Changchon Mission

History & origins

The roots of Changchon mission station reach back to the Catholic village that formed in the Seowon-myeon area after the Byeongin Persecution and to the earlier Maenami mission station. Catholics who had fled persecution settled there and continued practicing their faith. A letter sent by Father Jeong Gyu-ha to Bishop Gustave Mutel in 1897 describes the difficult circumstances of mission communities in the area, including Maenami. Another letter records that Father Jeong contracted typhoid fever at Maenami during a mission circuit in 1902, confirming that the community was already part of an established pastoral visitation network by the late nineteenth century.

Later material says that mission services began around 1907 in the home of Song Sun-cheol, but Father Jeong's records from the 1890s show that Maenami mission station existed earlier. The prehistory of Changchon therefore should not be reduced to a single founding year; it is better understood as a gradual development from a post-persecution Catholic village and household-based faith community into an organized mission-station structure.

Changchon mission station under its present name began in 1957, when Maenami and the nearby Doechangmal mission stations were combined and a new mission building was erected in the center of Changchon. From the 1960s onward, lay missionary leaders sent first by the Diocese of Chuncheon and later by the Diocese of Wonju assisted with evangelization and the continuity of the community. This illustrates the typical way a rural mission station without a resident priest was sustained through lay leadership and pastoral visits from its mother parish.

The present Changchon mission-station building was newly constructed in 1993 and renovated in 2011. Its history thus runs from the formation of a Catholic village after the persecutions, through the late nineteenth-century Maenami community, the 1957 union of two mission stations, and the construction and renovation of the modern building. Although locations and forms changed several times, the central continuity is the survival of the local Catholic community under the pastoral care of Pungsuwon Parish.