김범우의 집 터

History & origins

After Peter Yi Seung-hun returned from Beijing baptized in 1784, the first Korean Catholics studied the faith and organized a community largely on their own. By late that year, Thomas Kim Beom-u's house in Myeongnyebang had become an important regular meeting place for prayer and catechesis.

In the spring of 1785 officials discovered the gathering in the event known as the Eulsa Chujo incident and arrested the participants. Aristocratic believers were released under family pressure, but Kim Beom-u, from the middle social class, refused to abandon the faith, was punished and exiled to Danyang, and died in 1786 from the aftereffects of torture. The episode is remembered as the first major collision between the self-formed Korean Catholic community and state authority.