Ulman Church

History & origins

The roots of the Ulman Catholic community reach much further back than the establishment of the present parish. The Korean Catholic Encyclopedia's history of Gimhae Parish records that, in 1945, leaders and members of several mission stations in the Gimhae area organized a mutual association, and it explicitly names Ulman among those mission stations. This provides evidence that an organized Catholic community already existed in Ulman around the time of Korea's liberation.

As the structure of the local Church later changed, the mission-station community developed into a parish. The official Catholic Directory in Korea records October 7, 2004, as the establishment date of Ulman Parish. A community that had long continued in mission-station form thus acquired the pastoral structure of an independent parish, giving local Catholics a closer and more stable base for parish life as the wider Gimhae and western Busan area changed.

The church building itself was also renewed to meet the community's circumstances. The Catholic Times reported that a new church, rebuilt on the basis of the previous structure, was dedicated on October 1, 2022, by Bishop Joseph Son Sam-seok. The relatively modest one-story building includes both the worship space and areas for community use. The movement from mission station to parish and then to a rebuilt church shows how the Ulman community has preserved its older local roots while renewing its pastoral foundation for changing circumstances. The 1945 mutual association is recorded as an organization through which members of several mission stations helped one another with Catholic funeral rites and worked for evangelization, showing that Ulman maintained its faith life in solidarity with neighboring communities. The church dedicated in 2022 is a one-story building of about 400 square meters with the sanctuary, Maria Hall, and office areas, renewing the functions needed for parish life while remaining proportionate to the size of the community.