Includes a complete translation of an anti-Catholic essay and an annotated translation of the Silk letter of Hwang Sayong.

Korea's first significant encounter with the West occurred in the last quarter of the eighteenth century when a Korean Catholic community emerged on the peninsula. Decades of persecution followed. Don Baker provides an invaluable analysis of late-Choson thought, politics, and society to help readers understand the response of Confucians to Catholicism and of Korean Catholics to years of harassment.