SEOUL, Korea - 'It is a place of extraordinary importance for making the history of the Church in Korea and the faith of our predecessors known': with these words, Cardinal Nicholas Choeng, Archbishop of Seoul, inaugurated the reopening of the Korean Martyrs Museum, in Jeoldusan, in the Archdiocese of Seoul, after two years of remodelling of the building, with multimedia additions that tell the story of Christianity in Korea and its martyrs.
The Museum-Shrine was built in 1967 on the site where many of the martyrs died from 1866 to 1873, when thousands of Catholics were killed in a time of fierce persecutions.
The reopening of the structure took place in September, which Korea celebrates as the 'Month of the Martyrs,' as 20 September is the universal feast of Saint Andrew Kim Taegon (1821-1846), the first Korean priest and martyr, Patron of the Korean clergy.
The Gospel first reached Korea at the beginning of the 17th centuryand boasts of over 10,000 martyrs all together. 103 of them were canonized in 1984 in Seoul, by John Paul II, in the first canonization ceremony to take place outside the Vatican.
In addition, in 2004, Seoul opened the diocesan phase of the Cause for Beatification of Servant of God Paul Yun Ji-Chung and 123 companions who were tortured and killed 'in odium fidei' in 1791, at the dawn of the arrival of Christianity in Korea.