Surfing the World Wide Web, I came across a great blog [Naver blog, Korean] that has a ton of information of Korea’s older Catholic churches—just click on the 한국의성당건축 category and enjoy.
Wanna guess what I’ll be doing over the next couple of weekends?
The first church linked, BTW, is the Uijeongbu Catholic Church, a cute stone church built in 1953 with a lot of help from the U.S. I Corps, no doubt during their down time from assaulting Uijeongbu’s hapless cabbie community. Catholics in II Corps ponied up a lot of the cash.
Interestingly, a number of similarly built stone churches were constructed in the northern part of the country during the mid-1950s, built in large part with help from nearby ROK and U.S. military units. According to the Seoul Shinmun’s Ryu Jae-lim, this preference for stonework might have been because many churches seemed to have miraculously survived the carnage of the Korean War, giving believers the sense that such structures were fortresses protected by God [Seoul Shinmun, Korean]. One of these churches, the old Pocheon Catholic Church (which I was researching when I found the blog above), was even registered as a national cultural property late last year. The church, built by the engineering corps of the ROK VI Corps under orders from the devout Catholic corps commander Gen. Lee Han-lim, was completed in 1955. Its outer walls remain perfectly intact, although the interior was destroyed in a fire in 1990.
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I occasionally see stone country churches (not sure if they’re Catholic or not) as the backdrop in Korean TV dramas and the like. It’s bizarre, because with rolling hills and the background, etc., they look like something straight out of the English countryside.
I used to have the 19th-century cartographer Kim Chŏng-ho as my avatar, because in my travels about Korea, I fancied that I was literally following in his footsteps (I also have a thing for maps). It seems, however, Robert, that in your hill-and-dale architectural photo essays, you are much more the heir to his mantle than I could ever hope to be. Keep up the good work, and we all look forward to the forthcoming pix!
Jeez, if one was interested in history, one would look at the churches built under the japanese era. more history there, one would think.
Mind you, the US military has a great tradition of erecting steeples (disregarding Geronimo and the Granny), although, this generally had as much to do with God as Bush introducing Democracy to Iraq as al Qaeda introducing a wakeup to the US.
Good Morning,
its nearly midday,
half the day is over
The ROK Army does -or did, have a track record of building chapels/churches/temples depending on the religion of the commander in charge. A good place to look on your travels is Sabang-geori ( 사방거리 )in Kangweon-do. Back in the 80’s it was the rear area for ROKA 15th ID, and boasted a nice Catholic chapel, an excellent division budhist temple, and a protestant chapel was coming along.
I was never able to figure out the ROKA’s funding for religious buildings, but it does seem like individual commanders took on a lot of rain-making tasks.
Make-work projects?
Hmmm, rather than Sabang(四方(?))-geori, perhaps that place be called Samgyo(三敎)-geori.