In the year 1783 strange rumors were afloat. It was said that war had been declared against Korea by some foreign power which was about to throw an immense army into the peninsula. No one knew where it was to come from, but many believed it was Japan. The excitement grew so strong that crowds of people fled to the country, and so great was the influx into the southern provinces that real estate rose rapidly in value. Such was the haste of these deluded people that on the road families became separated and children were lost. Out of pity for the latter the king founded an asylum in Seoul for their maintenance. Yi Tŭk-cho of Kyöng-ju was one of the men who had accepted the teachings of the Roman Catholic books and in this year he induced a young attaché of the embassy to Peking to look up the missionaries there and get such light as he could on the subject. This young man, Yi Sŭng-hun, met at Peking the Portugese Alexandré de Govea of the Franciscan order. He accepted Christianity and was baptized under the name of Pierre. He brought back with him many books, crosses, images and other religious emblems. Some of these he gave to Yi Tŭk-cho who redoubled his studies and at the same time began to do some proselyting. Two of his most celebrated converts were two brothers Kwŭn Ch‘ul-sin and Kwŭn Il-sin of Yang-geun, thirty miles from Seoul. This town is called the birth-place of Roman Catholicism in Korea. Yi Tŭk-cho took the baptismal name of Jean Baptiste and Kwŭn Il-sin that of Francois Xavier. The propagation of the Christian faith soon began in Seoul and from there rapidly spread in the south. In 1785 the Minister of Justice began active operations against the new faith and in the third moon of that year a courtier memorialized the king on the subject. This caused the defection of many of the converts. In 1786 Kim Yi-so informed the king that when envoys came back from China they brought in their train many Catholic books, which caused a “conflagration” in the country, and he denounced it as a bad religion. He said the books were flooding the land and that the only way to stop it was to make Eui-ju, on the border, a customs port and have all baggage strictly examined before being allowed to pass.