Franklin Rausch

10.18399/acta.2012.15.1.003

Catholicism Chosŏn Dynasty Religious Violence Rebellion Animals

In 1839, on the twelfth day of the fourth month, after suffering torture and an imprisonment of three years, Magdalene Kim Ŏbi, a commoner widow in her sixties, was beheaded for practicing Catholicism. As an elderly widow, she was supposed to receive special protection from her government. How then did the Chosŏn state justify killing her? In order to answer this question, this article will survey public proclamations against Catholicism issued in 1801, 1839, 1866, and 1881. In the course of this article, I will argue that these edicts created an image of Catholics and the religion they followed as such a serious threat that their executions were necessary for the good of the state, the civilization it defended, and the people it governed. In particular, I will contend that Catholics were primarily portrayed as rebels and animals, rhetorically transforming them from subjects deserving protection to dangerous beasts needing to be slaughtered. These portrayals not only justified the violent suppression of Catholicism, but also provided a useful foil against which the state could justify its own rule, presenting itself as the beleaguered defender of true civilization against bestial, rebellious followers of an evil religion and therefore the center around which the people of Chosŏn must rally around and to which they must give their ultimate loyalty. In turn, these extreme images helped drive the suppressions, making them more expansive and intense than they might otherwise have been, leading to a level of state violence directed against the common people not seen previously in Korean history.