About this place
Hwadong Mission Station is a chapel community under Baengnyeongdo Parish in the Diocese of Incheon, serving Catholics in a village on the southern part of Baengnyeong Island. The official directory of the Catholic Church in Korea registers Hwadong as a mission station belonging to Baengnyeongdo Parish. Although it is not an independent pastoral unit like a parish, it illustrates the traditional role of a gongso: a place where Catholics living far from the parish church can pray together and sustain their local faith community.
Several mission stations, including Hwadong, remain on Baengnyeong Island today, and together with Baengnyeongdo Church they form an important part of the island's Catholic history. Hwadong is also introduced as a stop on the island's pilgrimage route, preserving traces of the faith communities built by missionaries and island residents. Its character as a small chapel close to village life, rather than a large parish church, helps visitors understand how Catholicism took root at the level of individual settlements across Baengnyeong Island.
History & origins
The history of Hwadong Mission Station is best understood within the growth of Baengnyeongdo Parish. The parish was established in 1959, and through the vigorous missionary and pastoral work of its first pastor, Father Edward Moffett, mission-station communities were formed in several villages around 1960. A Catholic Peace Newspaper survey of Baengnyeongdo Parish and its mission stations identifies Hwadong as one of the communities formed in that period that have survived to the present.
Baengnyeong Island in those years had received many refugees after the Korean War, and a single parish church could not easily serve Catholics scattered across the broad island. Village mission stations became local centers where the faithful could gather regularly for prayer and continue their Catholic life. Hwadong likewise served as a link between Baengnyeongdo Parish and the village community within this island pastoral structure.
Today ten mission stations, including Hwadong, remain on Baengnyeong Island and form a pilgrimage route together with the parish church. As these small chapels preserve traces of the missionary expansion of the 1960s, Hwadong continues as a piece of religious heritage showing how the Catholic community spread and took root village by village across the island.
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Building information
- Passenger elevators: 0
- 1 above-ground floors · 0 below-ground floors
- Total floor area: 170㎡
Building-register record · · Source
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Sources and updates
- Information Status
- Official
- Source
- Official source
- Data freshness
- Fresh
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- Source
- 한국천주교주교회의 온라인 주소록
Diocese
Incheon Diocese (Diocese of Incheon)
Official website: http://www.caincheon.or.kr
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