There was a small minority of privileged scholars and nobility while the majority were commoners paying taxes, providing labor, and manning the military, all above a slave class.

Eventually, two Chinese priests were sent, but their ministry was short-lived, and another forty years passed before the Paris Foreign Mission Society began its work in Korea with the arrival of Father Maubant in 1836.

Paul Chong Hasang, Augustine Yu Chin-gil and Charles Cho Shin-chol had made several visits to Beijing in order to find ways of introducing missionaries into Korea.

[7] Bishop Laurent Imbert and ten other French missionaries were the first Paris Foreign Missions Society priests to enter Korea.

The idea of Catholics gathering in one place with no distinction on the basis of class were perceived to undermine "hierarchical Confucianism", the ideology which held the state together.

Andrew Kim Taegŏn wrote to his parish as he awaited his execution with a group of twenty persons: My dear brothers and sisters, know this: Our Lord Jesus Christ upon descending into the world took innumerable pains upon and constituted the holy Church through his own passion and increases it through the passion of its faithful… Now, however, some fifty or sixty years since the holy Church entered into our Korea, the faithful suffer persecutions again.

[excessive quote]In the early 1870s, Father Claude-Charles Dallet compiled a comprehensive history of the Catholic Church in Korea, largely from the manuscripts of martyred Bishop Antoine Daveluy.

An English lawyer and sinologist Edward Harper Parker observed that: Coreans [sic], unlike Chinese and Japanese, make the most staunch and devoted converts… The Annamese [Vietnamese] make better converts than either Chinese or Japanese, whose tricky character, however, they share; but they are gentler and more sympathetic; they do not possess the staunch masculinity of the Coreans.[11][relevant?

– discuss]Bishop and martyr Simeon François Berneux wrote, The Corean [sic] possesses the most perfect dispositions for receiving the faith.

Japan alone in later days can boast a martyrology at all to compare with that of Corea [sic] in the number of the slain, or in the heroism of those who died for Christ.[14][relevant?

The bishops and priests who confronted this danger, as well as the lay Christians who aided and sheltered them, were in constant threat of losing their lives.

Until the granting of religious liberty in Korea in 1886, there were many "disciples who shed their blood, in imitation of Christ Our Lord, and who willingly submitted to death, for the salvation of the world" (Lumen Gentium, 42).

Bishop Laurent Imbert and ten other French missionaries were the first Paris Foreign Mission Society priests to enter Korea and to embrace a different culture for the love of God.

The first Korean priest, Andrew Kim Taegon, found a way to make the difficult task of entering Korea as a missionary from Macau.

Paul Chong Hasang, Augustine Yu Chin-gil and Charles Cho Shin-chol had made several visits to Beijing in order to find new ways of introducing missionaries into Korea and a bishop and ten priests from the Paris Foreign Missions Society arrived in the country for the first time since 1801.

John Yi Kwang-hyol died a martyr's death after having lived a life of celibacy in consecrated service to the Church.

In 1783, Yun passed the first state examination and learned about Catholicism for the first time through his cousin Jung Yak Yong John.

Yun Ji Chung and Kwon Sang Yeon, in accordance with the Church's commands, set their families ancestral tablets on fire.

In the end, Jeongjo backed the Noron faction push to oppress Catholicism and ordered the arrest of Yun and Kwon.

After leaving Beijing in February 1794, Father Ju waited at Yodong area until the Amnokgang River froze enough to cross across.

However, after his entry was revealed, he escaped to female President Kang Wan Sook (Colomba)'s house and continued to pray in many areas in secrecy.

After Father Ju Mun Mo came in 1794, Jeong Yak Jong often visited Han Yang to help church work.

He also wrote two easy Hangul textbooks called 'Jugyo-yoji' a Catechism in the Korean language and distributed them to Christians with Father Ju's approval.

Kang Wan Sook guided her mother-in-law and her son from previous marriage (Hong Pil Joo Phillips, martyred in 1801) to become Catholics, but could not persuade her husband.

Her mother consulted Father James Zhou who remembered that Yu Jung-cheol John also wanted to live a life of celibacy.

Pius Kim encountered Catholicism when his eldest son learned the catechism from Yi Jon-chang Gonzaga and taught it to his brothers.

As his sons continued to tell him about God, he gradually drew towards Jesus Christ and left his government position to focus on fulfilling religious duties.

Due to the danger of persecution the family had to move frequently but Yi Seong-rye told Bible stories to her children and taught them to endure difficulties.

[21] Full list: Pope John Paul II, speaking at the canonization, said, "The Korean Church is unique because it was founded entirely by lay people.

[21] In 2004 the Archdiocese of Seoul opened its investigation into the cause for beatification of the Servant of God Paul Yun Ji-Chung and his 123 companions who in 1791 were tortured and killed in odium fidei, in hatred of the faith.