Wonmeori Shrine

History & origins

The Diocese of Daejeon traces the Catholic community at Wonmeori back to around 1785, when Yi Jon-chang began spreading the Gospel in the Naepo region. The name “Wonmeori” is explained as deriving from the “first head” of an embankment, or eon (堰), constructed to reclaim coastal tidal flats as rice fields. Catholics here sustained their faith while making their living through salt production, fishing, and farming.

During the Byeongin Persecution, which began in 1866, twenty Catholics from the Wonmeori community were martyred at Hongju, Haemi, and Suwon. The shrine preserves the graves of Mark Park Seon-jin and Matthias Park Tae-jin, who were martyred during the 1868 Mujin persecution, linking the documentary history of persecution to a surviving burial site. Their graves are a central legacy through which the suffering and witness of this long-established Catholic village are remembered today.

The community continued after the persecutions through its mission stations. The Diocese of Daejeon records that the Wonmeori mission hall and the halls of Saeteo and Eumseom, which share the same local history, remain preserved. Diocesan materials also retain images of the martyrs' cemetery at the time of church construction on April 4, 2000, and of the present cemetery after reinterment, allowing the later development of the shrine grounds to be traced.

Today Wonmeori Shrine continues to remember twenty martyrs of the persecutions together with two modern martyrs and to pray for their beatification and canonization. Its history is distinctive in bringing together several layers in one place: an early Catholic village, persecution and martyrdom, and the enduring life of mission-station communities.