Hongcheon Church

History & origins

The roots of Hongcheon Parish lie in Songjeong Mission Station in the early twentieth century. Diocesan records mention the Catholic community in Songjeong in Bishop Mutel’s 1900 visitation record and in a 1901 report from Wondong Parish in Wonju. Songjeong Mission Station was first connected with Pungsuwon Parish and then came under Goeun-ri Parish in Chuncheon in 1920. On June 21, 1923, the mission station was elevated to a parish, creating Songjeong Parish, which at the time served several mission stations across parts of Inje and Hongcheon.

As the community grew, the parish moved to the present site in Hongcheon-eup in 1936 and changed its name from Songjeong Parish to Hongcheon Parish. During the Pacific War, Japanese authorities confined Irish missionaries at the church, and during the Korean War church construction was interrupted and the building was destroyed. After the war, Fr. Athanasius Choi Dong-oh restored a wooden church and renewed the plan for a stone church. Through the efforts of Fr. Philip J. Crosbie and the parishioners, the present church was completed in April 1955.

The stone church preserves characteristics of 1950s Catholic architecture, including exterior walls built with stone brought from Sammachi Pass. Recognizing its architectural value and state of preservation, the Korea Heritage Service registered it as a National Registered Cultural Heritage on April 15, 2005. Meanwhile, Hongcheon Parish became the mother parish of Inje in 1954, Seoseok in 1968, Seongsan in 1976, and Yeonbong in 1999. Its history—from mission station through war, reconstruction, and regional growth—is embodied both in the parish community and in the church that remains today.

The present church is especially significant because it was built as the parish community recovered from wartime destruction, making the building itself a record of postwar reconstruction. The move and renaming of the parish, the confinement of missionaries, wartime damage, rebuilding, and eventual heritage registration are all layered onto the same site, giving Hongcheon Parish a history in which nearly a century of change remains physically visible.