Kim Agada Tomb

History & origins

Kim Agatha was the younger sister of Peter Kim Yeong-je and is remembered within the history of persecution in the Salti area. During the Gyeongsin Persecution of 1860, Kim Yeong-je was arrested together with his father, his younger sister Agatha, and several other Catholics and was taken to the Gyeongju magistracy. Most were eventually able to return as the persecution eased, but the episode dealt a severe blow to the local Catholic community as believers scattered and the mission station was burned.

The surviving church records do not provide a detailed account of Agatha's later life or the circumstances of her death. The record that remains describes her as Kim Yeong-je's "younger sister, the virgin Agatha" and states that her grave was originally at Ganwol. Rather than filling her life with unsupported tradition, her place within the history of Salti can be understood through the verified fact of her arrest with her family during persecution and through the later preservation and relocation of her grave.

On March 4, 2008, Kim Agatha's grave at Ganwol was moved to a place beside Kim Yeong-je's grave at Salti. A blessing of the relocated grave was held on September 29 of the same year. The graves of the brother and sister who had endured persecution were thus brought together in one burial area, forming a pilgrimage space that remembers the faith history of both a family and a Catholic village. Today, Kim Agatha's grave bears witness to part of Salti's history less through a detailed personal biography than through the verified experience of persecution and the later formation of the memorial burial site.