Gahung Mission Station

History & origins

Gaheung Mission Station did not begin as a community of Mokhaeng-dong Parish. The Korean Catholic Encyclopedia’s history of Judeok Parish records that the first and second pastors of Judeok worked to develop nearby mission stations and established Monam, Gageum, Yeonhwa, Gaheung, and Yongwon between 1961 and 1965. This places the formation of Gaheung within Judeok Parish’s expansion of mission-station pastoral care in the first half of the 1960s.

As the Catholic population in the Chungju area grew, Mokhaeng-dong Parish was separated from Gyohyeon-dong Parish and established on September 15, 1971. The Korean Catholic Encyclopedia’s Mokhaeng-dong Parish entry lists Eomjeong, Dongnyang, Sancheok, Sotae, Gaheung, and Yadong among the mission stations under the new parish at the time of its establishment. Gaheung was thus incorporated into the pastoral structure of the newly created Mokhaeng-dong Parish and continued to serve as a local center of Catholic life.

The current Korean Catholic Directory still identifies Mokhaeng-dong Parish as the mother parish of Gaheung Mission Station. The verifiable history of Gaheung can therefore be summarized as its formation under Judeok Parish in the 1960s, its transfer into the newly established Mokhaeng-dong Parish in 1971, and its continuing connection with Mokhaeng-dong today. This sequence clearly illustrates how parish and mission-station jurisdictions were reorganized as the Catholic community grew in northern Chungju.