Christmas time seems a fitting season to revisit the progress towards the canonization of the first potential saint to emerge from the bloody carnage of the Korean War.

Korea, of course, has had other saints. These, most notably, include the Korean Martyrs who first brought Catholicism to Korea via the writings of the Jesuits at the imperial court in Beijing in the 18th century.  

Christianity has a long history in North Korea. As noted by the late journalist Don Oberdorfer, in his classic work “The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History, Kim Il Sung himself had Christian roots: