Hamheung, Apostolic Vicariate of

HAMHEUNG, APOSTOLIC VICARIATE OF. - Located in north-western 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.

Erected on 5 Aug. 1920 with a territory detached from the vicariate of Seoul, it was named the apostolic vicariate of Wonsan, after the city of the same name, and entrusted to the Benedictines of St. Ottilien of Bavaria, who had arrived there in Feb. 1909. On 19 March 1922 the Holy See added to it the civil provinces of Yenki (this one, today, a suffragan diocese of Moukden) and of Ilan, belonging at that time to the apostolic vicariate of northern Manchuria.

The Benedictines, meanwhile, founded there an abbey, dedicated to St. Benedict, which, erected as an abbey nullius (the present-day Tokwon) on 12 Jan. 1940, incorporated a small part of the territory of the aforementioned vicariate, including the city of Wonsan itself. The vicariate, then, was entrusted to the Korean secular clergy, changing the name of Wonsan to the primary (Japanese) one of Kanko and to the secondary (Korean) one of H.-H. The latter, finally, on 12 July 1950, became the sole official name. It was the Fathers of the Society for Foreign Missions of Paris who wrote, for the first time, splendid pages of missionary history in Korea, from the first half of the 19th century and especially Fr. Bret, who in 1894 settled in Wonsan. This vicariate has 6,067 Catholics; 427 catechumens; 5 native priests and 11 foreign ones; 5 native nuns and 3 foreign ones; 6 major seminarians; 8 primary stations and 43 secondary ones; 6 churches and 15 chapels.

Edoardo Pecoraro