Yonggipo Mission

History & origins

The roots of Catholic life on Baengnyeongdo are found in the island's broader missionary history, which predates any securely documented founding date for Yonggipo Mission Station itself. Incheon Metropolitan City records that Baengnyeongdo Parish was established on May 9, 1959, and that it now has jurisdiction over a number of mission stations, including Yonggipo. A structure thus developed in which village communities across the island were linked through the parish.

Catholic sources report that, through the energetic pastoral work of the first pastor, Father E. Moffet, several mission stations were formed on Baengnyeongdo around 1960, and they include Yonggipo among those that remain today. The source, however, does not specify the exact date on which Yonggipo itself was founded. For that reason, dates such as “around 1961,” found in unofficial materials, have not been treated as an established founding date.

Yonggipo later continued as an existing mission station included in pilgrimage routes together with Baengnyeongdo Parish. What reliable sources clearly establish at present is that Yonggipo has remained part of the parish's network of mission stations. Its precise date of origin should be supplemented only when diocesan documents or parish archival materials become available.