서대문 성당

History & origins

The formation of Seodaemun Parish is connected with the expansion of the parish network west of central Seoul in the late 1950s. Until the early 1940s, a wide area outside the old city gates was under Yakhyeon Parish, today’s Jungnim-dong Parish. As both the Catholic population and the city itself grew around liberation and in the years after the Korean War, new parishes were needed in several districts. The plan for an independent parish serving Catholics in the Seodaemun area developed in this context.

In 1958 a new community was separated from Jungnim-dong Parish and began under the name Songwol-dong Parish. The first pastor, Fr. Lee Seok-chung, used a wooden building at 112 Songwol-dong as a temporary church while establishing the community. The sources do not agree on the precise founding date: the current Catholic directory gives April 18, 1958, while the Encyclopedia of Korean Catholicism records March 1958. The narrative therefore uses only the securely shared year, 1958.

In 1959 the community purchased the present property in Naengcheon-dong, about 317 pyeong of land with three buildings, and moved the church there. At the same time the parish name changed from Songwol-dong to Seodaemun. This was the decisive step by which a community that had begun in a temporary wooden church established a stable base within the present Seodaemun area.

Seodaemun Parish continued in the same district as the administrative and residential environment of central Seoul changed greatly around it. To understand today’s Seodaemun Church, it is therefore important to see not only the parish foundation in 1958 but also the 1959 move to Naengcheon-dong and the accompanying change of name as the transition that shaped its present identity. The move from Songwol-dong to Naengcheon-dong was more than a change of address. By leaving a borrowed wooden structure and securing its own property with land and several buildings, the community established a long-term base for parish life and adopted a new name reflecting the area it would serve.