Samyang-dong (Seon) Catholic Church

History & origins

The history of Samyangdong Mission Parish is rooted in the Archdiocese of Seoul’s pastoral response to redevelopment and housing poverty in the city. The archdiocese established its Committee for Pastoral Care of the Urban Poor in 1987. Under the 1994 pastoral plan for “Evangelization in the 2000s,” the committee adopted the building of basic communities with people in poverty as a central direction. Mission stations were organized in the eastern, western, southern, and northern areas of Seoul, with Samyangdong serving as the northern mission-station field.

The committee then developed the urban mission-station system into a structure centered on local evangelization committees and mission parishes. In September 1998, Samyangdong was established as the first of these mission parishes. Mission parishes in Geumho 1-ga, Muak-dong, and Bongcheon 3-dong followed, making Samyangdong one of the starting points for settling the archdiocese’s accompaniment of the urban poor into a parish-based pastoral form.

From the 2000s, the committee expanded neighborhood-based ministry through the mission parishes as local centers, including activities for unemployed and low-income residents, children and young people, and facilities known as “Peace Houses.” Within this development, Samyangdong (Solsaem) has continued an identity that goes beyond administering a territory: it seeks to form community in the places where people in poverty live and to cooperate with the surrounding neighborhood. In the late 1990s, the earlier urban mission-station model was reshaped so that local evangelization committees could participate more directly in community life and neighborhood evangelization through the mission-parish structure. Samyangdong was the first place to embody this transition in parish form, giving its establishment a significance beyond an administrative creation of a parish. The later expansion of local centers and “Peace House” activities linked with mission parishes continued the same effort not to separate parish ministry from the everyday circumstances of people in poverty.