용산 성당

History & origins

The Yongsan Catholic community began around 1920 as a mission station under Yakhyeon Parish and grew into an independent parish in the early 1940s. The exact year is not consistent across current Catholic sources: the present directory gives January 1941, while the Catholic Encyclopedia of Korea describes the separation as taking place in 1942.

During the Pacific War, the church building was requisitioned for military use, forcing Catholics to worship at the nearby Sacred Heart Seminary church. After liberation, the parish community worked to re-establish its own church, and a new church was completed and dedicated on December 5, 1954.

Yongsan Parish’s history thus moves from its beginnings as a Yakhyeon mission station through wartime loss of its church and post-liberation rebuilding. It is a local church whose development closely reflects the modern history of the Yongsan area.