HAM-HEUNG, APOSTOLIC VICARIATE of. — Situated in northwestern Korea, it faces the Gulf of Eastern Korea. It has an area of 49,375 sq. km. and a population of 2,500,000 inhabitants.
Established on 5 August 1920 with territory detached from the vicariate of Seoul, it was named the Apostolic Vicariate of Wonsan, after the city of that name, and entrusted to the Benedictines of St. Ottilia of Bavaria, who had arrived there in February 1909. On 19 March 1922, the Holy See added to it the civil provinces of Yenki (now a suffragan diocese of Moukden) and Ilan, which at that time belonged to the Apostolic Vicariate of Northern Manchuria.
The Benedictines, meanwhile, founded an abbey there, dedicated to St. Benedict. Erected as an abbey nullus (present-day Tokwon) on 12 January 1940, it incorporated a small portion of the territory of the aforementioned vicariate, including the city of Wonsan itself. The vicariate was then entrusted to the Korean secular clergy, with the name Wonsan changed to its primary (Japanese) name, Kanko, and its secondary (Korean) name, H.-H. The latter finally became the sole official name on 12 July 1950. It was the Fathers of the Society for Foreign Missions of Paris who first wrote splendid pages in the history of the missions in Korea, from as early as the first half of the nineteenth century, and especially Fr. Bret, who settled in Wonsan in 1894. This vicariate has 6,067 Catholics; 427 catechumens; 5 national and 11 foreign priests; 5 native and 3 foreign nuns; 6 major seminarians; 8 primary and 43 secondary stations; 6 churches and 15 chapels.