Hakya-ri Mission Station

History & origins

Official sources describe the exact beginning of the Hakyari Catholic community in two ways. The Diocese of Chuncheon mission-station directory lists 1882 as the year of establishment, while the diocesan shrine account, drawing on Bishop Mutel's diary and a 1934 article in Kyunghyang Magazine, suggests that the mission community may have formed around 1877.

In his diary entry of December 4, 1900, Bishop Mutel recalled administering the sacraments in 1882 in a pottery village in the area and noted that the mission house in Hakyadong was the home of Ha Bang-ji-geo, the elder brother of the Yongsan seminarian Paul Ha. Diocesan material records 44 Catholics in 1882 and an average of about 85 during the 1910s.

A separate mission house was prepared in 1914. A 1934 article in Kyunghyang Magazine described the steady development of the Hakyari mission, noting how the community sustained its mission life despite the poverty of a rural setting. These records show Hakyari not merely as an old building, but as a living trace of a Catholic village whose faith and daily life have continued in the Yeongbuk region since the late nineteenth century.