Ugok Shrine (Martyrs' Tomb of Hong Yu-han and his descendants)

History & origins

Nong-eun Hong Yu-han was born in 1726 and studied classical learning from an early age, entering the circle of the scholar Yi Ik at about sixteen. According to the Diocese of Andong and GoodNews materials on the shrine, around 1750 Hong studied Western-learning texts such as the Tianzhu Shiyi and the Chilgeuk together with other students connected with Yi Ik. He tried to put what he discovered in those works into practice rather than leaving it as intellectual study. Because this was before the Catholic Church had been institutionally established in Korea, his ascetic life belongs to a very early stage in the Korean reception of Catholic teaching.

Hong chose a disciplined spiritual life rather than an official career and for many years practiced prayer and self-restraint inspired by the Chilgeuk. After his death in 1785, his tomb remained in the mountains of Ugok-ri in Bonghwa. In later generations, descendants of his family embraced the Catholic faith and some were martyred during periods of persecution. Ugok therefore came to hold a wider meaning, joining the memory of Hong's personal ascetic practice with the martyr witness of his descendants.

The Diocese of Andong identified Hong Yu-han's tomb in Ugok-ri in 1993 and formed a shrine-development committee the following year. A blessing of the grave and the erection of a memorial monument in 1995 began a sustained development of the site. A retreat house and priest's residence were completed in 1998, followed in 2000 by a youth training center that also included a church. In 2005, marking ten years of the shrine's development, a large cross and a statue of Hong Yu-han were erected.

In 2009, for the fortieth anniversary of the Diocese of Andong, soil from the places where thirteen descendants of Hong had been martyred was brought to Ugok to create memorial tombs and a monument in their honor. In 2015, the “Path of the Seven Victories” was created to recall Hong's ascetic spirituality. Ugok thus developed from the site of one man's grave into a shrine that brings together the early reception of Catholic faith in Korea, the martyrdom of later generations, and modern pilgrimage and spiritual formation.