새남터 순교성지

History & origins

The name Saenamteo is traditionally associated with a low sandy rise near Nodeul ferry on the northern bank of the Han River. During the Joseon period the area was used as a military training ground and as a place of execution for serious offenders. When the persecution of Catholics began, it became an execution site especially for clergy and leading members of the Church. The Catholic martyrdom history of Saenamteo began in 1801, during the Sinyu Persecution, when the Chinese priest James Zhou Wen-mo was executed here by military beheading.

During the Gihae Persecution of 1839, Bishop Laurent Imbert, the second Vicar Apostolic of Korea, and Fathers Pierre Maubant and Jacques Chastan were martyred here. In 1846, during the Byeongo Persecution, St. Andrew Kim Taegon, the first Korean priest, was executed at Saenamteo. Clergy and lay Catholics, including Bishop Siméon Berneux, were also martyred here during the Byeongin Persecution of 1866. The bishops’ conference records a total of eleven clergy and three leading lay Catholics martyred at the site between 1801 and 1866.

The Catholic Church in Korea sought early to preserve the site. An attempt to purchase the land was made in 1890 but did not succeed. The Korean Catholic Martyrs’ Veneration Association, founded in 1946, renewed the effort, and the present property was secured in 1950. After the Korean War, a monument inscribed “Catholic Martyrs’ Shrine” was erected in July 1956. This marked an important transition from a historical execution site to a place formally remembered and visited in pilgrimage by the Church.

In 1981, Saenamteo Parish was established on the same grounds, and in 1987 the Korean traditional-style memorial church was completed and dedicated. Spaces for venerating relics and continued programs honoring the martyrs followed. Saenamteo thus became a shrine where the events of the persecution era, the Church’s memory of the martyrs, and present-day liturgy and pilgrimage meet in a single place.