Level of industrialization does not correlate with culture. They shared a language, history, customs All the things you associate with industrialism take time to develop, but still don't amount to fundamental differences. Are you suggesting that Los Angeles must belong to a different country than Modesto because of cultural differences?
Not at all, but we're not talking about a city and its countryside. Are you going to tell me that there is no significant difference between New Orleans and the surrounding bayous and marshes? Or that the Rust Belt has the same interests or Detroit in its peak was culturally identical to The surrounding countryside? What about in Raleigh, NC, or London, which have measurably different political views than the more rural counties surrounding them?
I'm not suggesting that the North and South were so culturally different that they wouldn't both be Korean, I'm sure the similarities there far outweigh the differences.
The Forsaken Hills A Novel of the Korean War
It's just that urban environments rise around industry, and people living in urban environments have historically had different sets of priorities than their rural countrymen. Can you see why I'm curious as to how Korea might have avoided this? A "rural backwater" in the South having near identical principles, politics, and way of life to a more industrialised North? I really know very little about Korea, I do not even know the timescale of Korean industrialisation and how quickly it occurred.
These things do totally take time, and if it simy happened too quickly for those distinctions to evolve that makes sense to me, but I'm genuinely curious about the details of that distinction! I really don't understand your point. I'm saying that that is anachronistic non-sense. There's no way to look at South Korea and assert that it was destined to succeed while South Vietnam was destined to fail. Both were weak client states of the Americans. It's only knowing subsequent history that tells us that South Korea becomes an industrialized basically developed country, while South Vietnam falls to the North.
The cultural point is a minor one. Like the differences between the N. Vietnam, those between N. Korea were political not cultural. If anything, the cultural distinction between the Vietnams was stronger. Tonkin and Cochinchina were ruled as separate colonies for decades. I'm sorry, i must not have been clear enough, my question was totally outside the range of OPs question! I was specifically asking you about Korea during the war. Simply, if the South was that far behind the more industrial north, what circumstance would have led to prolonged cultural unity?
Historically, the growth of industry in a particular region tends to lead to an increase in urbanization, which then results in significant cultural differences between the industralized and non-industrialized regions as the people living in each then have separate priorities. It's like the political trouble in Italy, where the industrial North somewhat dislikes the south, because the agricultural south is seen as lazy and piggybacking off the work of the North while drinking wine all day.
Or In the northeast US during the industrial revolution, where populism became popular in factory towns, but struggled in rural environments. I genuinely don't know much about Korean history, and I'm just curious as to what circumstances would have prevented this divide.
The Japanese occupying forces, from the s to the s, concentrated their industrialization efforts in the North. After the division between Soviet and American occupation, the North kept most of the resources and the industry while the South had far more people. But 30 years is not long enough to create massive cultural gaps between the two areas. The cultural differences between regions in Italy go back over a thousand years and hundreds in America. My understanding of the subject is limited, but I was under the impression that neither North nor South Korea was all that industrialized in I have heard from several sources I believe it was in Korea's Place in the Sun, by Bruce Cumings that the North was somewhat more industrialized, but that neither place was very well off economically.
Oh yes, they were both very poor. Korea has different cultural areas, but they're not divided by the 38th parallel. The South contains Seoul and Pusan which is a major port for trade with Japan and the world, so it was not exactly the middle of nowhere. I made another comment about insurgent groups in the South, these areas were and are still mainly agrarian and susceptible to promises of land reform and so on from the North. For people who aren't familiar with the history, the outcome of the war influenced attitudes after the withdrawal from Saigon in , but a significant portion of the US deeply opposed the war over the preceding decade.
Opposition existed to even the earliest US involvement, and spread over time. I think it's fair to say that significant US involvement began around , escalating in '62 and '63 with the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in August and the rapid passing of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution a few days later representing the US's full involvement as a "war". Opposition to US involvement in Vietnam started with organizations that were anti-war in general, and opposed what they described as "American imperialism" in particular. This civil rights activity in part inspired the student Free Speech Movement which became organized in the fall of Thus, there was a wave of organization around progressive principles coming together at exactly the same time that the US became involved in and escalated the war in Vietnam, and opposition to the war became intertwined with these other movements from very early.
These progressive movements represented a minority of the US population, so one way to narrow or focus ones questions would be to look at the question, "How did opposition to the US war in Vietnam move from being held primarily by a left-leaning minority and become more widely adopted by a large part of the US population during the later stages of US involvement and subsequent to the withdrawal, by a majority of the population? How is that so much more different than South Korea's situation though? South and North Korea were both set up as temporary states in preparation for national elections in When this failed, both states were established in with war breaking out shortly after.
Likewise in Vietnam, after refusing to engage in national elections, the Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed in It was clear early on that South Korea was also far from a democratic state. Rhee's South Korea was also corrupt, unpopular, and very likely would have been voted out had he not had so much undue control. I don't generally like to correct spelling on reddit but since this is a proper name and people may not know the actual person involved, I need to hop in here and say that it's Ngo Dinh Diem.
Also of note, and this is entirely anecdotal, my South Korean exchange student roommate from college always talked about how much everyone in Korea loves America for helping them out in the war, etc. I do believe South Korea for the most part wanted the US there, whereas Vietnam for the most part did not. I think that makes a difference. Gotta chime in here and say your last point is not necessarily true. Many South Vietnamese wanted the US to intervene, and were horrified and angry when Kissinger became diplomatic with the Chinese, because that would mean that the US would pull troops from, and wind down their involvement in Vietnam.
As the war wound down, and LBJ failed to get congressional support for increased funding for the war, South Vietnamese were in constant fear that the communists would come in swiftly. South Vietnamese who did flee are generally supportive of US intervention, and Republicans, to be more specific, because they were the party that had publicly supported the war in the first place.
All this is also anecdotal. Although I will say I am a first generation Vietnamese American who has a pretty firm grasp of the complications of the war, and the post-war attitudes of the Vietnamese. Just saw the mod post about anecdotal "evidence" not being allowed. I'm not going to delete what I said, but yeah The continued to funnel money and supplies into the government long after they knew that none of it was being put to good use. Is perhaps the most worrying part to see for me, so I'd like for you to provide some sources for these statements, in particular the statement that the South Vietnamese government lacked popular support.
I'm not personally claiming it had popular support, but I am not going to say that the population of South Vietnam was hostile towards it. I think it is inaccurate. A Narrative History, the South Vietnamese reps refused to sign the Geneva Accords calling for nationwide elections arguing that the treaties legitimized the Communist victory over the French. Power in the South consolidated around Ngo Dinh Diem who turned out to be an inept figure of suppressed his political opponents, not distributing land to peasants as was promised and allowing widespread corruption.
It was Diem who refused to join the elections in and the Eisenhower's administration "viewed its only option was to 'sink or swim with Diem. You seem to be conflating the issue of popularity with the Eisenhower administration with Diem's popularity with the people living in Vietnam during this time, which was what HClay77 was talking about.
Ho Chi Minh may have been regarded as popular, but he was also as OP notes a brutal autocrat, so I have to wonder how genuine his supposed legitimacy was. I also came across this article by John Prados which suggests that about 5 times as many Vietnamese left North Vietnam to go south as left South Vietnam to go north in the exchange facilitated by the Geneva Accords. That suggests to me that at least in the beginning there was at least some support for the South, if only as a bulwark against Ho Chi Minh.
I've actually written on this topic previously here! There are two schools of thought when it comes to the academic study of the Vietnam War: The orthodox is that which grew out of the war itself: The orthodox school is based around the opinion that the American intervention in South Vietnam is unjustified and that the South Vietnamese nation was not a legitimate nation. The revisionist school is based around the idea that the intervention was justified and that South Vietnam is a legitimate nation.
The revisionist school try to present the often neglected South Vietnamese perspective that has been overlooked by the orthodox school. Since by your own terminology HClay77's account is orthodox, isn't the onus on you to provide some citations supporting your objections? We must note that South Vietnam, unlike any of the other countries in Southeast Asia was essentially the creation of the United States.
Without the threat of U. I am particularly asking about the popular support, which I point out in the above post. I don't disbelieve the Pentagon Papers, but I also realize that it is a primary source which needs to be treated as such. Scholarship on the Vietnam War has come a long way since. Well, that Pentagon Papers quote demonstrates pretty clearly that DoD analysts did not belive "that SVN was a viable, independent and preexisting state. I am asking about popular support, not about whether or not South Vietnam was a viable, independent and pre-existing state, a discussion which is still active in academia.
My own personal recommendation about a book which presents the case of South Vietnam out of a contemporary revisionist perspective is Mark Moyar's Triumph Forsaken: Hey, while we are on the topic of perspectives that are often neglected, I wonder if you might be able to answer a question I have had for a bit. Although I suppose in this thread maybe just do you have any readings on the Hmong involvement in Vietnam? Tiako, I'll do some research into it and write up an answer. It's a very interesting perspective and their co-operation with the Green Berets is definitely something that should be emphasized.
What is your problem with this supposed "Orthodoxy" on their part regarding the war if it can be considered as valid of an academic take as a "revisionist" one? I don't have a problem. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I respect it since it's all a question of interpretation. I am simply asking for a source regarding a particular claim. Also, according to Department of Defense sources the US forces suffered some 36, deaths and , soldiers wounded in the Korean war, while in Vietnam the US suffered 58, deaths and , wounded.
I would imagine this was a factor in how the public perceived the war. Was South Korea really a legitimate state? I mean, America flew in their leader on MacArthur's personal plane, and he never truly had the support of the majority of South Koreans. And most of the leaders in his cabinet were holdovers from Japanese occupation.
It's almost trivia, but not only was South Korea a much more legitimate state than South Vietnam in the eyes of the international community, but also the Korean War was directly sanctioned by the UN and so it had an air of direct legality that the Vietnam War never had. This was in a period when the UN was still taken very seriously by American politicians -- they had only recently been instrumental in founding it.
The US fought in Korea as the primary power in a real multinational force with allied ground forces from a quite wide range of countries including most of the major Western allies from WWII. In Vietnam the only countries that directly supported the United States were either only notionally democratic as in the case of Thailand and South Korea or were entirely regional as in the case of Australia. One may say what they will about the politics involved in both cases, but the perception as a result of the much broader coalition with a vested interest was dramatically different.
In this sense it's not entirely dissimilar to the journalistic and legal judgements on the first and second wars between Iraq and the United States. Perhaps this is similar to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I hadn't even realized it when I made my original post since I was thinking mostly about the analogy between Gulf War I and Korea. This is just not a good answer at all. Not only are the details your explanation relies on wrong, but it isn't even an explanation as such, because public opinion turned against the Vietnam war in , while the details of the background of the South Vietnamese state were obviously not different in from before.
How does that show increasing support over time? That seems to show decreasing support over time. A "mistake" means that it was a bad idea; not a mistake means it was necessary. No, I agree with you. While I don't have the breakdown by age which would point to the generational aspect that HClay77 mentions , the numbers as-a-whole show declining support for the decision to go to war. However, this history is being forgotten at an alarming rate, with support for the Vietnam War increasing in generations born later and later after its end. I just checked Gallup and some other polls.
Opposition has only increased over time. I suggest you edit this portion or cite a source. I would add that the draft had a large role in making it unpopular. I'm pretty sure the 60's would have been quite different and nowhere near as rebellious without the draft affecting college aged kids. Of which an independent commission of three countries all agreed the North made those fair national elections impossible, and that the delegates from the South, not being signatories to the Geneva Conference were not bound to.
Again, how is there a legitimacy issue? The dictatorial South Korean regime was set up along the same lines as the South Vietnamese. He was much more popular than his Southern counterpart, Ngo Dinh Diep, who was also autocratic and led an extremely corrupt South Vietnamese SVN government, without popular support.
Of which an independent commission of three countries all agreed the North made those fair national elections impossible. Can you explain just how the commission reached that conclusion, and which three countries the members of that commission belonged to? This I really don't understand, and sounds more like legalistic hand-wrangling, than anything. If one party is not bound by the Geneva Accords, then the Geneva Accords are really nullified. That's a statement I'd like to see backed up by sources. In hindsight, we can see that dominoes didn't really fall, but how would policymakers have known that prior?
I really appreciate your summary, especially for someone so young. Especially the point that the war is being forgotten, that we are becoming more accepting of it. Now, the theory of monolithic Communism, which was also key to the domino theory of one country's fall engendering a worldwide collapse of free societies into Communist control, was demonstrably false. The Domino Theory held that if Vietnam fell, so would the rest of Indochina and then, ultimately, India.
As it turns out, Vietnam became and remains communist but India is certainly not. In the communist states in the whole world were very monolithic, this was before China broke up with the USSR. Besides, after the Vietnam war, two neighboring states turned communist: So, the facts seem to prove that the domino theory had some fundamental truth. An the dominoes weren't just local, right after the US retreated from Vietnam two African countries became communist, Angola and Mozambique.
How much did the American failure in Vietnam influence the strategic decision by the Soviet block to pour enough support on the communist movements in Africa? Cuba helped directly by sending troops to Angola, "boots on the ground". On the other hand, the Tito-Stalin split and the rise of the nonaligned movement could have and maybe should have suggested that nominal communists could be independent actors. And what about the repeated denunciations of Tito and Yugoslavia by North Vietnam precisely for that independence from Moscow?
How many other nations in Eastern Europe? And one shouldn't forget Cuba. Before the revolution there were many analysts that thought Castro would be non-aligned, yet he went straight into the Soviet domain after. You just gave me a thought, and that is I wonder how much Cuba becoming communist in the 50s influenced American fears about communist agitation. I would assume that having a nation so close - both geographically and politically - turn communist wouldve had a powerful effect on the American psyche. That would have been a factor contributing to it, of course, but there were others.
The atom bomb spying case was another factor. Also, the s was a period when several colonies in Africa and Asia achieved independence and the Soviet Union influenced many groups that were fighting for independence. Angola and Mozambique had nothing to do with the US leaving Vietnam. They were colonies of Portugal, and each fought independence wars against the Portuguese. Political revolution in Portugal led to both becoming independent in , and the factions that fought the colonial Portuguese vied for control of their respective countries in very long and brutal civil wars.
They didnt just "become communist" countries. The communist and anti communists fought for control for decades. Both civil wars outlasted the Cold War itself. Didn't the tactics used by US troops for example things such as strategic hamlets and things like Operation Phoenix, and overall the general treatment of the US and ARVN troops towards Vietnamese civilians also cause people to view the Vietnam War in such a negative way?
- Why is the Vietnam War so vilified in American culture, but the Korean War not? : AskHistorians.
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The 10, Day War is also an excellent and highly informative source, focusing less on military conflict and more on the policy-making aspects of the war. I think from today's point of view it's also important to note that modern Vietnam is a relatively successful state friendly with the US, so there is no "see that's what happens when you let the commies win in Vietnam" example. On the other hand, North Korea is led by an almost cartoonishly evil dictator and is behind an iron curtain of mystery and starvation. Do you think the fact that the American side in the Korean War was a "UN force", whereas in the Vietnam War it was a largely American force, played a role in the latters unpopularity?
Now, the theory of monolithic Communism, which was also key to the domino theory of one country's fall engendering a worldwide collapse of free societies into Communist control, was demonstrably false, and many policymakers knew that. I get that the domino theory wasn't correct but were they being willfully ignorant or just dishonest about that? Fascinating bit about the battle of Dien Bien Phu, the US was actually considering intervening by dropping nuclear bombs on the Vietnamese. Thankfully, that didn't happen.
Also add that American leadership didn't believe in a successful outcome as established in the record of the LBJ phone records. What they said in public was not reasonably truthful. Agreed, but I think the present perception of the Vietnam war is also colored by the present perception of the Korean war. In the present, we see a relatively vibrant, mostly-democratic, economically successful country in South Korea, while North Korea is intractably hostile. I think these facts in the present influence peoples' perceptions of the history; it's easier to justify the Korean War because it was at worst a stalemate, and at best a demonstration of the importance of the war.
Note that I'm not trying to justify or advocate, only to explain one part of why many people see these two wars quite differently. There's also the fact that, while North Korea remains a place no sane American would want to go, Vietnam, where we supposedly 'lost', is a beautiful vacation destination where Americans can go freely. Well, I think you can partially chalk that one up to the fact that Vietnam wasn't being run by a guy trying to be the poor man's version of a Japanese Emperor, who was heavily reliant on the support of a now defunct state, after the war.
You know your comment got me thinking.
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There's a lot of research on public opinion during lengthy wars, but to my knowledge not much on current public opinion of past wars. Some of the key factors that affect public opinion of war is the difference between the administration's message and the reality on the ground shown by the media.
Another key factor is of course success in achieving the goal of the war. So looking back on Korea we can see that Truman's message about the danger of communist North Korea was pretty spot on. Also while it lead to a standstill given the economic disparity between the two Korea's, as you mentioned, the war was a success. Now looking at Vietnam, virtually nothing Kennedy, Johnson, or Nixon said about the war is viewed positively and did not fit the reality on the ground. Martha began working in the houses of the Catholic firneds to repay their help. It was during this period that her faith grew deeper and she repented of her past sins, her inability to put up with her first husband and her subsenquent living by superstition.
At times Martha felt deep sorrow but in her total dependence on the Lord she came through her depression The concern and Christian example of the other Catholics made her realize and confirm how great is the love of God. They were so deeply moved by the love of God that all decided to give themselves up to the government authorities to profess their faith. They wanted to do mortification and sacrifice following the cross of Jesus Christ. The Hisotry of the Catholic Church in Korea says: However, it might have been evoked by divine grace, or God might have given His tacit approval to them, because the women were steadfast in their faith and wanting to be witness of God by being martyrs.
There are other laudable examples in church history, such as St. By the end of March or in the beginning of April of these courageous women went to the police station and told the police to put them in prison because they were Catholics. To the unbelieving policemen they showed their rosaries. The police tied them up and put them in prison. Therefore, it can be easily understood that these pious women courageously endured all tortures and pains for the love of God.
We surendered ourselves for the sake of God. They were repeatedly and severly tortured. The courageous women were sent to the higher court, where they were interrogated atain. The police chief tortured the women more severly than others to punish them for surrendering themselves.
They were finally sentenced to death. According to the government Sungjongwon Diary, these four pious women and four otehr Catholics were beheaded outside the Small West Gate on July 20th, Martha was 53 years old, when she was killed for her faith. Won Kwi-im Maria was boarn in in Yongmori, Kyuanggun. She lost her mother when she was a child, and followed her father, who wandered around begging for food. When she was nine years old, one of her relatives, Won Lucy, who was a very devout Catholic, took her and taught her prayers and the catechism. She also taught Maria embroidery for her lifelihood.
Maria was very intelligent, genial and pious. Maria was baptized at the age of Soon after that she received an offer of marriage. But she refused to be married because she wanted to offer herself to God. The next year she put her hair up in a style which indicated that she was a married woman. Maria was accused of being a Catholic by a neighbor and was arrested.
She looked a little discouraged when she first was put in prison. Mary was interrogated by the police chief. If I have to die, I would rather die for God to save my soul. Many of her bones were dislocated, but her faith was not shaken. Maria was 22 years old, when she was crowned with martyrdom. Saint Kim Barbara was one of those who died of disease while in prison.
In fact, while the pain of torture was terrible, every day prison life was even worse and unbearable. There were many who bravely witnessed through all forms of torture, but finally gave in because of the hunger and thirst. Given no more than two fistfuls of rice a day the prisoners were often reduced to eating the dirty straw they lay on.
Also, with a large number of people crammed into the small cells, it was inevitable that disease would break out and spread very quickly. Bishop Daveluy, who would himself later die as a martyr, wrote of the prison situation: Our Catholics were packed in so tightly that they could not even spread out their legs to sleep. Compared to the suffering of imprisonment the pain of torture was nothing. On top of everything else the stench from their rotting wounds was unbearable and in the heat typhoid would break out killing several in a few days.
People like Kim Barbara suffered the extremes of prison life. Kim Barbara was born to very poor family in Kyonggi Province. Her family was Catholic, but not very devout. At the age of thirteen Kim Barbara was sent as a servant to the wealthy Catholic family of Hwang Maria. It was there she spiritually met God and her devotion for Jesus grew. She was forthright and diligent, inscribing in her heart the teachings of the Lord. One day her father came to tell her that a match had been made for her with a young Catholic man.
However, it turned out that her husband was a pagan and all her efforts to convert him were of no use. She had several children of whom she only managed to baptize a daughter. Differences in faith created many difficulties between the couple and these problems were never resolved. With the arrival of foreign priests in the country she was able to lead a more fervent and happy spiritual life. Barbara was arrested in March, , and subjected to torture, but she refused to apostatize or reveal the name of other Catholics. During the three months of her prison life she suffered from torture, hunger, thirst and disease.
On May 27th, , Kim Barbara died of typhoid fever lying on the dirty mat of her cell at age of thirty-five. In June , Cho Pyong-ku who had a pathological hatred for Catholics took control of the Korean government. On July 5th, a decree came down to completely eradicate the Church. The first to be martyred after this decree were eight Catholics who were already in prison.
Of these Kim Rosa was the first to have been arrested. Kim Rosa was born in a non-Catholic family in , Hanyang. She was married, but she and her husband subsequently separated. After the separation Kim Rosa went to live with a Catholic relative and this was her first contact with the Church. Although it was late in her life she happily applied herself to learning the doctrine. She was intelligent and could communicate well so she was able to make others understand the value of her belief. She taught her mother and older brother the truths of the faith helping them to repent of their past.
Thus the family was able to live in harmony, practicing the teaching of the Church. Kim Rosa lived according to her faith, examined her conscience frequently, repented her sins and prayed constantly. She had high respect for priests and did all she could to help them. She was a model to other Catholics. On January 16th, , in the middle of the night, the police surrounded her house but she did not show any concern.
Happy that at last her time had come, she went to prison calling on the names of Jesus and Mary. She never betrayed her faith, but testified to all in the prison. Even the guards were impressed by her attitude. However, she could not avoid the fury of the government. When she first appeared before the judge he displayed all the instruments of torture before her and said,. I cannot give up my God. He is the Creator and Father to all of us. He loves virtue and punishes sin, so how could I abandon Him?
Harming others is also a sin. A long time ago I decided to shed my blood for these truths. Do as you please. How is it that Your Excellency does not know this simple fact? The judge was furious and had her tortured before sentencing her to death. The sentence was carried out on July 20th, She was fifty-six years old. In , Pope John Paul II visited the flat sands of the Han River and there forty seven Korean women, fort seven Korean men, seven French priests and three French Bishops, all martyred for their Christian faith, were canonized as saints.
It was the first time that such a ceremony had been performed away from Rome. Those chosen were a representative group from among thousands who lost their lives refusing to renounce their religious beliefs. It was a church formed without foreign missionaries and by lay people. The first news of Christianity came to Korea in the seventeenth century. It entered via the caravan which travelled each winter to China — where, to Peking, goods, gifts and slaves would be taken in tribute to its powerful neighbour. These were the ideas with which Korean travelers would connect. On reaching China the Europeans initially shaved their heads and dressed as monks but soon realised that by identifying with Buddhist and Taoist idolatry they were failing to reach the literati — the educated Confucian elite.
In his diary, Ricci wrote: Ricci brought the hugely admired Plantin Bible to China — eight gilded folio volumes with printed parallel texts in Aramaic, Syriac, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. His True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven was printed and distributed widely, drawing heavily on Aquinas but also appropriating Confucian ideas to bolster the Christian cause.
The Chinese came to value him as a true friend.
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There are also accounts from the same period in Korean records mentioning England, France, and Catholicism. In the decades following people stole clothes from graves, babies were abandoned, and the starving were eating the dead. Floods added more misery. It was in this climate that a young Korean intellectual, Yi Pyok, read about Christianity from Chinese books circulating among a group of friends.
In he brought them together to make further study. Curious Korean youths were eager to plumb the depths of this religion, impressed by a doctrine where all were loved equally by God; and where they were struck by the Jesuit demands for justice for the poor and an end to slavery. He was baptized by a Jesuit and took the name Peter, returning to Korea in There would not be another priest for 35 years. Yet without missionaries or priests, belief in Christ spread rapidly, first among the nobles and educated, then protected by these aristocrats, among thousands of poor.
Within a year of Yi Sunghun pilgrimage to Peking, in a secret church had been established in Pyongyang. The authorities raided the house church and discovered a prayer group. The owner of the house, Thomas Kim, was so badly injured during interrogation that he died of the injuries. That same year, , belief in Christ had been banned.
State hostility was harsh, even toward the royals and members of the nobility who had converted. In there were 4, believers in Korea, and while there were executions every year, by the number of believers had risen to 10, In more than Christians were executed. One fearful Christian penned a letter to Jesuits in China appealing for military protection. Immediately she decreed that to hold the evil learning was high treason. Capital persecution now became policy.
Some Christians died in prison. Many others recanted their faith. The beating left him insensible and a few hours later dead. Yi Sunghun who had been baptised as Peter Yi , would, like his name sake, also, under pressure, repudiated his faith but then re-embraced it and in was martyred along with three hundred others, including two royal princesses. Many of the ordeals faced by prisoners are described in Martyrs of Korea by the late Msgr. Prisoners were given boiled millet twice a day. Those who could not buy or acquire more food were reduced to eating the foul straw and lice.
Many who had not recanted under torture, cracked because of prison. Intermittently, itinerant priests arrived in the country — most were executed. For 35 years the fledgling church was without a single priest. Only one sacrament could be given — and thousands came forward to be baptised.
Border guards along the Yalu River would not allow Europeans to enter so Fr Pierre waited until the river froze. In January he crossed into Korea, taking two weeks to walk to Seoul where he was greeted by a Chinese priest called Fr Pacifico.
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From there he arranged for three young men to be smuggled out to Macao to study as seminarians. He was joined by another Frenchman, Fr Jacques Chastan, and in , a third, Laurent Imbert, who became the first bishop of the Korean diocese. To conceal their features the three men wore capacious Korean mourning costumes and very wide-brimmed hats. They carried out their duties at night, three priests for thousands of believers.
Within weeks 2, had been baptised bringing the total number of Korean Christians to 9, Two years later, with two other priests, he was decapitated. Hundreds of Korean Christian suffered the same brutal fate, including many members of the same family: Typical was Peter Yu, aged 13, who was tortured on 14 occasions. In his defiance he even picked up shreds of his own flesh and threw them before his interrogators.
If you leave me : a novel, Crystal Hana Kim
He was strangled in the prison in October Perhaps most famous among the Korean martyrs is St. Andrew Kim, born on August 21st His parents had become Christians. His father, Blessed Ignatius Kim, was martyred in Andrew was baptized at the age of fifteen. He was one of the three seminarians who had been secreted out of Korea by Fr Pierre Maubant five year earlier in The British consul in Shanghai had arranged shelter for him and having, in , become the first Korean to be ordained as a priest and having experiencing all sorts of adventures attempting to return to his homeland, later that year he crossed the Yalu River.
By the autumn of Father Andrew Kim was on trial. He impressed the judges with his eloquence and good manners, and they might have considered a lenient sentence. But during the trial two French warships, commanded by Admiral Cecile, appeared off the Korean coast. The admiral sent insulting letters to the King, demanding an accounting for the deaths of the three French clergy, and saying he would return the following year. This soured the mood against those who colluded with foreigners.
Andrew Kim, aged just 25, was arrested, stripped naked, and decapitated. On 16th September , he was taken to the Han sands and beheaded, proclaiming as he died:. It is for Him that I die. My immortal life is on the point of beginning. Become Christians if you wish to be happy after death, because God has eternal chastisements in store for those who have refused to know Him. It required eight strokes of the sword to kill Andrew Kim.
Customarily his head would have been displayed on a pole for three days but the authorities were afraid of the public reaction. They buried Kim immediately. Forty days later his relics were recovered and in he was among those canonized by John Paul II — one of at least 8, Korean martyrs from the time the first house church was planted in Pyongyang. It occurred in — twenty years after the execution of Andrew Kim and during a year of increased persecution. It is the story of a remarkable Welshman.
He enlisted with the London Missionary Society and in he went to Peking where his wife, Caroline, died of fever. In Thomas met two Korean traders who told him that there were about 50, Catholics in Korea, and they recounted the story of how Koreans had spread the Christian message and baptised many others. He obtained work as an interpreter on the American schooner the General Sherman and as the boat traveled around Korea Thomas handed out Bibles. Near Pyongyang the boat became involved in an altercation with the Korean army and Thomas leapt overboard with his Bibles and, while calling on the name of Jesus, he handed them to the angry crowd which had gathered at the river side.
It is said that he handed out more than Bibles before being captured and executed, giving his lat one to his executioner. The authorities ordered the people to destroy the Bibles they had received. However, some removed the pages and used them as wallpaper in their homes. It was from these people that a Presbyterian congregation would be formed. He returned the next year with James Scarth Gale and in returned to establish a mission station — which, despite attempts on his life, opened in By the acre Presbyterian campus consisted of secondary academies for boys and girls; a college; industrial shops; a facility for the provision o vocational training for abandoned wives and widows; a seminary; a Bible school; a foreign school; the Union Christian Hospital and the West Gate Presbyterian Church.
Its founder and President, Dr. After the ferocious wave of persecutions in a trade treaty was concluded with the United States. This Treaty of Amity and Trade, concluded in , included a clause requiring toleration and protection for Christian missionaries. Proselytising was still forbidden but missionaries were permitted to embark on educational and medical initiatives. This is turn led, in , to the arrival of Horace Allen, the first American missionary in Korea, to be followed by Horace Underwood in These Presbyterians were followed by Methodists, including Henry Appenzeller.
From these seeds, some of the great Korean schools and universities would germinate and grow. Christianity was also having a fundamental impact on the mores of Korean society. Despite the clash over ancestor worship which often arose from a mistaken belief that Koreans deified their ancestors rather than venerating their memory there was much which Koreans had embraced in Christian teaching and which revolutionised feudal attitudes towards women and children.
From the outset, in the eighteenth century, the Catholic Church allowed widow to remarry normally not permitted in East Asia ; it prohibited concubinage and polygamy; it forbade cruelty to or desertion of wives; and. Catholic parents were taught that each of their children — girls and boys — was a precious gift from God — not merely the first-born son. Along with the other denominations which arrived in Korea it insisted that girls should be educated as well as boys. The Church also placed a prohibition on the traditional arranged child marriages.
Beyond all this activity a new danger was, however, looming — one which would shape contemporary Korea and the role of the Christian community: The Japanese would rule Korea from until and the refusal of many Christians to worship the Japanese emperor would lead to more martyrdom — and ruptures within the Christian community as those who collaborated were ostracised. This, in turn, would lead to the identification of Christianity with Korean nationalism and independence and increase its standing, reputation and reach within the Republic of Korea during the post war years.
Open discontent with Japanese rule erupted on March 1st, , with a Proclamation of Independence and the emergence of the March First Movement which saw many street demonstrations led by Christians and followers of the Cheondogyo native Korea religion challenging Japanese rule. As the world came to terms with the enormity of Japanese ambitions, and became embattled in the Second World War, in Korea worship at Shinto shrines became mandatory, and any attempt to preserve Korean identity or culture was asphyxiated.
If you leave me: The Resource If you leave me: The item If you leave me: This item is available to borrow from 1 library branch. Creator Kim, Crystal Hana, Author Kim, Crystal Hana, Summary An emotionally riveting debut novel about war, family, and forbidden love, the unforgettable saga of two ill-fated lovers in Korea and the heartbreaking choices they're forced to make in the years surrounding the civil war that still haunts us today. When the communist-backed army from the north invades her home, sixteen-year-old Haemi Lee, along with her widowed mother and ailing brother, is forced to flee to a refugee camp along the coast.