Yongpo Mission Station

History & origins

According to the Diocese of Andong's mission-station interviews, Catholics in the Yongpo area had to walk long distances to other mission stations and the parish church before they had a chapel of their own. Yang Hwa-seok Paul, remembered as the first mission-station leader, was baptized during military service and later formed a small Catholic community with several other believers. When the parish priest learned of the difficulty they faced, he helped establish Yongpo Mission Station in 1965. The Catholic Directory of Korea records the establishment more specifically as April 1965.

The mission-station building was constructed on land obtained from a local Catholic family. Transportation was so difficult in the early years that after celebrating Mass at Yongpo, priests sometimes needed a local Catholic to guide them over mountain paths toward the next pastoral destination. Parishioners prepared meals for visiting priests and for one another, recalling how food was cooked in a large cauldron and shared despite modest circumstances. These memories show that the mission station was not merely a worship space but also a place of communal life and hospitality.

Yongpo also preserves traces of church art associated with Fr. André Bouton. The diocesan interviews recall murals behind the altar and near the entrance; some were later lost when walls were repainted during maintenance, while surviving works remain part of the mission station's religious and artistic memory. The old building has continued in use through repairs, including roof work. Yongpo thus preserves a history of rural mission in the 1960s and a community sustained largely through the initiative and care of local Catholics.