Haksan Mission

History & origins

A Catholic village existed in the Haksan area before the formal establishment date now given for the mission station. A Catholic Bishops' Conference source on the nearby martyr site records that Catholics began settling in the village in the 1920s and formed a Catholic community, and that a wooden mission chapel was built in 1938. The current Catholic Directory of Korea lists 1942 as the establishment year of Haksan Mission Station, showing that the formation of the community and its first worship space preceded the formal date used in the directory.

In September 1955, the older mission building in front of the family residence associated with Nam Sang-gyo and St. John Nam Jong-sam was rebuilt. With the help of descendants of the martyrs and benefactors, the residence was repaired in 1987 and the fourteen Stations of the Cross were arranged on the hill behind it, bringing the local mission community and the memory of the martyrs into a shared devotional landscape.

The building now used by 학산 공소 was constructed in 1989. A Marian statue was erected and blessed behind the historic residence in 1999, an education hall was built beside the mission station in 2013, and the residence underwent a complete dismantling and restoration in 2014. These projects show that Haksan has continued to care for both the living space of the Catholic community and the nearby places of martyr memory.

The history of 학산 공소 can therefore be read in several stages: the formation of a Catholic village in the 1920s, the wooden chapel of 1938, the formal 1942 establishment date recorded in the directory, the older mission building of 1955, and the present mission chapel built in 1989. These dates need not cancel one another; they describe different stages—the emergence of the community, formal mission status, and successive buildings.