Jukjeon 1-dong Church

History & origins

Diocesan materials describe the Jukjeon area as a place through which earlier Korean Catholics traveled for evangelization and where Catholic villages were formed nearby. The modern Jukjeon 1-dong Parish was established on September 26, 2006, when it was separated from Jukjeon Parish amid urban growth and an increase in the Catholic population. Mary, Gate of Heaven, was chosen as its patron. Once the new community had taken shape as an independent parish, securing a church building to serve as the center of parish life became an important task.

Ground was broken for the new church on April 24, 2010, and construction was completed on December 30, 2011. On January 28, 2012, the community celebrated an entrance Mass and began carrying out its liturgical and pastoral life in the new space. The building has two basement levels and four floors above ground and includes the church, rectory, convent, and multipurpose spaces. Its symbolic design connects the seven exterior walls with the Seven Sorrows and Seven Joys of Mary. Wood and transparent glass were used on the exterior and interior so that natural light could enter the church, and the building was placed to harmonize with the surrounding landscape from its elevated site.

In 2013, the architecture was publicly recognized when it received the grand prize in the completed-building category of the Gyeonggi Architecture Culture Award. On September 10, 2016, marking the parish’s tenth anniversary, Bishop Mathias Lee Yong-hoon presided over the dedication of the church. The sequence from the parish’s separation and establishment to church construction, entrance, and dedication shows how the community formed an independent place of faith in the rapidly growing Jukjeon area. The relatively short span in which construction, architectural completion, and dedication followed the founding also illustrates how a parish formed during a period of new-town growth secured a stable setting for its liturgical life.