The stage: Korea. The times: early nineteenth century. Main characters: the uncle Chǒng yag-yong, one of the greatest Korean Confucian scholars known by his pen name as Tasan, and the nephew Chǒng Ha-sang, one of the best loved Korean Christian saints known by his baptized name as Paul. The real-life drama starts with how Tasan, in exile from a top official position because of his fascination with new Western learning, and particularly with Catholicism, was shocked or “awestruck” by the Buddhist funeral ceremonies of his soulmate, an unconventional Buddhist who was attracted to Confucian teachings. In the end, Tasan returned to his home village and died peacefully, while Ha-sang gracefully endured torture and beheading for his faith. These stories are not unique as during this time, many noblemen and women became martyrs as a consequence of religious intolerance and ruthless political persecution. Such cross-cultural encounters are neither merely local nor only of historical interest, but are universal stories that remain relevant to the present day. This is very clearly portrayed in the historical novel Encounter by the eminent contemporary Korean writer Hahn Moo-Sook [1]. Based on real historical figures and events, and following the traditional mode of one-man Korean opera (p’ansori) and its developed form (ch’anggǔk), Hahn reveals what multicultural meeting, particularly the meeting of the Eastern and the Western cultures as incarnated in Confucianism and Catholicism, has brought to Koreans—to men and women, to adults and children, to the ruling and the ruled, to the intelligentsia and the peasantry. More vividly than any scholarly work could do, Hahn’s novel brings to life how the grand human drama of the meeting of the East and the West was experienced in early nineteenthcentury Korea. In doing so, she vividly portrays the complexities of cross cultural meeting—its benefits and costs, joys and pains, fusion and clash, embracing and resisting, acting and reacting, enrichment and struggle. Most importantly, this portrayal of life in early nineteenth-century Korea reminds us that Asia, contrary to popular belief, is, and has been, as with most other parts of the world, multicultural for a long, long time. And while much has been written about the potential for globalisation to lead to a clash between Western values and the more traditional cultures of the East, the reality is that some form of cultural mix and clash has been an essential feature of life in Asia for many centuries. Buddhism and Confucianism offer two salient examples of this deep-rooted and pervasive multicultural reality. The trans-regional spread of these two Bioethical Inquiry (2007) 4:163–167 DOI 10.1007/s11673-007-9061-6