Gonggeun Mission Station

History & origins

Catholic life in the Gonggeun area has deep roots connected with believers who moved into the mountains of Gangwon after persecution. A Catholic Peace Newspaper account describes Catholic villages developing across the Hoengseong, Dunnae, and Gonggeun areas, and says that Catholics in Gonggeun continued Sunday observances and communal prayer for many years without a dedicated mission-station building, gathering instead in the home of the mission-station leader and other places. The Guide to the Catholic Church in Korea records 1965 as the establishment year of Gonggeun Mission Station. This formal date differs from the date of the present building, and should be read alongside records showing that Catholic life continued in homes and neighboring mission stations before construction.

During the period without a building, Gonggeun Catholics moved between nearby mission stations and private homes. When Gagok Mission Station was built in Gagok-ri, Gonggeun-myeon, in 1961, they attended Sunday observances there. After Gagok was closed in 1971, they again gathered in the sarangchae of the mission-station leader's home in Naegonggeun. The effort of believers to secure their own places of gathering in a rural region far from the parish church is a central feature of the community's history.

The present mission-station building was constructed in 1976. It was partially enlarged in 2007, and in 2017 the roof and exterior walls were renovated. Rather than the construction of a large church, these changes show a pattern of continually adapting a modest mission-station space to the size and circumstances of the local community.

Catholic Farmers' Movement activity was once active in Gonggeun, and more recent records describe long-time Catholics and those who have returned to farming continuing the community together despite aging and rural depopulation. The significance of Gonggeun's history therefore lies less in the chronology of a building than in the way believers did not abandon communal prayer and gathering as locations and circumstances changed repeatedly.