Juksan Sanctuary

History & origins

Juksan was a transportation crossroads in the late Joseon period, and around the time of the Byeongin Persecution beginning in 1866, Catholics arrested in other areas were sometimes brought to the local government office there. Diocesan sources state that Catholics were interrogated and tortured in Juksan before being executed, and that twenty-four martyrs can be identified by name in surviving records. Juksan therefore became not simply the site of an old government office but a place associated with specific testimonies of martyrdom.

After the persecutions ended, the martyrdom site remained little known for a long time and came to be remembered as an “forgotten site.” Drawing on Church records and local Catholic memory, however, efforts continued to identify the martyrs and their stories, and the Juksan parish community also participated in securing land so that the place could be preserved.

The Diocese of Suwon’s pilgrimage records describe organized development of the shrine as beginning in 1992. The martyrdom site, burial area, and spaces for prayer were subsequently arranged, and Juksan became established as a diocesan martyr shrine. The work of the 1990s did not invent a new past; rather, it preserved and made visible again the memory of recorded martyrs and the actual site associated with their deaths.

Today Juksan Shrine is linked with the Diocese of Suwon’s pilgrimage routes and continues as a place of veneration and prayer. Its history runs from an execution site during persecution, through a long period of obscurity, to rediscovery, preservation, and renewed use as a place of pilgrimage. That process represents a recovery of memory achieved through the efforts of the local parish together with the wider diocese. Juksan’s historical importance cannot be explained simply by the fact that executions occurred there. Because major routes converged in the area, Catholics arrested in different places were brought to Juksan, and believers from different backgrounds came to bear witness to their faith at the same location. The later development of the shrine created a way to remember these layered martyr records together in one place. The burial and prayer spaces encountered by pilgrims today are therefore the result of both nineteenth-century events and the work of preserving their memory from the twentieth century onward.