Eternal Help of Mother Convent of the Religious Community

History & origins

The Sisters of Our Lady of Perpetual Help was founded on June 27, 1932 in Sangsu-guri, Pyongyang by Bishop John Edward Morris, the second Apostolic Vicar of Pyongyang. The congregation grew as a community of Korean sisters, but in 1950 it faced a major crisis when the North Korean authorities requisitioned the convent building and the community was temporarily dispersed. The Korean War directly created the congregation’s historical connection with Busan.

Sisters who came south during the war reassembled as a community in Busan. The congregation’s official chronology records that on November 8, 1951 its motherhouse was blessed within the Maryknoll Sisters’ compound in Daecheong-dong, Busan. During the refugee period, the sisters struggled to support themselves while rebuilding their common and religious life, making Busan an important place where the congregation began again after the rupture of war.

On April 19, 1955, the motherhouse and novitiate moved from Busan to Heukseok-dong in Seoul. The motherhouse that existed in Busan during the 1950s therefore should not be identified automatically with the present “Busan Branch” in Seodaesin-dong as if it were one continuously documented institution. What can be stated clearly is that the current Catholic Church directory lists a Busan branch of the Sisters of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Seodaesin-dong, and the directory for Seodaesin Parish at the same address also names the congregation as its community of sisters.

The exact original establishment date of the present Busan branch cannot be fixed from the publicly available official sources reviewed here. Nevertheless, Busan has a meaningful continuity in the wider history of the congregation: it was the city where the sisters regrouped and established a motherhouse during the Korean War refugee period, and today a distinct branch continues religious life within the local Church. The congregation’s own records remember the refugee years in Busan not simply as a temporary stay but as a period of rebuilding the community. The sisters who came south gathered again, organized common life, and found ways to support themselves; that experience helped create the basis for the congregation to continue its mission in South Korea and explains the particular significance of Busan in its history.