A Visit to Korea's Christian Martyrs' Memorial Hall
To live by faith in God means, by definition, to live differently from the world's prevailing currents. Because God is holy, He calls us to a life of holiness—and holiness, at its root, means being set apart. Yet how often believers, swept along by the world's tides, lose sight of that calling. Readers who recall this magazine's earlier discussion of C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters in read.log will remember how the demons' strategy has shifted over time: rather than open hostility, they now work through the comforts of culture and the pull of material life. That strategy, this writer would argue, is working remarkably well in our own day. In such a season, it is worth asking again what faith actually requires of us. The place this writer visited for this installment of step.log speaks directly to that question: the Korean Christian Martyrs' Memorial Hall, located in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province.
A Path That Remembers Their Names
The Korean Christian Martyrs' Memorial Hall does exactly what its name promises—it remembers martyrdom. From the moment the gospel first took root on the Korean peninsula, the church faced one trial after another. Persecution came under the late Joseon government; later, under Japanese colonial rule, believers were martyred for refusing to bow before Shinto shrines. After liberation, the Korean War brought yet another wave of martyrdoms, as countless Christians lost their lives rather than renounce their faith.
The memorial exists to keep those names and that history before us, so that we might examine our own faith in their light. Along the path from the parking lot up to the main building stands a row of stones, each honoring a martyr—pastors and elders, yes, but also a great many ordinary, unnamed laypeople. Walking that path, this writer was struck by how many different kinds of Christians stood firm to the point of death. The faith we practice in peace today exists because of the blood and the faith of those who came before us.
Inside the Memorial: Where Suffering Meets Glory
Past the entrance, the building's design itself becomes a kind of sermon. The central space is built to evoke a prison—the very cells where these martyrs were once held. But it is not only a prison. Built into the same structure is an image of the heaven these martyrs fixed their eyes on as they faced death. Look up along the high walls, and light pours in through a window set near the ceiling. Standing there, this writer was reminded of a truth worth repeating: faith may cost us dearly in this world, but our eyes belong fixed on God alone.
The second floor traces the history of Christian martyrdom in Korea from start to finish—from the persecutions of the late Joseon era, through the refusal to bow to Shinto shrines under Japanese rule, to the killings carried out by North Korean forces during and after the Korean War. Walking through this timeline, it strikes this writer that the most recent of these martyrdoms took place less than a century ago. The question follows naturally: if such a moment came for us today, would we stand as our forebears did?
Further along, one display includes a video recounting an incident in Sinan County, South Jeolla Province, where retreating North Korean forces killed a large number of Christians during the Korean War. But the story the video tells is not simply one of tragedy. That seed of martyrdom became, in time, a means by which the gospel spread further into that region. And most of those who died, the video makes clear, were not pastors or church leaders but ordinary believers—a detail that should give every reader pause.
Examining Our Own Faith in Light of Theirs
Too often, believers today look little different from those who claim no faith at all—and at times, regrettably, even worse. The reason, this writer would suggest, is that Christians have largely lost hold of a right eschatological hope. When we remember that this life is not all there is—that a day of judgment is coming, and a day when we will meet our Lord face to face—we recover what Scripture has always said about us: that we are pilgrims passing through this world. There is no better way to recover that faith than to look again at the faith of the martyrs. The next opportunity that presents itself, a visit to the Korean Christian Martyrs' Memorial Hall is worth taking—not merely as a historical exercise, but as an occasion to stand Coram Deo, before the face of God, and examine one's own faith.
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faith.log
A journal that connects faith and everyday life. In each small piece of writing, we share the grace of God and the depth of life together.
