Imbert was born at
Marignane, to parents who were residents of the
hamlet of Callas, in the
commune of
Cabriès in the
Department of
Bouches-du-Rhône. When he became of age, he was sent to
Aix to pursue his studies. According to reports, he paid his expenses by making and selling
rosaries. He then enrolled at the
seminary of the
Paris Foreign Missions Society on 8 October 1818. On 5 March 1819, Imbert was
incardinated in the
Archdiocese of Paris, and
ordained on 18 December of that same year, having received an
indult from the
Holy See due to his not having reached the legal age. He then set sail from France on 20 March 1820, bound for
missionary service in China. Imbert's first stop was in
Penang,
Malaya, where he was asked to replace a teacher at the
College General (Major Seminary), who had taken ill. He taught there from April 1821 to January 1822 In 1821,
Esprit-Marie-Joseph Florens, the
Vicar Apostolic of Siam, requested for him to call at Singapore. The bishop had been contemplating opening a
missionary station in Singapore. He was not very certain, though, whether there was any urgency or he was aware of the circumstances prevailing in the island. Therefore, the young missionary was to check on the situation. He reached Singapore on 11 December 1821 and spent about a week there. Imbert was the first priest to celebrate
Mass on the island. He then crossed secretly from Manchuria to Korea that same year. During this time, Korea was going through a period of
Christian persecution. On 10 August 1839, Imbert, who was secretly going about his missionary work, was betrayed. Realizing that it was only a matter of time before he was arrested and killed, he celebrated Mass and surrendered himself to those who lay in waiting for him. He was taken to
Seoul, where he was tortured to reveal the whereabouts of foreign missionaries. Mistakenly believing that his
converts would be spared if all foreign missionaries came out from hiding and gave themselves up, he wrote a note to his fellow missionaries,
Pierre-Philibert Maubant and Jacques-Honoré Chastan, asking them to surrender to the Korean authorities as well, which they did. All three of them were imprisoned together. They were taken before an
interrogator and questioned for three days to reveal the names and whereabouts of their converts. As torture failed to break them down, they were sent to another prison and
beheaded on 21 September 1839 at Saenamteo, Korea. Their bodies remained exposed for several days but were finally
buried on Nogu Mountain. The three were among the 79
Korean Martyrs beatified in 1925, and among the 103
Korean Martyrs canonized by
Pope John Paul II in Seoul on 6 May 1984. The
feast day of Saint Laurent Imbert is celebrated on 20 September (formerly 10 June). Accordingly, a religious statue of Imbert Bum is also enshrined at a side chapel of the
Myeongdong Cathedral, where pious women have vested the image in the traditional
Hanbok costume of South Korea. ==See also==