Roman Catholicism in South Korea

The Catholic Church in South Korea (called Cheonjugyo, Hangul: 천주교; Hanja: 天主教; literally, "Religion of the Lord of Heaven") is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome. At the end of 2013, it had 5,442,996 members (10.4% of the population) with 4,901 priests and 1,668 parishes.

Portuguese Jesuit priest Gregorious de Cespedes was possibly the first Catholic missionary in Korea, arriving in Busan on 27 December 1593 (Yet, this is just about the possibility, or rather, the probability. There's no evidence that de Cespedes came to the Korean peninsula and gave the baptims to dying children, as a Spanish Jesuit historian asserted in his book cited here). At the time of the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–98) Japanese leader Konishi Yukinaga married a Korean Christian woman. Julia was adopted as her name.Macau received an influx of African slaves, Japanese slaves as well as Christian Korean slaves who were bought by the Portuguese from the Japanese after they were taken prisoner during the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–98) in the era of Hideyoshi. However, Catholicism (and Christianity in general) in Korea more generally began in 1784 when Yi Seung-hun was baptized while in China under the Christian name of Peter. He later returned to Korea carrying religious texts, and baptized many fellow countrymen. The Church in Korea continued without formal missionary priests until clergy from France (the Paris Foreign Missions Society) arrived in 1836 for the ministry.

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