Hurisa Chapel

History & origins

The Yongsu-gol area where Hurisa Mission Station stands preserves traces of Catholics who moved into the mountains to escape persecution. A Catholic Peace Newspaper report explains that believers from Bunji-dong in Maeji-ri and nearby Catholic villages moved into the deep valley of Yongsu-gol beneath Baegunsan and formed a community there. The exact first foundation date cannot be stated with certainty, but Pungsuwon Parish statistics for 1893-1894 record “29 Catholics at Yongsu-gol Mission Station,” confirming that an organized community existed there by the late nineteenth century.

The community created a new physical base after the Korean War. In the spring of 1952, mission leader Bernard Jo Sang-jun donated the site of his own home, which had been destroyed by bombing, for use by the mission. In the autumn of 1953, shortly after the armistice, a mission building was erected there. At that time the former Yongsu-gol mission station began to be called Hurisa, taking the name of a locally well-known temple, and the building was blessed by a priest of Wondong Cathedral Parish. The donation of land and construction by local Catholics amid the scars of war became the decisive foundation of the present mission station.

Parish jurisdiction changed as the local Church was reorganized. Hurisa was placed under Dangu-dong Parish in 1960 and became a mission station of Gugok Parish after that parish was established in 1998. The chapel was renovated in 2005, with new windows and interior improvements that gave it a form close to what is seen today. The history of Hurisa is therefore a layered story of a Catholic village formed in the era of persecution, rebuilding by believers after war, and changes of parish jurisdiction through which a small mountain community has survived to the present.