本文以「怨國失志」一詞為線索來出發，嘗試對韓國天主教初期歷史做出不同於傳統教會史的理解。天主教信仰之所以能夠在朝鮮自發性生根，與以朱子學思想為中心的儒家政教秩序，在朝鮮半島似乎已經面臨崩潰與失能有重要關聯。忽略了這些重要的思想背景與社會脈絡，只以教會史的視野或「衝擊―回應」的框架來研究韓國天主教會初期歷史有其界限。本文也觀察到，初傳入朝鮮天主教信仰乃是在中國經過脈絡化詮釋的思想，傳教史中，中國這個所謂「巨大的他者」依然存在，透過明代晚期與清初教會的歷史記憶，對朝鮮初代教會的宣教方向與其後1801 年教難的發生產生了深遠影響。

Starting from an alternative historical thread – the phrase “Resenting the Nation and Losing Resolve” (yuanguo shizhi 怨國失志), this paper attempts to propose an understanding of the early history of the Korean Catholic Church, which is different from that of traditional church accounts. The reason why Catholic beliefs spontaneously took root during the Joseon dynasty is significantly connected to the Confucian social order of government and education, which placed Zhu Xi’s (朱熹 1130-1200) thought at the heart of its institutions. At that time, these institutions already faced collapse and had become incapacitated. In studying the initial stages of the Korean Catholic Church, ignoring this important ideological backdrop and social context, while only relying on the perspectives of Church history or a “impact-response” model and separating such issues from comparisons of how states in East Asia (Korea, Japan, and China) responded to the arrival of Western powers is certainly limited. This paper also examines how Catholic beliefs introduced into Korea had already undergone a process of contextualization and interpretation in China, and in the missionary process, the idea known in China as the “inevitable other” (不可避の他者) continued to exist. The idea, passed through the historical memory of the late Ming and early Qing church, produced profound and long-lasting effects on the policy of evangelization in the early Korean Catholic Church and later persecutions in 1801.