Bae Ron Shrine

History & origins

Catholics began living in Baeron in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. According to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea, believers settled in the valley from around 1791 to 1801 and made pottery and household wares for a living, forming a Catholic village that offered refuge during persecution. During the 1801 Sinyu Persecution, Hwang Sa-yeong Alexius hid in a cave here and wrote the Silk Letter in an attempt to report the persecution of the Korean Church to the outside world. He was captured, and the community suffered a severe blow.

The Catholic community was formed again in the 1840s after the intensity of persecution temporarily eased. Joseph Jang Ju-gi settled in Baeron in 1843, and in early 1855 Father Joseph Maistre established St. Joseph Seminary here. It is regarded as the first formally established seminary of the Catholic Church in Korea and demonstrated the Church’s determination to form Korean clergy even under the continuing threat of persecution.

The seminary ceased operating during the Byeongin Persecution of 1866. Fathers Pourthié and Petitnicolas, who served at the seminary, and Joseph Jang Ju-gi were among those martyred in that persecution. Baeron again suffered greatly, but the Catholic community gradually recovered after the persecutions. The burial of Father Thomas Choe Yang-eop, the second Korean priest, at Baeron added another layer of memory, making the valley a place associated not only with persecution and martyrdom but also with the life of the Korean clergy.

In the twentieth century, efforts to commemorate Baeron’s Church history became more visible. In 1942 Catholics erected a memorial monument to Father Choe Yang-eop, and later shrine development and preservation brought the Silk Letter cave, the seminary site, and Father Choe’s tomb into a connected pilgrimage landscape. Baeron today is thus an important site where the history of an early Catholic village, the 1801 persecution, the seminary and the 1866 persecution, and the memory of a Korean priest are layered together.