Hyuchun-dong Catholic Church Buseok Mission

History & origins

Catholics in the Buseok area gathered in homes for mission-station services and Mass long before they had a separate building. According to testimonies published by the Diocese of Andong, even in the 1970s the community had no mission station of its own and used believers' homes as worship spaces. Older Catholics worked for many years to leave a mission station to the local community before they died. Funds were raised through a rice-saving practice in which small amounts were set aside from each meal, by gleaning after harvests, and through side work such as assembling envelopes. These offerings show that establishing the mission station was a task carried across generations rather than a short-term building project.

The effort continued with the next generation. At the time, the community belonged to Punggi Parish, and a parish priest came twice a month to celebrate Mass in a Catholic home. The faithful visited Bishop René Dupont to ask for help securing land, and a process followed to transfer the community to Hucheon-dong Parish so that fundraising and support could be organized more effectively. The diocesan testimony records that land for the mission station was purchased in 1988.

An old and unsafe house stood on the land at first. As the number of Catholics grew and support from Hucheon-dong Parish increased, plans for a new mission station moved forward. The jurisdiction was transferred to Hucheon-dong Parish in 1991, and a new mission-station building was erected in 1992. Diocesan material records that Bishop Ignatius Park Seok-hui dedicated it on May 17 of that year.

The formation of Buseok Mission Station shows how a lay Catholic community in a rural area without a resident priest created its own place of faith. Small acts of saving, side work, donations, and support from the parish gradually became a permanent building, and the mission station preserves that process itself as an important memory of local Catholic history.