Eumseong Bongam Shrine

History & origins

After the Gihae Persecution of 1839, Catholics who had fled persecution gathered in Bangchukgol and Gyemadae in the Bongam area and formed Catholic villages. The Diocese of Cheongju's history of the shrine records that the families of Ambrose Kim Baek-sim, Paul Song Gun-myeong, Kim Gyeong-jang, and Peter Yi lived in Bangchukgol, and that the family of Francis Min Yun-myeong, a Catholic community leader who had lived in Gwangbeol in Chungju, later moved to Gyemadae. The community continued its life of faith away from outside scrutiny.

Father Thomas Choe Yang-eop visited the area during his pastoral journeys and administered the sacraments to the faithful. He selected Sado Yohannes, the youngest son of Kim Baek-sim, as a seminarian and sent him to the Apostolic Vicariate of Korea's seminary at Baeti. During the Byeongin Persecution of 1866, however, the communities of Bangchukgol and Gyemadae were discovered. Ambrose Kim Baek-sim, Fabian Kim Seong-seo, Francis Min Yun-myeong, and Peter Yi were martyred, and in 1868 Paul Kim Seong-hoe and Sado Yohannes were also arrested and martyred in Seoul.

After persecution scattered the Catholic villages, Joseph Jeong Mu-seon moved to Bongam in 1892 and rebuilt a Catholic community there. Bongam Mission Station was established in 1897, becoming a concrete communal base through which the memory of the earlier Catholic villages could continue.

In recognition of this history and the witness of the martyrs, the Diocese of Cheongju proclaimed Bongam a shrine on November 29, 2020. The development of the shrine links the life and persecution of the nineteenth-century Catholic villages, the rebuilding of the mission-station community, and their modern remembrance through pilgrimage. The ongoing cause for the beatification of Francis Min Yun-myeong further carries the church-historical significance of the place into the present.