Juksan Catholic Church

History & origins

The Juksan area preserves the memory of martyrdom during the Byeongin Persecution, but Catholic life in the region was greatly weakened for a long period after the persecutions. The Diocese of Suwon’s history of Juksan Parish explains that a Catholic community began to form again in the 1930s. This reconstituted community became the direct foundation of the later Juksan Parish.

In the early 1980s the diocese moved to establish an independent pastoral base in Juksan. On June 23, 1981, the Juksan community became a quasi-parish, and in 1983 it was established as a full parish. The current Korean Catholic directory records September 8, 1983, as the official establishment date. The parish then continued work on a permanent church, which was dedicated in 1987.

The history of Juksan Parish also became linked to preservation of the nearby martyrdom site. The parish took part in acquiring land in order to remember and preserve the site where Catholics had died, and these efforts became one of the foundations for the development of Juksan Shrine as a diocesan shrine in the 1990s. Memorial elements within the parish church likewise connected ordinary parish liturgy with veneration of the local martyrs.

The history of Juksan Catholic Church is therefore not a simple uninterrupted continuation of a persecution-era community. Rather, Catholic life that had been weakened by persecution was rebuilt in the twentieth century, grew from a local community into a quasi-parish and parish, and then rediscovered and preserved the earlier sites of martyrdom. This sequence of rebuilding and remembrance shapes the historical identity of Juksan Parish today. Before the parish was formally established, diocesan discussions about providing a church in Juksan were already under way in 1980, and construction was attempted but did not proceed smoothly. After this period of preparation, the community moved through the stages of quasi-parish in 1981 and parish in 1983, with the 1987 dedication giving it a stable physical base. Its later participation in preserving the martyrdom site represented a process in which a newly established parish rediscovered the region’s much older Catholic history and incorporated that memory into its own identity.