Magdalene Kim Ŏb-i

Magdalene Kim Ŏb-i, known in Korean as Kim Ŏb-i Magdalene, was a Catholic laywoman of the Joseon kingdom and one of the 103 Korean Martyrs of the Roman Catholic Church. She was born in 1774 in Seoul. The Catholic faith had entered Korea only a few years before her birth, when Yi Sŭng-hun was baptized in Beijing in 1784 and returned to form a community of scholars and commoners who studied Christian books in secret. For decades the Korean Church had no resident priests, relying on lay leadership and occasional contact with the diocese of Beijing. The Joseon state regarded Christianity as a heterodox teaching that undermined Confucian ritual, especially the ancestral rites, and therefore as a political as well as a religious offense.

Kim Ŏb-i lived through the first great storm against the Church, the Sinyu persecution of 1801, in which many leading Catholics were executed and the community was driven deeper underground. Surviving records of her personal life are limited. Church notices describe her as a woman of steadfast piety who held to the faith over many years of danger. The acts of the Korean martyrs, compiled from interrogations and from the testimony of fellow Catholics, generally give ages, places of execution, and the fact of refusal to apostatize, rather than full family histories. Accordingly, details of her household, possible marriage, and occupation are not securely established in the sources commonly used by historians and hagiographers.

The Kihae persecution of 1839 was ordered during the reign of King Hŏnjong, while the queen dowager Sunwon acted as regent. Informers and police sought out Catholics in the capital and the provinces. Prisoners were repeatedly beaten, hung by the arms, and pressed to trample on a crucifix or to denounce companions. Magdalene Kim Ŏb-i was arrested in the course of this campaign. Traditional accounts state that she endured torture without denying Christ and that she encouraged other prisoners to remain firm.

She was sentenced to death and beheaded on 26 September 1839 outside the Small West Gate, or Sŏsomun, of Seoul, a site used for the public execution of many Catholics. She was approximately sixty-six years old. A number of other Korean Christians, including several women, were put to death in the same period of the persecution. Their remains were often recovered in secret by the faithful and later honored as relics.

The Holy See examined the causes of the Korean martyrs in the twentieth century. Pope Pius XI beatified seventy-nine of them, including Magdalene Kim Ŏb-i, on 5 July 1925. Pope Paul VI beatified a further twenty-four in 1968. Pope John Paul II canonized all 103 in a Mass celebrated in Seoul on 6 May 1984, during his apostolic visit to Korea. The group is commemorated in the General Roman Calendar on 20 September, the feast of Saint Andrew Kim Taegŏn, Saint Paul Chŏng Hasang, and companions. Magdalene Kim Ŏb-i is venerated as a martyr who witnessed to the Catholic faith under the Joseon persecutions of the nineteenth century.