Hwawon Church

History & origins

Hwawon Parish was established on June 12, 1938, after being separated from Daemyeong-dong Parish. The Korean Catholic Encyclopedia identifies that parish as today's Namsan Parish and records this period as the beginning of an independent parish community in Hwawon.

As the community developed, its church facilities were also renewed. In 1983, the Catholic Times reported that Hwawon was keeping the existing church building while constructing a separate new church through the offering of an anonymous benefactor, presenting the project among the diocesan church-building efforts undertaken as the bicentennial of Catholicism in Korea approached. This shows how the parish's physical setting was reorganized in response to the changing needs of the community.

In 2018, a thanksgiving Mass was celebrated for the parish's 80th anniversary. The sequence of establishment, church renewal, and the 80th-anniversary commemoration shows the continuity of the Catholic community in the Hwawon area from the period of Japanese rule to the present.

The 1983 church-building record shows that the parish did not remain limited to the existing church building, but added a separate new church in response to the scale and needs of the community. Together with the later 80th-anniversary commemoration, the evidence presents Hwawon's history not as a single act of foundation but as a process in which successive generations renewed both church and community.