Between faith and apostasy

In July 1795, Jeong Yak-yong, better known as Dasan, was abruptly demoted to the post of geumjeongchalbang (a low-ranking inspector) for his adherence to Catholicism. Following his demotion, Dasan hastily traveled to Boryeong in South Chungcheong Province to fulfill King Jeongjo’s extraordinary order: to capture Yi Jon-chang, a prominent Catholic leader, as proof of his apostasy. Despite years of evading capture—even by the provincial governor of Chungcheong—Yi was astonishingly apprehended by Dasan, who arrived with only a single constable.

How could this be? In his recent book, Dasan’s Diary, Jeong Min, a professor of Korean literature at Hanyang University, offers a new perspective on this historical enigma. He argues that the incident reflects Dasan’s lifelong inner turmoil—caught between his faith in God and loyalty to his king—and suggests that Dasan never fully renounced Catholicism. “The fact that Yi Jon-chang, who enjoyed considerable support from the Catholic community, surrendered without resistance indicates prior communication between Dasan and the church,” Professor Jeong explains.

Dasan’s story evokes parallels with Martin Scorsese’s 2016 film Silence, which portrays the spiritual torment of Portuguese Jesuit missionaries during the Tokugawa Shogunate’s brutal persecution of Catholics in 17th-century Japan. In the film, the shogunate forces Father Rodrigues to publicly apostatize by subjecting Japanese converts to unspeakable torture. In a devastating moral compromise, Rodrigues renounces his faith to save his followers and spends the rest of his life under strict government surveillance, dying in Japan after four decades.

But in the film’s poignant final twist (spoiler alert), Rodrigues’ faith is revealed to have endured. During his cremation in a Buddhist ceremony, the camera closes in on a small cross clutched in his hand—a powerful symbol that, while he outwardly abandoned his religion, his inner faith remained unshaken. Might Dasan, too, have secretly preserved his Catholic beliefs, despite his public declaration of apostasy?

Indeed, Dasan’s departure from orthodox Neo-Confucianism and his pivotal role in spearheading the silhak (practical learning) movement—heralded as the Renaissance of late Joseon Korea—were profoundly influenced by Catholicism and seohak (Western studies), which introduced Western science and technology. Yet, scholarly research has rarely explored the enduring influence of Catholicism on Dasan’s life, even after his supposed renunciation of faith. “Korean academia dismisses the connection, seeing it as irrelevant since Dasan ‘shook it off,’ while the Catholic Church views him as an apostate and therefore unworthy of further attention,” Professor Jeong observes.

Just as the most compelling fictional characters embody both virtue and vice, history resists simple dichotomies of heroism and betrayal. Dasan’s legacy reminds us of the limitations—and dangers—of a black-and-white approach to the past. Isn’t it time we moved beyond such binary thinking and embraced the complexity of human lives as we experienced on the night of December 3rd?