Peter Shrine

History & origins

Peter Yi Seung-hun, whom the shrine commemorates, was born in 1756 and encountered Catholic teaching through the study of Western Learning. In 1783 he traveled to Beijing with a winter-solstice embassy, and in February 1784 he was baptized there by the Jesuit missionary Father Louis de Grammont, receiving the name Peter. After returning to Joseon, he baptized companions and helped organize regular gatherings of believers, playing an important role in the formation of the early Korean Catholic community.

Because the community had no ordained clergy, its members at one stage created a pseudo-hierarchical system for church leadership. When they learned that this practice did not conform to Church discipline, they abandoned it and opened communication with the Church in Beijing, asking that priests be sent to Korea. Yi endured repeated pressure through incidents such as the Eulsa Chujo investigation, the Jeongmi anti-Catholic controversy, and the Jinsan incident, and he was finally beheaded outside Seosomun during the Sinyu Persecution of 1801.

His descendants also continued the faith through the persecution era. The official exhibition presents the history of a family in which eight members across four generations became martyrs, showing that Yi’s faith did not end as an individual decision but continued through later generations.

The present Peter Yi Seung-hun Shrine connects this life and its wider church-historical context through exhibition, education, and pilgrimage. Its permanent exhibition approaches Yi through the themes of learning, faith, conflict, and martyrdom, and situates his story alongside other martyrdom sites of the Diocese of Incheon so that visitors can remember the formation of early Korean Catholicism and its tradition of witness.