Biography
Peter Yu Chong-nyul
About Peter Yu Chong-nyul
Peter Yu Chong-nyul lost his parents while still a child and earned his living selling straw shoes. The Korean bishops’ conference biography describes his earlier life as troubled by gambling and harsh treatment of his wife. After learning about Catholicism, he traveled to Seoul and was baptized by Bishop Siméon Berneux around 1864. The same account says that he stopped gambling and began treating his wife kindly. His wife also became a Catholic.
In February 1866, Yu visited relatives for the New Year before attending a gathering of Catholics at nearby Godunri. The Korean Catholic Encyclopedia describes the group studying Scripture when officers arrived and arrested them. Yu and several fellow believers were taken to the provincial authorities at Pyongyang. The article reports that he resisted demands to abandon his faith despite interrogation and torture. Commander Jeong Ji-yong then ordered prisoners who had renounced Catholicism to beat him. Yu died on February 17, the day after his arrest.
The 1895 martyr list, ChiMyeongIlgi, also preserves a brief account of his refusal to submit during interrogation. It records that the commander ordered other prisoners to kill him and have his body thrown into the Daedong River.
His wife recovered his body after paying officials and buried him near his home village of Nonje. In 1923, the Korean church investigated the location of the grave as part of preparations for his beatification. Father Kim Seong-hak asked Yu’s son, Yu Won-gang, to draw a plan before the inquiry. Yu’s daughter and local Catholics were among the witnesses who helped identify the site. The investigators compared the plan with the shape of the hillside and recorded their findings. This later inquiry preserved a connection between the account of his death and the family who had buried and remembered him.
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