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Biography

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Joseph Cho Yun-ho was a Korean Catholic layman and martyr of the nineteenth century, numbered among the 103 Korean Martyr Saints. He was born in 1848 at Sinchang in Chungcheong province, in Joseon Korea, into a Catholic family. His father was Peter Cho Hwa-so, who would later be martyred with him. Catholicism had been introduced to Korea in the late eighteenth century and remained illegal under Joseon law; believers typically practiced in secret and faced recurrent waves of persecution. Joseph was baptized as a child and raised in this underground Catholic milieu. Contemporary hagiographical accounts describe him as a devout young man who remained attached to the faith of his household during a period when discovery could mean imprisonment, torture, or death.

In 1866 the Byeongin persecution broke out under the regency of Heungseon Daewongun, one of the most severe anti-Catholic campaigns in Korean history. Large numbers of clergy and laity were arrested. Peter Cho Hwa-so was seized for being a Catholic. Joseph, then about eighteen years old, went to the authorities and openly declared himself a believer, choosing to share his father's imprisonment rather than remain at liberty. Father and son were transferred to Jeonju in Jeolla province. There they were interrogated and tortured in an effort to force them to recant. Officials are said to have tried to break Joseph by claiming, falsely, that his father had already apostatized, in the hope that the son would follow. Joseph refused. The two men encouraged one another in prison.

On 23 December 1866 they were taken to the execution ground at Supjeongi in Jeonju and beheaded. Joseph was about eighteen years of age. He was a layman, not a member of a religious order, and the surviving notices of his life do not record a spouse or children. His death belongs to the wider company of Korean Catholics killed in 1866, whose witness the Church later recognized together with earlier martyrs of 1839 and 1846.

Joseph Cho Yun-ho was beatified by Pope Paul VI on 6 October 1968 among a group of twenty-four Korean martyrs of 1866, and was canonized by Pope John Paul II on 6 May 1984 in Seoul, together with the 103 Korean Martyrs. The Roman Martyrology and the general liturgical calendar commemorate Andrew Kim Taegon, Paul Chong Hasang, and their companions on 20 September. He is venerated as a young lay martyr who freely presented himself to the authorities rather than deny the faith, and as an example of filial loyalty joined to Christian confession in nineteenth-century Korea.

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