Jeongsan Shrine

History & origins

Paul Yi Do-gi was born in Cheongyang in 1743. Based on the period when the Gospel reached the Cheongyang area, the Diocese of Daejeon explains that he embraced the Catholic faith in the latter half of the eighteenth century. He actively taught the faith in the Cheongyang and Jeongsan areas, and several people recorded as having learned Catholicism through him were later arrested and exiled during the Sinyu Persecution of 1801. He is said to have moved several times in order to continue practicing his faith under pressure, yet he did not stop evangelizing.

His activity drew the attention of the authorities. As persecution intensified, he refused his family's urging to flee and remained in Jeongsan, where he was arrested in 1797 and imprisoned. During interrogation and punishment in the prison and marketplace, he would not renounce his faith. The diocesan account states that, unable to break his resolve, the magistrate ordered him beaten to death about a year after his arrest, on the twelfth day of the sixth lunar month in 1798; the biography published by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Korea gives July 24, 1798, as the corresponding date of martyrdom.

Paul Yi Do-gi is remembered as a believer who called upon God as Father even as death approached. His martyrdom also illustrates the role of lay Catholics in the early Korean Church, when priests were scarce and lay believers learned, transmitted, and sustained the faith in local communities. The memories attached to the magistrate's office, prison, marketplace, and execution ground at Jeongsan give a concrete geographical setting to both his life and the martyr history of the region.

Today's Jeongsan Martyrs Shrine preserves these memories so that pilgrims may contemplate not only the fact of persecution but also a life spent spreading the Gospel and a faith maintained to the end. The witness of Blessed Paul Yi Do-gi continues to connect the name Jeongsan with the history of Catholic martyrdom in Korea.