The CBCK Committee for Culture (President: Most Rev. Joseph Son Sam-seok, Auxiliary Bishop of Pusan) opened the historical documents of Paris Foreign Missions Society (MEP) in a readable format with the Korean summaries to the public for the cause of the research on the history of the Catholic Church in Korea as of August 23, 2011. The documents, named “A-MEP Vol. 580” and “A-MEP Vol. 581”, are compiled in two volumes respectively. They contain annual reports and official letters of the MEP written from 1875 to 1886 (Vol. 580), as well as from 1887 to 1900 (Vol. 581). Now that the documents are digitalized, the researchers can enjoy better accessibility to them more than ever before. The documents were very illegible because they were written in old cursive script.

On this occasion, Bishop Son said, “The documents written personally by the hands of the French missionaries are very important for the study of Korean Church history, nevertheless they could not be orderly compiled up to recently because of the difficulty to understand the texts of scarcely intelligible hand writing.” He added, “Now, I am sure that these digitalized documents will be a great help for the study of Korean Church history.”