Yodangri Shrine

History & origins

The roots of the Catholic faith in the Yodang-ri area are traditionally traced to around the time of the Sinyu Persecution of 1801. Catholics fleeing persecution from Seoul and the Naepo area of Chungcheong settled around Yanggan, forming a Catholic village that remained connected with nearby communities such as Gatdeungi and Euni and continued the practice of the faith.

The area is known as the birthplace and childhood home of St. Joseph Jang Ju-gi. Blessed Thomas Jang, a member of his extended family, and the Servant of God Thaddeus Ji also had deep ties to the area. Jang Ju-gi was baptized around 1826 and passed the faith on to his family. When Baeron Seminary was later established, he offered his home for its use and assisted the seminary. Arrested during the Byeongin Persecution, he was martyred at Galmaemot on March 30, 1866. Yodang-ri also preserves memories connected with figures of the persecution era such as St. Laurent Imbert, St. Stephen Min Geuk-ga, and St. Andrew Jeong Hwa-gyeong.

Long remembered as the birthplace of St. Jang Ju-gi and as an old Catholic village, the site began to be developed more systematically as a shrine after a priest was assigned exclusively to it on September 26, 2006. A martyrs’ cemetery, prayer paths, churches, and other pilgrimage spaces were created in stages, and in May 2010 the main church, enshrining a relic of St. Jang Ju-gi, was dedicated.

The Yodang-ri Shrine of today remembers not only the martyrdom of an individual saint but also the history of the Yanggan Catholic village, whose people formed a community while fleeing persecution, handed on the faith within families and among neighbors, and sustained the Church. Its historical meaning therefore extends beyond the death of martyrs to the life of a community that transmitted the faith through a difficult age.