Eun-dong Mission Station

History & origins

Catholic life in the Eoeun-dong area is connected with believers who took refuge in the mountains after the Byeongin Persecution. The Diocese of Jeonju records that around 1876 Catholics who had come from Chungcheong and other regions formed villages in several valleys of Jinan, and that as they gathered around Eoeun-dong a mission station was established there in 1888.

As the number of Catholics grew, Eoeun-dong was separated from Jeonju Parish on September 22, 1900 and became the first parish in the Jinan area, with Father Kim Yang-hong Stephen as its first pastor. The existing mission building was repaired for use as a church in 1901, and larger churches were constructed in 1904 and again in 1909 as the community expanded. The 1909 church, a wooden structure with a shingled roof, was completed and dedicated that year.

Because of its remote mountain location, however, the parish center was moved in 1922 to Handeul Mission Station, which offered better prospects for evangelization, and Eoeun-dong once again became a mission station. The diocesan account notes that the surviving building was designated Registered Cultural Property No. 28 in 2002 and regards it as an important witness to early Catholic architecture and village life. Eoeun-dong thus preserves a long history in which a refugee Catholic village grew into a parish and later remained as a mission station carrying that memory forward.