ABSTRACT
Even during the period of the Great Persecution, plans were still being laid for the further evangelization of the peninsula. Between 1868 and 1874, a conference was held under the authority of the new bishop Felix Clair Ridel (1830-84) in Ch'a-kou, a village in the Liaotung Peninsula in southern Manchuria. In 1876, five years after the cessation of the Great Persecution, two priests returned to Korea, and they were joined in the following year by Bishop Ridel. It was during the latter part of the 1870s that the Catholic Church achieved tacit recognition of its right to exist in Korea. Although the bishop and another priest were deported in 1878 and 1879, by 1881 the government had ceased officially to harass priests carrying out their religious functions. This was undoubtedly the result of Korea's opening to the outside world and the moves to establish diplomatic relations with the various Western powers.
