John Baptist Chŏn Chang-un

John Baptist Chŏn Chang-un was a Korean Catholic layman and martyr of the nineteenth century, later numbered among the 103 Korean Martyrs canonized by the Catholic Church. He was born in 1811 in Seoul, capital of the Joseon kingdom, at a time when the practice of Catholicism had been prohibited by royal decree and was punishable by death. From the late eighteenth century, Catholicism had spread in Korea largely through books and lay initiative, without a resident hierarchy for many years. Korean Catholics of Chŏn Chang-un’s generation therefore lived their faith in secrecy, gathering in private houses and depending on clandestine texts for catechesis, prayer in the absence of priests, and the preservation of doctrine. The Joseon state regarded the new religion as subversive of Confucian ritual, ancestral rites, and political loyalty, and launched repeated persecutions across the nineteenth century.

Chŏn Chang-un became known for a specialized and highly dangerous craft: the casting of metal movable type with which Catholic books could be printed in Korean and classical Chinese. Together with the layman Peter Ch'oe Hyŏng, he produced type and printed religious works when mere possession of such books was a capital offense. After the martyrdom of Korea’s first native priest, Andrew Kim Taegŏn, in 1846, and amid long intervals when foreign missionaries were few or absent, the underground community relied on printed catechisms, prayer books, and instructional texts. The metal-type printing undertaken by Chŏn Chang-un and his companion thus stood at the center of the Church’s survival in Joseon. It also made both men conspicuous targets once the authorities determined to destroy Catholic networks and confiscate their literature.

In 1866 the Byeongin persecution broke out under the regency of the Heungseon Daewongun, who sought to eradicate Catholicism and to close the country to Western influence after the appearance of foreign vessels and the activity of French missionaries of the Paris Foreign Missions Society. Chŏn Chang-un was arrested in connection with the printing of Catholic books. He was interrogated and tortured. Accounts drawn from the later beatification process hold that he refused to renounce the faith or to betray fellow Catholics. Condemned for the practice of Christianity, he was put to death in Seoul in 1866, at about fifty-five years of age. His execution belonged to a large wave of killings that year which claimed French bishops and priests as well as Korean clergy, catechists, and laity, and which left a lasting mark on the memory of the Korean Church.

Chŏn Chang-un was beatified on 6 October 1968 by Pope Paul VI, among Korean martyrs associated chiefly with the 1866 persecution, and was canonized on 6 May 1984 by Pope John Paul II in Seoul, together with Andrew Kim Taegŏn, Paul Chŏng Hasang, and one hundred companions. The canonization, celebrated on Korean soil during the first papal visit to the country, presented the 103 martyrs as witnesses to a Church that had grown under prohibition. The group is commemorated in the liturgical calendar on 20 September. Chŏn Chang-un is remembered as a lay artisan who placed a technical skill at the service of an illegal Church and who accepted death rather than abandon that faith.