Examined in this article are the Oppressive incidents of Catholic believers(邪獄) that broke out in the Gihae-year(1839) and the Byeong’oh-year(1846). The intention behind the examination is to take a look at the Joseon government’s penal action taken against the Catholic church on the Korean peninsula in the mid-19th century, when concerns for certain issues both domestic and foreign were considerably growing.
Ever since the Shin’yu-year Persecution in 1801, the Joseon government established certain legal protocols to deal with Catholic followers, but as the Catholic church in Joseon continued to grow and expand its influence, and the prospect of foreign intrusion into the internal affairs of the peninsula kept on rising in the mid-19th century, such legal procedures from the past had to be modified.
While the Shin’yu-year Persecution was intended to eliminate the new pro-Western studies elements[新西派] inside the Southerners[南人] party, and therefore prevent the Catholic church in Joseon from further spreading its reaches, the Persecution of the Gihae-year was less political in nature, as the intention behind it was more focused upon dealing with the increasing number of Catholic believers already in jail, and then also to deal with the Western missionaries and their accomplices(the Joseon Catholic believers), with a legalized penal process. Unlike the Shin’yu–year Persecution, during the Gihae–year Persecution the exile of Catholic believers was never ordered, as it was instead demanded that they would leave the church summarily or accept certain death. During the process, the old people who couldn’t be interrogated or simply released were strangled to death, and in cases of Bishop Laurent Joseph Marius Imbert, Priests Pierre Philibert Maubant and Jacques-Honoré Chastan, the Joseon government applied the earlier example of Priest Zhōu Wénmó and decapitated their heads before exposing them to the public. It was the first ever incident to execute offenders only with a precedence.
Meanwhile, cases of Jeong Ha-sang and Yu Jin-gil of the Gihae-year Persecution, as well as cases of Hyeon Seok-mun and Father Kim Dae-geon of the Byeong’oh-year Persecution, were all processed with the law for treason[謀叛], which was also out of fear of the Catholic spread in Joseon in the mid-19th century.
So, it can be said that the Gihae & Byeong’oh–years cases of Catholic Persecution were different from the oppressive incidents that came before, as the Joseon government felt the need to modify its response to the Catholic church, according to certain changes that occurred since the Shin’yu-year Persecution.