Martyrs' Tomb of the Jo Brothers

History & origins

According to official material of the Diocese of Busan, the brothers Jo Seok-bin and Jo Seok-jeung came from an aristocratic Changnyeong Jo family in the Gimhae area. After accepting the Catholic faith, they did not keep it merely as a private conviction. Tradition preserved by the diocese says that they hid a Chinese-language Bible among Confucian classics, read it, and shared the Gospel particularly among neighboring members of the yangban class.

When the Mujin Persecution broke out in 1868, the brothers were arrested and taken to the government offices in Dongnae. The Diocese of Busan records that they endured severe torture, refused to apostatize, and were ultimately beheaded as martyrs. Because Catholics were regarded as criminals adhering to a prohibited teaching, even their family found it difficult to collect their bodies and provide a burial.

At that point, a neighbor named Bae Jeong-mun took the brothers’ bodies and buried them behind his own home. The Bae family then cared for the graves and passed down the story for four generations, and the present graves are described as remaining on land belonging to that family. The Church examined the memory that had long been transmitted orally and continues to present the site as the graves of the Jo brothers, martyrs.

The story of the Jo brothers therefore preserves more than the fact of martyrdom during an age of persecution. The burial of people rejected because of their faith by a neighbor, and the care of their graves by his descendants, also testify to solidarity among lay people and to the transmission of memory. The historic site today preserves both dimensions of that history together. The preservation of these graves is particularly important because it shows how the memory of lay Catholics from a persecuted Church—difficult to preserve in official documents—could survive through oral tradition and the care of a family. The Church’s later verification of that tradition and presentation of the graves as a historic site show that local Church history can be transmitted not only through written records but also through places and communal memory.