In lovely Jeonju, Jeollabuk-do for the weekend.
Jeonju’s one of my favorite cities for a good number of reasons, one of them being the drop-dead beautiful Byzantine/Romanesque Jeondong Cathedral, one of the oldest and largest Western-style buildings in the Honam region.
During my last visit to Jeonju, I gave the cathedral short shrift with my camera due to lack of time, so I was hoping to do a more complete job this time around.
Nooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!
This has been the story of my life for the last couple of weeks — visit a beautiful piece of early modern architecture, only to find it’s under restoration. On the other hand, this may be a function of the fact that unlike the past, national and local governments are taking a keener interest in protecting their “early modern cultural heritage” and are putting up the money to restore their old buildings.
Anyway, to give you the skinny on the cathedral, it was designed by master church buillder Victor Louis Poisnel, the Norman priest whose work in Korea includes Myeongdong Cathedral and Gupodong Catholic Church. The building was completed in 1914, and is built in a rather eclectic style mixing Romanesque and Byzantine elements.
As disappointing as the scaffolding may have been, I did manage to get some decent shots of the cathedral’s beautiful interior.
Hey… nice clerestory, man.
It should be pointed out that the church is dedicated to Yun Ji-chung Paulus and Gwon Sang-yeon Iacobus, Korea’s first Catholic martyrs. They were executed in Jeonju in 1791.
Priests’ Quarters
Thankfully not undergoing restoration is the handsome Priests’ Quarters, or sajegwan, which has been designated a local cultural property.
Like the cathedral, the Priests’ Quarters combine two styles — Renaissance and Romanesque. It was built in 1927 and is the personal design of Father Marcel Lacrouts, the cathedral’s second parish priest.
Lacrouts had an eventful career in Korea. He came to Korea in 1894 at the age of 33, and was sent to the Jeolla provinces, where he and two other French priests handled the local missionary work.
In June 1900, he got sent to Jeju Island, which at the time was a real tough assignment. Native islanders distrusted foreigners, local officials were generally hostile to foreign missionaries, but exiles on the island (Jeju, after all, was a popular internal-exile destination) were interested in currying favor with the missionaries, making for a complex and not entirely welcoming social environment. In 1901, the shit hit the fan when a combination of local politics, increased taxes, hostility toward the missionaries and their faith, and international intrigue led to a full-fledged revolt by native islanders and Confucian landlords, led by a native-born magistrate and backed by the Japanese, against the head tax collector sent from the mainland and Jeju’s Catholic community (who supported the tax collector), backed by the French. Native forces sieged and eventually took Jeju Fortress, slaughtering some 300 Catholics. French diplomats protested, with Paris backing up those protests by sending a naval squadron from Shanghai to Jeju, supposedly to protect Lacrouts and his fellow missionary, Father (eventually Bishop of Daegu) Jean-Germain Mousset. Seoul responded by arresting the leaders of the rebellion, paying restitution to the Catholics, changing local officials and moving mainland exiles off the island in attempt to assauge native sentiment.
Of course, if you’ve seen Park Kwang-soo’s 1999 film “The Uprising,” or “Yi Jae-su’s Rebellion,” you already know all this. In that film, Lacrouts was played by French actor Frederic Andrau.
Anyway, in 1915, Lacrouts was appointed parish priest of Jeonju, where he would spend almost all of the last 15 years of his life. In 1920, he contracted tuberculoses. He went to Hong Kong for treatment in 1925, but he returned to Korea before he was fully recovered. He built the building you see here in 1926, but three years later he was dead of TB at the age of 58.
In 1937, when Jeonju was elevated to the Prefecture Apostolic of Zenshu, the building became the residence of the prefect.
Don’t forget the Flickr slideshow.
13 Comments
That is a an unusual interior and very nice too.
Interesting buildings, great photos, fascinating stories. Too bad this cathedral, too, was under renovation, Robert—and you travelled all the way from Seoul to see it, too!
Beautiful church. Thanks for the photos and the interesting history (hmmm, 300 Catholics slaughtered, 21 of 23 missionaries on deck for slaughter). I always liked Jeonju, as well, and as the wife is from around here, we’ve visited a few times. Never saw the church though, so will look for it next time we’re there. In an odd way, Jeonju reminds me of my hometown for the fact that it’s small, quiet, provincial, relatively spacious.
That kid who has lost his balloon…that is the story of my life.
Robert, as always, I am humbled by your talents as both a photographer and as an amateur historian. Hold on to all your materials! There is a developing niche for historical fiction in a Korean setting, written in English. The obvious initial target audience are second and third generation Korean Americans and Canadians, but as Korea (and Koreans) become more familiar to their non-Han neighbors, that market will expand.
That altar’s got Traditional Latin Mass written all over it.
#6 - Et introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui lætificat iuventutem meam…
It’s too bad they wasted the building on a church!
#8 - Yes, what a shame that it’s a public building for all to enjoy and not a private residence or a government office.
Strange, isn’t it, that Man in all the world’s civilizations tends to reserve his best for religious art and architecture?
“Strange, isn’t it, that Man in all the world’s civilizations tends to reserve his best for religious art and architecture?”
Whoops! A little too much ‘pride’ in that comment…
#10 - Pride? No, a simple observation. Quite the opposite, in fact, I am humbled by the visits I have made to great cathedrals, mosques, and temples.
It would make no sense to be proud of something I had no hand in creating. It would make even less sense to take pride in the acheivements inspired by others’ religions.
Great Posting~
One thing though, with your pictures, I see that you’re using a rather small camera. When you collect all your stories and pictures and make a book someday (wishful thinking on my part) will the picture size be large enough for printing?
I’m an avid collector of books on korea written in English (more than a 1,000) and what I don’t have and think is lacking is a photo-historical sites-essay book.
There’s a book (don’t qoute me on this) written by clarkson and I think grayson called Discovering Seoul and one of my dreams would be to have pictures accompanying their descriptions for each location.
Do you mean the 1969 “Seoul - Past and Present” by the Clark brothers.
Due for a re-print, even if it was written by happy-clappy imperialist spawn.
However much would need to be updated as many of the places mentioned have disappeared.
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Great Photos of Historical Buildings in Korea…
Thanks to Kim Il Sung and Curtis LeMay, Korea's historical architecture is hard to find. But the Marmot Robert Koehler does a fine job of finding what remains -- his "Korea photos" posts at the Marmot's Hole are always very …
[...] Démange. Its design was entrusted to Father Victor Louis Poisnel, the man who did Jeondong Cathedral, Gupo-dong Catholic Church and some of Myeongdong [...]