Donghang Catholic Church

History & origins

The history of Donghang Church begins in 1951, in the midst of the Korean War. According to the Busan Future Heritage record, members of an existing Catholic mission community and Catholic refugees erected a tent chapel on a hill in Uam-dong. When the tent was destroyed by fire in 1952, they built a wooden-board chapel in its place. In a neighborhood crowded with people displaced by war, this modest mission community became a starting point where Catholics could preserve their faith and support one another.

As the number of Catholics increased, a parish was established in 1954, and the present church was newly built and blessed in 1957. After the German priest Father Ha Antonio arrived as the third pastor in 1959, the parish expanded its distribution of daily necessities and its medical and educational work. In postwar Uam-dong, where many residents were poor, the parish functioned not only as a liturgical center but also as a base for relief and efforts toward local self-reliance.

In 1964, the retreat and education center known as the “House of Love” was built and the Korean headquarters of the World Apostolate of Fatima was founded. Educational and health services broadened with the establishment of the Korea-Germany Women's Vocational School in 1965 and a maternity clinic in 1977. Part of the parish territory was separated to form Seokpo Parish in 1984. In 1986, the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Pentecost Peace Village became linked with the site's continuing history of social-welfare apostolates.

Donghang's chronology thus reveals one aspect of postwar Busan: a Catholic community that grew from a refugee-era tent chapel into a parish with a permanent church and a network of educational and welfare activities. Because the old church and these layers of local memory remain together, Busan Metropolitan City designated the site as Busan Future Heritage in 2022. Preserving it today therefore means more than maintaining a building; it means handing on the memory of a faith community that lived alongside its neighbors through war and poverty.