Hwangsapyeong Shrine

History & origins

The history of Hwangsapyung is directly connected with the problem of burying the victims of the 1901 Sinchuk Gyoan in Jeju. According to the history published by the Diocese of Jeju, the bodies of Catholics killed in the conflict had been provisionally buried around the Hwabuk Stream area, and securing a separate burial ground became an important issue in negotiations between the Church and the government of the Korean Empire.

After continuing negotiations, Hwangsapyung was selected in 1903 as the burial ground for Catholic victims. The Encyclopedia of Korean Catholicism explains that government and Church representatives worked through the formal arrangements that year, and that after surveying and transfer procedures were completed, the remains of victims who had been provisionally buried were moved to Hwangsapyung around November 1904 and a funeral was held. Hwangsapyung thus became a physical place that preserved the wounds of the Sinchuk Gyoan.

Over time the meaning and function of the cemetery expanded. In September 1977 the Diocese of Jeju held a gathering there in honor of the Korean martyrs and blesseds, and similar commemorations continued. Projects to organize and sacralize the cemetery followed. Clergy and lay Catholics of the Diocese of Jeju were also buried there, so Hwangsapyung developed both as a memorial cemetery for victims of the 1901 conflict and as a resting place for members of the local Church.

The formation of Hwangsapyung Holy Site is therefore more than the history of creating a shrine. It is the history of recovering and burying victims left by violence and conflict, establishing a place of memory, and preserving that memory through the prayer of later generations of the Catholic community in Jeju.