Seong Isidol Youth Retreat Center

History & origins

The direct origins of St. Isidore Youth Home can be traced to 1993, when the St. Isidore Development Association received approval for a social education training institute for young people. The Korean Catholic Encyclopedia records that approval was granted on October 14, 1993, and that responsibility for operating the institution was entrusted to the Salesian Sisters. On October 15, 1994, the first building was blessed and the institution formally opened in a ceremony presided over by Bishop Paul Kim Chang-ryeol.

The institution’s own official chronology likewise identifies October 1994 as its starting point. Facilities for youth training and lodging were subsequently expanded in stages, establishing a more stable base for communal living and educational programs. This represented the emergence of a specialized youth-education field from the broader rural-development and social-education work of the St. Isidore project.

In 2013, the institution received authorization to install and operate a youth training facility, and in 2014 it was registered as a youth training center. Its institutional character was thus clarified and reorganized from a general social-education training space into a formally recognized youth facility.

In March 2018, it was registered under the current name, St. Isidore Youth Home Youth Training Center. This history shows how a Catholic youth-education institution that began in the 1990s developed into a formal training center while continuing the Salesian Sisters’ youth apostolate and the founding spirit of St. Isidore.