Sanggye-dong Catholic Church

History & origins

Sanggye-dong Parish began as a mission station under Jangwi-dong Parish and was raised to parish status on December 18, 1970. A contemporary Catholic Times report announcing the creation of the Sanggye-dong and Hangang parishes stated that the Missionary Society of St. Columban was entrusted with pastoral care of Sanggye-dong and that construction of a new church was under way. The mission-station community was becoming an independent parish at a time when northeastern Seoul was rapidly turning into an urban residential area.

As the population and the number of Catholics in Nowon increased, the territory of Sanggye-dong was divided several times. Encyclopedia records show that Gongneung-dong Parish was created in 1981 from Muk-dong and Sanggye-dong, and that Nowon Parish was created in 1989 from Sanggye-dong and Dobong-dong. In 1992, Sanggye 2-dong Parish was established from Sanggye-dong and Junggye-dong.

These divisions were not a sign of decline but part of the increasingly dense pastoral organization required by the urban growth of Nowon. Beginning with a mission station and missionary pastoral care, Sanggye-dong became one of the communities that helped give rise to the parish network of northern Seoul. The present church continues that long local Catholic continuity. The contemporary record that a new church was already under construction when the parish was founded shows that the transition from mission station to parish and the creation of a permanent worship space were pursued almost simultaneously. The later separation of parishes such as Gongneung-dong, Nowon, and Sanggye 2-dong in the 1980s and 1990s also reveals that Sanggye-dong once served a much broader Catholic living area. Its territory became smaller as new parishes were created, but those very divisions reflected the growth of the Church in Nowon. Through these successive divisions, the continuity of Sanggye-dong Parish itself was nevertheless maintained.