Sharing the online lecture held on May 11, 2021.

Lecture title: ‘From Clandestine Go-between to Superstar: The Life and Afterlife of Fr. Andreas Kim Taegon (1821-1846)’
Lecturer: Pierre-Emmanuel Roux

Summary:
The outbreak of COVID-19 has severely affected social activities around the world. However it has not much impacted the bicentennial commemorations of Kim Taegŏn’s birth that are currently being held with great pomp (and masks) under the patronage of UNESCO. Kim Taegŏn benefits from such attention in South Korea and beyond since he is remembered as the first Korean-born Catholic priest and a martyr.

This lecture suggests that Kim Taegŏn was more a clandestine go-between engaged in “religious smuggling” between Qing China and Chosŏn Korea than a priest. His fate enables us to explore Korean Christianity through a local voice, but what does his life bring to our understanding of Korean history?

I will use this special case to belie the simple narrative of a religious martyr and to roll up general issues of Korean Catholicism from the origins to the present. So doing, I will demonstrate how the once-neglected figure of Kim Taegŏn was transformed into a highly venerated saint, a national hero, and a tourist attraction.

Bio:
Pierre-Emmanuel Roux is an associate professor of East Asian History at the University of Paris and the co-editor of the French scholarly journal Extrême-Orient, Extrême Occident. His current research projects include a biography of Kim Taegǒn and the translation of Pak Chiwǒn’s novels in French. He is the author of two books on East Asian encounters with the West in the nineteenth century.