Andrew Kim Taegon
Martyr, Priest · 1821–1846
“We have received baptism, the seal of our faith, and have become children of God. How can we not be grateful?”
Letter from prison, 1846
Andrew Kim Taegon was the first native-born Korean Catholic priest, and he was twenty-five years old when they killed him for it. That's not a metaphor or a dramatic retelling. He was literally beheaded on a sandbank outside Seoul in 1846, just months after his ordination. He had barely gotten started.
Christianity came to Korea without missionaries. Korean scholars encountered Catholic texts in China and brought the faith home themselves in the late 1700s. By the time Andrew was born, his family had already been Catholic for a generation. His father, Ignatius Kim, was martyred when Andrew was a child. He grew up knowing exactly what this faith could cost.
He walked over 1,300 miles to get to a seminary in Macau. He was ordained in Shanghai. He snuck back into Korea through Manchuria, because entering the country as a priest was illegal and punishable by death. He did it anyway, and spent his short ministry smuggling in foreign missionaries and building up the underground Church.
When he was finally captured, he wrote a letter to his community from prison. It wasn't a farewell note full of despair. It was a call to keep going. He told them that the Church had been built on suffering and that they should hold on.
He was canonized by Pope John Paul II in Korea in 1984, alongside 102 other Korean martyrs. The group is collectively known as the Korean Martyrs. Andrew is their most recognized face, and for good reason.