Panam-dong Catholic Church

History & origins

Panam-dong Parish was established in August 1993. At first it had no independent church building and began parish life in rented commercial premises. The community started excavation for a church of its own in June 1996 and completed the structural frame in December 1998, after which portions of the basement and first floor were temporarily partitioned for use. Because the new parish had to live for years without a completed church, finishing the building became one of the central tasks shared by the whole community.

Construction was halted, however, as the local economy worsened in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis that began in late 1997. Reporting from 2000 described growing unemployment among parishioners and a situation in which far more households were leaving the area than moving in, yet it also recorded that the faithful did not give up either evangelization or the effort to complete the church. Beginning in November 1999, parishioners traveled to other parishes around the country to sell toothbrushes as a fundraiser, sometimes leaving at two in the morning for distant destinations. The building project thus became a long process in which the community carried the burden of economic crisis together and sought solidarity from other parishes.

After years of effort, the new church was finally dedicated on November 6, 2005, in a liturgy presided over by Bishop Lazarus You Heung-sik. Catholic Times described the completed complex as standing on a site of 2,056 pyeong, with one basement level and three floors above ground and a building area of 745 pyeong. It also noted that the Marian garden, church, and landscaping had been arranged in harmony with the surrounding scenery of Sikjangsan. Roughly twelve years had passed from the foundation of the parish to the completion of its own church.

The path from rented commercial space, through a period when only the structural frame stood and work had stopped, to a completed church built after parishioners themselves undertook fundraising is the most distinctive line in Panam-dong Parish’s history. It shows that the church was not simply the result of construction work but the outcome of sustained participation by local Catholics who sought to preserve their parish and secure a stable communal home even during economic hardship.