Korea Catholic Church Founding Site

History & origins

In the late eighteenth century, Korean scholars increasingly studied Western Learning and Catholic teaching. Peter Yi Seung-hun was baptized in Beijing in 1784 and returned to Korea. In the early winter of that year, at Yi Byeok’s house near Supyogyo, he baptized Yi Byeok and other companions. The Seoul Catholic Pilgrimage Route presents this event as a decisive beginning of Korea’s first voluntarily formed lay Catholic community.

The group continued learning and sharing the faith, forming the early Korean Catholic community. Unlike many local Churches founded after missionaries arrived and organized communities, Korean Catholicism is remembered for this unusual beginning in which lay believers first embraced the faith and created a community.

The marker now standing in front of the Jeon Tae-il Memorial at 105 Cheonggyecheon-ro commemorates the events associated with Yi Byeok’s house and the Supyogyo area. The site is therefore not a surviving eighteenth-century building but a church-historical memorial preserving the memory of the community’s beginnings in the winter of 1784.