---
node: spot_jeonju_jeondong_catholic_church
type: spot
slug: jeondong_catholic_church
destination: dest_jeonju
title: "Jeondong Catholic Church"
lead: "Jeondong church stands on the site where the first Korean Catholic martyrs were executed in 1791, and it was built with stones from the city wall that had been demolished. It was finished in 1914."
published: 2026-08-12
updated: 2026-08-12
image_file: spot_jeonju_jeondong_catholic_church.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jeondong_Catholic_Church_in_Jeonju,_South_Korea.jpg"
image_author: "Emmanuel DYAN"
image_license: "CC BY 2.0"
---

## Overview

The French priest Xavier Baudounet had it designed by Poisnel, the architect of Myeongdong Cathedral in Seoul, in a Romanesque-Byzantine manner with a grey and red brick facade. The ground is what matters: Yun Ji-chung and Kwon Sang-yeon were beheaded here for refusing ancestral rites, the first executions in a persecution that ran a century. The building faces Gyeonggijeon across the road, a Catholic church looking at a royal shrine, which is an accident of siting that has become the picture of Jeonju.

## Highlights

Stand between the church and Gyeonggijeon and look both ways; that one street is the reason this corner is on every poster. The interior is open outside services and is plainer than the outside suggests. Evening light on the brick is better than midday.