Gosak-dong Catholic Church

History & origins

The roots of Gosaek-dong Parish go back to the Omoknae mission station established around 1910. The Catholic Encyclopedia records that Fr. Alix of Wanggung Parish founded the mission station, which later passed through the care of several parishes as the pastoral structure of the region changed. From 1921 it was under Suwon Parish, from 1959 under Godeung-dong Parish, and from 1968 under Seryu-dong Parish.

Even before becoming an independent parish, the mission-station community worked to establish its own place of worship. In 1952 a small gathering space was created on land donated by a Catholic, and in the 1960s additional property and a priest’s residence were prepared. These developments were more than administrative changes: they show a local community gradually building the facilities and organization needed for eventual independence.

On July 20, 1970, Gosaek-dong was separated from Seryu-dong Parish and established as an independent parish. Its first pastor was Fr. Benedict Park Geon-sun. A groundbreaking ceremony for a new church was held on May 12, 1971, and the building was completed that November, giving the community that had grown from the mission station a stable liturgical home of its own.

As urban development and parish life changed, the church facilities were renewed again. The official chronology of the Diocese of Suwon records the dedication of a new Gosaek-dong church on June 27, 2010, and the parish later published a fifty-year history that also included the preceding sixty years of mission-station life. The structure of that history itself makes clear that Gosaek-dong’s story did not begin with parish establishment but belongs to more than a century of continuous Catholic life in the area.