Merry Christmas - from Jeju-do Island!

Completing Christmas with the Korean fir tree from Hallasan (한라산)
& remembering the first Korean Catholic priest on Jeju Island

Germans started it, but Americans perfected the celebration of Christmas holiday in the 20th Century.

While no Christmas is complete without the Christmas tree, a native Korean fir called Gusangnamu (구상나무) is the preferred choice of Christmas tree in many homes in the U.S. and in Europe.

First encountered by Father Emile Joseph Taquet (1873~1952), a French missionary, in Mount Hallasan in Jeju Island in the early 1900s, famed botanist Ernest Henry Wilson (1876 – 1930), a British plant collector and explorer, documented his 1919 encounter with the Gusangnamu in Mount Hallasan as Abies Koreana, in the Journal of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University, the oldest public arboretum in North America.

Gusangnamu, Abies Koreana, the Korean fir, known for its unique blue cone, is abundantly found in elevations up to 1900 meters on Mount Hallasan.

The Hallasan native tree thrives in cold climates where the weather at high elevations on Mount Hallasan can be unforgivingly harsh especially in winter.

The world's largest Korean fir forest on Mount Hallasan covers about six square kilometers at elevations over 1,300 meters above sea level, almost all of which are inside the Hallasan National Park.

An old-growth forest of Gusangnamu, a primary forest of random one hundred trees shows that an average age was about 80 years old, with the oldest tree at 158 years old." said Kim Kwon-su, a researcher at the Jeju Self-Governing Province World Heritage Headquarters.

Gusangnamu, which used to be readily seen near the 1000 meter elevations, have been thinning out up to about 1200 - 1400 meter high elevations. The prime culprit is "mainly due to natural disasters such as wind effects, frequent typhoons, heavy rainfall and the reduction of snowfall caused by climate change." according to Kim the researcher.

Recent findings show that young seedlings of the Korean fir naturally proliferate at higher altitudes but few grow below 1,700 meters above sea level.

The Korean fir, which is widely available in the U.S. and in Europe, makes an excellent pyramid-shaped garden tree, or "potted living Christmas tree."

St. Andrew Kim Taegon

Jeju Island was the first place in Korea where Korea's first Catholic priest landed, on September 28, 1845.

Father Andrew Kim Taegon (1821-1846), Korea's first Catholic priest, was educated in Macau and in in the Philippines from age 15, and was ordained as a priest in Shanghai in 1844 by the French bishop Jean-Joseph-Jean-Baptiste Ferréol (1808-1853). Kim Taegon's great-grandfather and father had been martyred (executed) for practicing Christianity in Korea.

Saint Andrew Kim Taegon is celebrated widely around the world with many Catholic churches named after him. There are Saint Andew Kim Taegon churches in Toronto, Canada, Seattle, Washington and one in Bocaue, Bulacan, just north of Manila, Philippines.

When Christianity was severely suppressed during the 1800's, Kim lived in Lolomboy in Bocaue in the Philippines as a seminarian, before he moved to Macau to be a priest.

Long before European missionaries arrived, Koreans who had obtained the Bible translated into Hanja characters learned about Jesus, the Holy Spirit and God. When the first consecrated missionaries arrived in 1836, Koreans were already practicing Christianity.

The first Korean Christians were Yangbans, or nobles, the educated elite who had literacy with the Hanja bible imported from the Qing dynasty.

Mainstream Korean nobles owned slaves and did not believe in the equality of all men and women. Christianity challenged the status quo, and it was not compatible with their world view.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, Christianity was severely suppressed, and more than 10,000 Korean Christians were executed.

When Pope John Paul II addressed the first ever canonization ceremony outside of Rome, in Korea in the 1984 canonization of Saint Andrew Kim Taegon (성안드레아 김대건) and 102 martyrs, the Pope noted:
"The Korean Church is unique because it was founded entirely by lay people. This fledgling Church, so young and yet so strong in faith, withstood wave after wave of fierce persecution. Thus, in less than a century, it could boast of 10,000 martyrs."

Just before Saint Andrew Kim Taegon was beheaded in Seoul on September 16, 1846, at the tender age of 25, he said: "This is my last hour of life, listen to me attentively: If I have held communication with foreigners, it has been for my religion and for my God. It is for Him that I die. My immortal life is on the point of beginning. Become Christians if you wish to be happy after death, because God has eternal chastisements in store for those who have refused to know Him."

-30 -