Duae Mission Station

History & origins

The Catholic community in Dueum took shape before the present mission station was established. According to material from the Diocese of Andong, in 1964 the family of Ryu Hui-rak, who lived in Dueum-ri, was suffering from illness when a neighbor, Wi Bong-un, invited his relative Choi Chan-gyu, a Catholic of Jeongseon Parish, to help through prayer and care. This experience led Peter Ryu Hui-rak to begin learning the faith. After receiving catechesis at Jangseong Catholic Church, he was baptized on April 26, 1966, in a home in Dueum-ri. As the number of Catholics increased, priests were invited to celebrate Mass in private homes.

The Catholic directory of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea records April 15, 1973, as the establishment date of Dueum Mission Station. A diocesan feature preserves local memories that the present site had been used as a jail by police during the Japanese colonial period and testimony that a Catholic donated the land so that a mission station could be built there. This is community oral memory rather than an official administrative record, but it shows how local Catholics came to understand a painful site as a place transformed into one of prayer and faith community.

The memories of the mission station also include the experience of rural social activism. Recalling the 1988 Catholic Farmers’ Movement campaign for fair pepper prices, the mission-station leader said that education on the purpose and meaning of the farmers’ movement took place there and that Fr. Yoo Jae-jun and local Catholics played important roles. The history of Dueum Mission Station therefore developed from a small Catholic gathering in the 1960s into an established mission station that also came to hold the everyday life and social solidarity of rural Catholics.