26. Catholic Shrines Outside Seoul — Solmoe, Mirinae, Haemi and Cheonjinam

Aug 2026 | Pilgrimage | hellokr.kr

Seoul has its own martyrdom sites, and most pilgrims see them first. But the Korean Catholic Church did not begin in Seoul, its first priest was not born there, and he is not buried there. Those three things happened at three different places in the countryside, and a fourth place holds the ground where a persecution emptied an entire region.

Solmoe, Mirinae, Haemi and Cheonjinam are not a themed route somebody invented for visitors. They are four separate shrines that happen to hold the beginning, the death, the burial and the cost of the same story. All four are within reach of Seoul on a day trip or an overnight, and none of them charges admission.

Why This Matters

Korea is the one country whose Catholic Church was not founded by missionaries. It was founded by scholars who read their way into it. In the winter of 1779 a group of Confucian scholars were holding a study session in the mountains southeast of Seoul, working through Western books, when Yi Byeok walked through the snow at night to join them. Bishop Antoine Daveluy, who later collected the Korean Church's early records and was himself martyred, wrote that the true origin of the Korean Church was that study session.

That place is Cheonjinam. There was no priest in the country. The men who met there sent one of their own to Beijing to be baptised, and came back and started baptising each other.

Two generations later the same church produced Kim Tae-gon, ordained in Shanghai and returned home as the first Korean Catholic priest. He was born at Solmoe. He was executed in 1846, in the persecution of that year, and his body was taken to Mirinae and buried. His mother is buried there too, and so is Bishop Ferreol, the French bishop who ordained him.

Haemi is the other half of the same account. It is the ground where the persecutions took their numbers, and it carries a designation the other three do not: the Bishops' Conference lists it as the Haemi Martyrs' International Shrine.

You can visit any one of them on its own. Visiting them together is what makes the sequence legible: a study room, a birthplace, a killing ground, a grave.

Solmoe — Where the First Priest Was Born

Solmoe is in Dangjin, on the coast southwest of Seoul, and it is the most straightforward of the four. It is the birthplace of St. Andrew Kim Tae-gon, and the house site itself was designated a Chungcheongnam-do cultural property in 1998.

The shrine is unusual among Korean shrines in how much of it is built for staying rather than passing through. It has grown in stages over a century: recognised as a shrine site in the early twentieth century, established as a place of pilgrim devotion after 1947, developed as a formal shrine from 1976, and more recently rebuilt around cultural programming rather than devotion alone.

Mass is at 07:00 and 11:00, and unusually that holds on weekdays as well as Sundays. If you are coming as a group and want a pilgrimage Mass rather than the scheduled one, phone ahead.

Mirinae — Where He Is Buried

Mirinae is in Anseong, in the hills of southern Gyeonggi, and it is the other end of the same life. After the 1846 persecution the body of Kim Tae-gon was brought here and buried. His jawbone is enshrined separately in the shrine's St. Joseph church. Around him are the grave of his mother Ursula and the grave of Bishop Ferreol.

Mass is at 11:00 and 14:00 on Sundays, and 11:30 Tuesday through Saturday. Confession is heard 30 minutes before Mass.

Mirinae and Solmoe are usually done as a pair, because they are the same person. They are not close to each other, though — Solmoe is on the west coast in Chungcheongnam-do and Mirinae is inland in Gyeonggi-do, so a single day covering both means an early start and a car.

Haemi — The International Shrine

Haemi is in Seosan, along the same coast as Solmoe. Of the four it is the one the wider Church has singled out: it appears in the Bishops' Conference directory as the Haemi Martyrs' International Shrine, a status no other shrine in the country carries.

Haemi's own site publishes its Mass schedule and pilgrimage arrangements, and they are worth checking directly rather than assuming — the shrine handles a large volume of group pilgrimages, and its published times are the ones that hold. The office numbers are 041-688-3183 and 010-9655-3183.

Seosan city also maintains a walking pilgrimage route that begins at the shrine, for pilgrims who want to arrive on foot rather than by bus.

Cheonjinam — Where the Church Began

Cheonjinam is in Gwangju, Gyeonggi-do — the city east of Seoul, not the one in the southwest. It is the site of the 1779 winter study session, and it presents itself plainly as the birthplace of the Korean Catholic Church.

Of the four it is the easiest to plan around, because it publishes fixed hours: open 09:30 to 17:00 daily, last entry 16:00, no admission fee, parking on site. Pilgrim Mass is daily at 11:00, with confession 30 minutes beforehand. On the first Saturday of each month there is an evening candlelight devotion, rosary at 17:00 and Mass at 18:00.

The shrine holds the graves of the men counted as the founders of the Korean Church. If you have time for only one of the four and you want the part of the story that exists nowhere else in the world, this is the one.

Getting There

None of these four is on a subway line. They are rural shrines, and the honest answer is that a car makes all four possible in a weekend and public transport makes each of them a half-day on its own.

Two are in Chungcheongnam-do on the west coast — Solmoe in Dangjin, Haemi in Seosan — and they pair naturally, being roughly half an hour apart by road. The other two are in Gyeonggi-do, on opposite sides of Seoul: Cheonjinam east in Gwangju, Mirinae south in Anseong.

A common two-day shape is one day on the coast for Solmoe and Haemi, and one day in Gyeonggi for Cheonjinam and Mirinae. If you have a single day, pick one pair.

Each shrine publishes its own access directions, and those are the ones to follow: bus routes into rural townships change, and the shrine offices answer the phone. For getting as far as the nearest city, our guide to Korean public transport covers the intercity network.

Practical Notes

Call before a group visit. Every one of these shrines takes group pilgrimages, and a group Mass is arranged, not assumed. The numbers are in the Quick Info box above.

Mass times move. The Bishops' Conference publishes shrine Mass times and says plainly that they change, and that visitors should confirm with the shrine before travelling. That warning is worth taking literally for a rural shrine on a weekday.

These are working places of worship. All four hold daily or near-daily Mass for people who came to pray. Visitors are welcome at Mass. Photography inside churches during a liturgy is not.

Bring cash for nothing in particular. Admission is free, but the shrines are rural and their shops and cafes are small operations.

The Bottom Line

If you are coming to Korea for World Youth Day 2027 and you only see Seoul, you will have seen where the Korean Church died and not where it started. Cheonjinam is where it started, in a study room, without a priest in the country. Solmoe and Mirinae are the two ends of the first Korean priest's life, an hour and a half apart. Haemi is what the century cost.

Four shrines, no admission fees, and a story that does not exist anywhere else. Give it a weekend.

Sources

• Catholic Bishops' Conference of Korea, official shrine directory: Solmoe — road address and postcode, Mass times for Sundays and weekdays, telephone numbers, the 1998 provincial cultural property designation, and the shrine's stages of development
• Catholic Bishops' Conference of Korea, official shrine directory: Mirinae — road address and postcode, Sunday and weekday Mass times, confession 30 minutes before Mass, telephone, and the burials of St. Andrew Kim Tae-gon, his mother Ursula and Bishop Ferreol
• Catholic Bishops' Conference of Korea, national directory of shrines and martyrdom sites — the official listing of Haemi as the Haemi Martyrs' International Shrine, its road address and office telephone numbers, and Cheonjinam's road address and telephone
• Cheonjinam Shrine, official site of the Diocese of Suwon — opening hours and last entry, free admission, parking, daily pilgrim Mass at 11:00, first-Saturday rosary and evening Mass, confession timing, the winter 1779 study session and Bishop Daveluy's account of it as the Church's true origin
• Seosan City, official tourism pages — the walking pilgrimage route beginning at the Haemi shrine
• Haemi Martyrs' International Shrine, official site — the shrine's own published Mass schedule and pilgrimage arrangements, which visitors should confirm directly