipa. After the Sinyu Persecution, the persecution of Catholics in Joseon continued, including the Byeongin Persecution.

Assessment

• Historians view the Sinyu Persecution as both a religious persecution and a political purge in which the Byeokpa eliminated their rivals. They point to the fact that many of the victims were Namin who had led reforms under Jeongjo, and that deliberations on stripping Chae Je-gong of his titles proceeded at the same time.
• Assessments of Hwang Sa-yeong's silk letter are divided. The court of the time regarded it as treason aimed at bringing in foreign troops. Catholics value it as a record bearing witness to the injustice of the persecution and appealing for religious freedom, and some regard it as the first document in Korean history to seek the separation of politics and religion. The original silk letter is now held by the Holy See in Rome.
• The Sinyu Persecution belongs to the history of Catholicism in Korea. Because it was an event in which Christian faith came into direct conflict with the Confucian order before the arrival of Protestant missionaries, however, it is also treated in studies of the history of Korean Christianity as a whole.