John Yi Mun-u

John Yi Mun-u (Korean: 이문우 요한) was a nineteenth-century Korean Catholic layman who died as a martyr during the Joseon dynasty’s persecution of Christians. He was born in 1810 in Seoul. Catholicism in Korea at that time was a largely lay-led community that had begun in the 1780s when Korean scholars encountered Jesuit writings from China; the first Korean baptized in Beijing returned to form a church without resident clergy for many years. Yi Mun-u grew up in this milieu. His father died during his childhood, and his mother raised him in the faith. Contemporary and later hagiographical accounts describe him as generous to the poor and deeply attached to Catholic practice in a society where that faith was illegal.

The Gihae persecution of 1839, ordered by the Joseon court, produced a large number of arrests, tortures, and executions of Catholics, both Korean and the few foreign missionaries then in the country. During this period Yi Mun-u undertook dangerous works of charity. He is particularly remembered for recovering the bodies of executed Catholics and giving them burial, an act that both fulfilled a corporal work of mercy and defied government policy of exposing the corpses of those deemed criminals. He also aided imprisoned believers and their families. These activities led to his arrest.

In prison he underwent interrogation and torture intended to make him renounce Christianity. He remained steadfast. On 1 February 1840 he was beheaded in Seoul. He was about thirty years old. Like many of the Korean martyrs of 1839–1840, he was a layperson rather than a priest or religious.

The Holy See examined the causes of the Korean martyrs in the early twentieth century. Yi Mun-u was among the seventy-nine martyrs beatified by Pope Pius XI on 5 July 1925. On 6 May 1984 Pope John Paul II canonized the 103 Korean Martyrs, including Yi Mun-u, at a Mass celebrated in Seoul. Their collective feast day in the General Roman Calendar is 20 September. Surviving biographical detail for Yi Mun-u, as for many of the lay martyrs, is limited; Korean Catholic tradition preserves the memory of his charity, especially toward the dead, and his constancy under torture.