Galma-eul Mission Station

History & origins

A local tradition holds that the Catholic faith reached Galmaeul through believers who took refuge there during the Sinyu Persecution of 1801. More clearly documented evidence appears in 1887. A Diocese of Daejeon bulletin notes that missionary records of Father Doucet list Galmaeul as a mission station with 99 Catholics at that time. A record also survives of Bishop Gustave Mutel visiting the mission station in November 1896.

In the twentieth century, Galmaeul developed as both a Catholic community and a pottery-making village. By the 1920s the settlement had grown to about eighty households and three kilns, allowing the livelihoods associated with Catholic refuge communities and their religious life to continue in the same place. Pottery production ended in 1983, but this history of daily life remains closely tied to the Catholic memory of Galmaeul.

The present mission-station building is described in the diocesan bulletin as having been built in 1953 by Father Singer of Nonsan Parish with outside assistance, using cement bricks. The building shows how the faith of an older Catholic village continued within the later parish structure as a local mission station. Galmaeul’s history is therefore marked by continuity from persecution-era tradition and nineteenth-century mission records, through the pottery village, to the present chapel.