The narrative and the style of the book are nothing less than gripping, especially when measured against the bulk of arid academic tractates. Cawley has an evident talent for effectively wedding authoritative scholarly discourse with captivating storytelling, which makes his narrative both memorable and of high academic standard.

Religious Studies Review

The Emplantation of Catholicism in Pre-modern Korea is a fundamental source for understanding the geo-political development of the Catholic movement in early modern Korea. Unlike Buddhism, Daoism and Shamanism, the Western religion was perceived as a sociocultural risk to the Confucian state's authority.

Journal of Religious History

Kevin Cawley brings a fresh approach to the examination of the early history of the Catholic Church in Korea, both in the theoretical and analytical approaches he uses, but also in the depth of his discussion on the 'reception history' of Catholicism. The book examines the psychological reasons for why people responded as they did to the Christian message, the importance of the use of the indigenous Korean alphabet in catechisms and hymnology and how the Christian Gospel reached repressed groups including women. Cawley has given us a fresh and deeper understanding of how Christian teachings were emplanted in difficult circumstances.

James H. Grayson, University of Sheffield, UK