THIS CHAPTER ANALYZES how Catholic missionaries, primarily Jesuits based in Japan, considered the people of the Joseon kingdom as a target of missionary endeavours in Europe's later sixteenth century. It explores how varied masculinities performed by Jesuit men in their written texts informed missionary endeavours related to Joseon, not only in the context of other faith groups operating in the region, but as they experienced relationships with others in the Society. Collectively, these discussions circulating in the Jesuit correspondence across Asia and Europe produced assessments, conceptualized in gendered terms, of both the kingdom's people and its relationship to surrounding powers such as Japan and China. In their encounter with Korean people, Jesuit men utilized existing pathways of trade and communication among peoples in the region but also the opportunities opened up by contemporary political and military events. These assessments were thus produced in a context of violence inflicted on Korean populations that profoundly shaped the Jesuit encounter with Joseon, created conflicting perspectives and narratives among Jesuits about the nature of their activities and ambitions, and about the perceptibility of Koreans to the Christian message. This determined both the nature of missionary work and the identification of specific Korean cohorts for missionary endeavours. Among them were Korean women, who, as this chapter examines, were perceived by Jesuits to be exposed to specific vulnerabilities but who also presented opportunities for the mission as a discrete cohort holding key values.

The Joseon Kingdom: “The Treasure Kept for the Man who Most Merits It”

Despite the Joseon kingdom's trading and diplomatic ties with Japan and tributary relationship with Ming China, and the circulation of enslaved Korean peoples in the region, Catholic sources that documented knowledge of the kingdom in the later sixteenth century tended to suggest that its population was almost entirely closed to external contact other than that controlled by the kingdom itself. This narrative offered both a call to arms for its authors as well as a rationale as to why specific resources would be required to support efforts to extend communication to the kingdom. Jesuit information conveyed from Japan appeared to come from the Society's local hosts as well as from European traders who had encountered Korean populations in shipwreck events.