한말·일제강점기 뮈텔 주교의 교육활동

Bishop Mutel’s Educational Activities at the End of the Chosun Dynasty and During the Colonial Period in Korea

Bishop Mutel as the highest decision-maker of the Catholic Church in Korea, at the close of the Chosun dynasty and during the period of Japanese occupation in Korea, developed various educational activities during 43 years of his episcopate. The characteristic of his educational activities is they had been focused on the direct mission, as manifested well the report prepared by himself for the invitation of the order centered on education. His main concern was to bring up catholic teachers by establishing a college of education and to support the schools run by catholic church in each local area. He was also interested in setting up the institutions for higher education able to compete with protestant-supported college and in preventing the young catholics from being influenced by protestant proselytism. As a matter of fact, the contents of the report came true in his educational activities. Calling in the order in charge of the education in Korea, he asked, first of all, the foundation of a college of education. Although the running of the college was bound to fail due to the Japanese control to the education and the financial and internal situation in the order, he had centered on the training of catholic teachers. The particularity of his educational activities was the system based on each parish. The nurturing of the talented based on diocese was not so active, for the lack of financial and human resources, but the educational activities in each parish had been very vigorous. They tried to bring up the human power for the mission by cultivation of the leader of laity and the leader of propagation above all, though not by the ordinary schooling. They also had made efforts to help the youth to enlarge the theological knowledge as well as the secular one through the schools founded by catholic churches. The seminary for the future priest even in small scale was the one of his principal objectives, as the task of bring up the Korean priests had the priority for the mission and also for the rise of Catholic Church in Korea. However, he had the shortcomings in his educational activities in spite of his endeavors mentioned above. He adopted a very positive attitude for the task of founding schools and fostering the talented, directly speeding up the catholic mission, but disinterested, even negative in the establishing the institutions for higher education deviated from this objective. That’s why he took a stand against the proposition of founding a college by some Korean forerunners such as Ahn Jung Geun. Such a position taking brought about a poor progress, or retarded in the establishment of higher education, which was resulted in the long term in a lack of human resources needed in various social fields. Finally he has been underestimated as a person who was disinterested or negative in the education for the Koreans.