Fr. Bret

Late in 1897 Fr. Bret set off on a 3-month journey taking him from his base in Wonsan to the frontier with China at Hoeryŏng and on into Manchuria. This area had not previously been visited by any foreign priest. There was still considerable hostility toward the new religion and the foreign priest, and local believers were sometimes driven from their homes. Fr. Bret had to push the local authorities to impose order and respect freedom of religion.

On his return to Wonsan at the end of March 1898, Bishop Mutel asked him to write a full account of his expedition for publication in France.

The account was published in 24 installments in the weekly magazine Les Missions Catholiques between April 14 and September 22, 1899. They depict vividly the attitudes of the French missionaries of the time, as well as that of the Korean population in a region previously untouched by any missionary activity.

Somee episodes were illustrated by engravings of photographs taken by Fr. Bret and others.

	Fr. Bret's Journey
Late in 1897 Fr. Bret set off on a 3-month journey taking him from his base in Wonsan to the frontier with China at Hoeryŏng and on into Manchuria. This area had not previously been visited by any foreign priest. There was still considerable hostility toward the new religion and the foreign priest, and local believers were sometimes driven from their homes. Fr. Bret had to push the local authorities to impose order and respect freedom of religion. On his return to Wonsan at the end of March 1898, Bishop Mutel asked him to write a full account of his expedition for publication in France. The account was published in 24 installments in the weekly magazine Les Missions Catholiques between April 14 and September 22, 1899. They depict vividly the attitudes of the French missionaries of the time, as well as that of the Korean population in a region previously untouched by any missionary activity. Somee episodes were illustrated by engravings of photographs taken by Fr. Bret and others.	This map in PDF	Eusèbe-Louis-Armand Bret, Born in the parish of Saint-Bénigne in Dijon (Côte-d'Or) on December 17, 1858, he studied at the minor seminary of Plombières-lès-Dijon and at the major seminary of his native city. He entered the M.-E. Seminary on September 12, 1879, received the priesthood on March 4, 1882, and left on April 12 for the General College in Pinang. On November 16 of the same year, he was appointed professor of ecclesiastical history, and on December 29 of the following year, professor of rhetoric; his teaching was very popular. On November 4, 1884, he was added to these functions as a nurse. In 1890, he published a new edition of two pamphlets in Latin, on Literature and Rhetoric. The development of the particular seminaries of the Missions having led to a decrease in the number of students at the General College, he left this house on March 29, 1894 and went to the mission of Korea. A few months later, in May 1894, he was given the post of Wonsan, in the province of Hamkyong; in 1896, he became a professor at the seminary of Yongsan in Seoul; in 1897, he returned to Wonsan and began to evangelize the northern part of the region, where he met with very hostile populations, but finally obtained satisfactory results in Kan-to. In 1905, he gathered a large number of his neophytes in agricultural colonies. He built a church and a presbytery in Ouen-san. He died of cancer in his parish on October 25, 1908. The complete text of Fr. Bret's account of his expedition In French In English A longer biography from the MEP page In French In English Some of the illustrations in a PDF file