The hills east of Anseong close into narrow valleys where a road can only follow the stream. Catholics who had fled the persecutions of 1801 and 1839 settled in one of these folds, dug kilns into the slope and made their living firing earthenware jars, onggi, and selling them beyond the valley. Their village was called Mirinae (미리내).
In the autumn of 1846 a seventeen-year-old from that village, Vincent Lee Min-sik (이민식 빈첸시오), walked to the execution ground at Saenamteo in Seoul and took away the body of Andrew Kim Taegon (김대건 안드레아), the first Korean-born Catholic priest, forty days after the beheading. He carried it home on his back, moving at night, five days across roughly a hundred and fifty li of hills, and buried it in secret on his family's ground at the end of October.
The grave lies under a small brick chapel raised over it in 1928. Of the priest's remains the chapel keeps a jaw-bone and a fragment of the coffin, set beneath the altar; the rest was taken to Seoul long before. Three other priests lie in the row outside, and beyond the chapel wall, his mother and the boy who carried him.
📜 History & Spiritual Significance
Andrew Kim Taegon was ordained in Shanghai by Bishop Jean-Joseph Ferréol and returned by sea to a church in Korea that had no native priest and no legal right to exist. He was arrested within the year, questioned in the capital, and beheaded at Saenamteo on 16 September 1846. The bishop who had ordained him is buried in the grave row at Mirinae, beside him.
The village that hid the grave grew into a parish. Its first resident pastor, Father Kang Do-yeong, stayed thirty-three years, founded a school for local children and taught his parishioners to raise silkworms. When Seoul declined to pay for a church, he and the parishioners built one themselves, and dedicated it to Saint Joseph.
The unnamed graves came later. A diocesan priest opened a cluster of unmarked burials at Eumdarani, in Yongin, in 1976 — graves the neighbourhood knew by the story that the dead had been beheaded — and had the remains brought to Mirinae for safekeeping. Others were recovered the same year from Han-deok-gol and from Sibonggol. Twelve of those martyrs lie at the top of the cemetery slope, under stones that carry no names. What the digging uncovered set the Diocese of Suwon to work on its martyrs' ground across the whole region, and the shrine at Mirinae took the shape a pilgrim walks today.
Pope John Paul II canonized 103 Korean martyrs in 1984, Kim Taegon among them. A larger church was built at the shrine in their honour, and a calf-bone of the saint was placed in its altar.
☩ Pilgrimage Sites in Mirinae
Mirinae Holy Site
미리내성지
One shrine road runs the length of the valley, and a visit on foot takes two to three hours. The memorial church over the saint's grave stands small and brick at the head of it, with the jaw-bone relic and the coffin fragment beneath the altar and four priests' graves in a row outside — Kim Taegon, Bishop Ferréol, Father Choi Mun-sik and Father Kang Do-yeong. Near the wall are the graves of the saint's mother, Ursula Ko, and of Vincent Lee Min-sik.
The Memorial Church of the 103 Canonized Korean Martyrs is the large church, its altar holding the calf-bone relic, with stained glass along the flanks and an underground room where the scenes and the instruments of the persecutions are shown. St Joseph's Church (성 요셉 성당) is the parish church the villagers built with their own hands. Along the road are the Grotto of Our Lady (성모당), with a path of the Seven Joys of Mary turning off it; the Blessed Sacrament chapel (성체조배실), built in the shape of a Joseon gate and named the Gate of Heaven (천국문); the Stations of the Cross in bronze relief on the path behind the martyrs' church; and Gethsemane Hill (겟세마니 동산), a devotional mound on natural rock.
The slope to the right of the entrance climbs to the burial ground of the diocesan clergy. At its highest point are the graves of the unnamed martyrs, brought here out of the fields of Yongin.
🕯️ Annual Feast Days & Celebrations
Feast of Saint Andrew Kim Taegon — September 20
The Church keeps the feast of Korea's first priest on 20 September, and at Mirinae it is kept at his grave. The shrine also sets aside one day each month for the veneration of the relics; the Diocese of Suwon's shrine page carries the Mass schedule and the veneration day.
🛏️ Where to Stay
Mary's Guest House (guesthouse) — A private guesthouse in Yangseong-myeon, the shrine's own township, with a kitchen, a barbecue area, free parking and wifi. Reserve this hotel
More hotels in Mirinae on Booking.com →
Accommodation available to book near Mirinae. Pilgrim houses and religious guesthouses are listed above — many take bookings directly and do not appear on booking sites.
🚗 Getting There
By Car: Mirinae lies in the hills of Yangseong-myeon, about 52 km south-east of Seoul; the shrine road ends at 420 Mirinae-seongji-ro. The Diocese of Suwon's shrine page gives access details for pilgrims and groups.
On Foot: Pilgrims walking from Eun-i come into the valley at the end of a 10 km hill route, described under Pilgrim Routes below.
📚 Further Reading
Books:
Sebastian C. H. Kim & Kirsteen Kim. A History of Korean Christianity — Comprehensive history from the earliest Catholic converts through the persecution era that produced the Mirinae martyrs.
Don Baker & Franklin Rausch. Catholics and Anti-Catholicism in Chosŏn Korea — Scholarly study of the Chosŏn persecution that drove Catholics into hidden villages like Mirinae and martyred Andrew Kim Taegon.
Florence Magruder Gillmore. For the Faith: Life of Just de Bretenières, Martyred in Korea, March 8, 1866 — Biography of a French missionary martyred in Korea, one of the thousands killed during the same persecutions that shaped this shrine.
Chang-seok Thaddeus Kim. Holy Places of the Korean Martyrs — A guide to the martyr shrines of Korea, including Mirinae and the wider Suwon diocese.
🥾 Pilgrim Routes
Young Kim Taegon Path (청년 김대건길) — 10.3 km on foot between Eun-i Holy Site in Yongin and Mirinae, crossing three passes named for the theological virtues: Faith (신덕고개), Hope (망덕고개) and Charity (애덕고개). Kim Taegon used this way on his pastoral rounds in the few months he was based at Eun-i, and his body was carried along it after the execution. Yongin City has laid trail markers, walkways and rest decks over the route.
🔗 Useful Links
Mirinae Holy Site — Diocese of Suwon — The diocese's own page for the shrine, with visiting information, Mass times and the monthly veneration of the relics. (Korean)
Eun-i Holy Site — Diocese of Suwon — The diocesan page for the shrine at the other end of the pilgrim path, with the route's three passes described. (Korean)
Korea Tourism Organization: Mirinae Holy Site — National tourism listing for the shrine, with practical visitor information. (Korean)
🧭 Nearby Pilgrimage Destinations
Seoul (52 km) — The capital where Andrew Kim Taegon was questioned and beheaded, at the Saenamteo execution ground on the Han River.
Haemi (80 km) — The fortress and execution ground of the Chungcheong persecutions, where Catholics were buried alive, designated an international shrine of the Korean martyrs.
Eun-i Holy Site (10 km on foot) — Where Kim Taegon was baptized as a boy and chosen for the seminary, and where he said his last Mass in Korea before leaving for the capital. The Shanghai church in which he was ordained was taken down when the city rebuilt around it, shipped to Korea and re-erected on the site.
🪶 Closing Reflection
"If we live, we shall meet one another joyfully once more; and if not, let us have a joyful reunion in heaven."
— Saint Andrew Kim Taegon, farewell to the Eun-i community, 1846
