Cheonjinam Shrine

History & origins

The central event that the Diocese of Suwon commemorates as the origin of Cheonjinam Shrine is the Cheonjinam study gathering of the winter of 1779. According to diocesan sources, a group of scholars including Gwon Cheol-sin gathered to study the classics, and Yi Byeok joined them and discussed Catholic faith on the basis of Chinese-language Western Learning texts. The participants then moved toward practices such as prayer and observance of Sunday. The diocese presents this process as a moment when scholarly interest developed into the formation of a community of faith and commemorates Yi Byeok, Gwon Cheol-sin, Gwon Il-sin, Yi Seung-hun, and Jeong Yak-jong among the early founders of Korean Catholicism.

The old hermitage at Cheonjinam later disappeared, and its site was forgotten for a long period. Diocesan sources state that the location was identified again in the 1960s through historical records and local testimony. Msgr. Byeon Gi-yeong subsequently led efforts to develop the shrine, beginning the purchase of land in 1978. The remains of Yi Byeok were reinterred there in 1979, followed in 1981 by those of Gwon Cheol-sin, Gwon Il-sin, Yi Seung-hun, and Jeong Yak-jong, forming the burial ground of the early founders.

Around 1984, as the Korean Church marked the bicentenary of its beginnings, the development of the shrine entered a more extensive stage. Burial grounds and places of prayer were arranged, devotional markers such as a Marian image and crosses were installed, and foundations were laid for research and commemorative projects concerning the early Church. The project was therefore not limited to reconstructing a forgotten study site; it developed as a long-term effort to transmit the spirit and documentary memory of the early lay pioneers to later generations.

The Cheonjinam Museum now preserves artifacts, old documents, and materials related to beatification and canonization that were discovered or gathered in the course of the shrine’s development. The Diocese of Suwon continues to recall the meaning of the site through annual commemorative Masses and pilgrimages. Cheonjinam Shrine today thus brings together the memory of the late-eighteenth-century study gathering and the shrine-building project that began in the late twentieth century as a place commemorating the early history of Catholic faith in Korea.