Author Description

The Attainment of All Things was based on a shorter piece, entitled Sloth(published by the Korean Religious Track Society in 1904), which Rev. Gil Seon-Ju wrote in 1901. In The Attainment of All Things, published in 1916, Rev. Gil Seon-Ju supplemented the content of Sloth with sijo, illustrations, and a more detailed explanation of eternal life. The Attainment of All Things contains more than ten sijo, composed of five - and seven- syllable lines, revealing Rev. Gil Seon-Ju's literary side. The ten or so illustrations functioned as icons for spiritual education to a public with a low literacy rate at the time The symbolic pictures provided a rhetorical depiction of the Christian's road of penance and pilgrimage. In particular, it demonstrates symbolically how Christianity and Korean sensibilities were combined to fit a context in which there were not yet many Christian. Rev. Gil Seon-Ju's Work allows us to infer a likeness of the early Korean Church, the growth of which has been unparalleled in the twentieth century.