초록 열기/닫기 버튼
Until the 18th century Korea remained, for the most part, unknown to Europeans for many reasons: First, Korea was acessible via the land route, but due to high mountains and wild beasts there the land journey was very dangerous. The journey by sea route was more dangerous than by land. Second, Korea was known as a barbaric country which neither permitted the foreigners to enter nor the shipwrecked strangers to return to their homeland. Third, Korea was said to make no dealings with countries except China and Japan. Missionaries thought that it was very difficult and dangerous to enter Korea. Therefore Korea was isolated internationally for a long time. Only the negative rumors about Korea were spreaded in Europe. Even into the first half of the 20th century Korea was not properly known to the Westerners. Martino Martini’s work had exerted a great influence on the later writers, before Dallet’s work was published. Although Martini’s informations on the Korean church relied completely on the hearsay in China and was,therefore, incorrect, they were often cited by writers before Dallet. They described Korea as the vassal country of China and the Korean missions as an appendix to those of China. Some writers of the 19th century believed that Korea was evangelized by the Japanese in the end of 16th century. Although the theory of the origins from Japan was refuted by Dallet, even some writers of the 20th century were inclined to think that Korea must have been evangelized by foreign missionaries in China or Japan. The above mentioned theory was embraced especially by those writers who wrote about the Korean church in the time of annexation by Japan (i. e. Pichon, Latourette,Laures). Since Dallet’s monograph appeared, most works written by the Westerners have dealt with Korean missions as a mere appendix to the Chinese or Japanese missions (Dallet’s work being the notable exception). Dallet relied mainly on reports, letters and the opinions of French missionaries. Writers after Dallet relied primarily on Dallet’s work and other reports by missionaries. Therefore their descriptions on the Korean church were necessarily swayed by the opinions of missionaries. All the missionaries who visited Korea from the end of the 19th until the first half of the 20th century, both Catholic and Protestant, were the representatives of the mission civilisatrice. The works written in European languages by the Koreans were rare,until L'érection du premier vicariat apostolique by A. Choi appeared. In 1927 R.-J. Paik submitted The History of Protestant mission in Korea,1832-1919 as a doctorate thesis to the University Yale. But his work has been hardly noticed by the Western scholars. I as a Korean believe that our duty in the future is to write the church history of Korea in Western languages so that the Westerners may better understand their Korean brothers and sisters than before. The history is part of a deeper understanding of our fellow Christians and their experience through history.
키워드열기/닫기 버튼
Dallet, Daveluy, Cespedes, Peter Lee, missions, imperialism
