Jukbyeon Mission Station

History & origins

Catholic life in Jukbyeon began around 1955 with Mass celebrated in a private home. According to Uljin County's official local history, Regina Yun, Justina Mun, Teresa Kim, and other Catholics who had moved from Gangneung gathered at Yun's home and invited a priest from Samcheok Catholic Church to celebrate the first Mass. In 1956 the group was designated a temporary mission station of Samcheok Parish in the Diocese of Chuncheon, and in 1958 Jukbyeon Mission Station was formally established. A small household gathering thus developed into an official Catholic mission community within only a few years.

As diocesan boundaries changed, Jukbyeon's affiliation changed together with Uljin Parish. It passed from the Diocese of Chuncheon to the newly created Diocese of Wonju in 1965 and then to the Diocese of Andong in 1969. The Diocese of Andong's mission-station record also confirms the 1958 foundation and these transfers. In the coastal village, the mission station provided a local base for common prayer and Mass when travel to the parish church was difficult, and it became an important part of Uljin Parish's pastoral care across a wide territory.

The mission building itself was later renewed. Uljin County records that the old Jukbyeon mission building was demolished in August 1987, construction of a new one began that November, and the completed mission station was dedicated by Bishop René Dupont on 25 April 1988. This rebuilding marked another stage in the development of a community that had begun with Mass in a family home. The work from the November 1987 groundbreaking to the April 1988 dedication was a concrete renewal of the older mission station into a new space. Jukbyeon's history therefore runs from a first household Mass, through temporary and formal mission status, changes of diocesan jurisdiction, and the dedication of a new building, showing how a Catholic community took lasting root in this East Coast town.