Chungdong First Methodist Church

The first church was a hanok

The red-brick church on Jeongdong-gil was not where the congregation began. Henry Gerhard Appenzeller started worship with Koreans in Jeongdong in 1885, and in 1887 a small hanok became Bethel Chapel, the congregation’s first separate meeting place

The hanok mattered because the church existed before its Western architecture did. Appenzeller was also building Paichai school and missionary publishing work in the same district, while other institutions around Jeongdong were introducing new forms of education, medicine and diplomacy

Red brick created a new public room

Construction of a larger chapel began in 1895, and Bethel Chapel was dedicated on December 26, 1897. The single-storey building used red brick, pointed openings and a simplified North American Gothic vocabulary; its original plan was cruciform and the sanctuary was designed for roughly 500 people

That room quickly did more than hold Sunday worship. Church members, Paichai students and reform-minded figures used Jeongdong’s Methodist network for education, public meetings and political activity during the late Joseon and Korean Empire periods. In 1919, pastor Lee Pil-ju and evangelist Park Dong-wan were among the church figures who joined the March First independence movement

The congregation outgrew the cross-shaped plan

The building visitors see today records two distinct stages of growth. In 1916, the curtain that had separated men and women inside the sanctuary was removed and the north arm of the cruciform chapel was extended. A second enlargement followed in 1926, adding about 200 square metres and creating the broader three-aisled form that survives now. The earlier structure was incorporated rather than demolished

That physical change is one reason the church is more useful than a frozen architectural relic. The 1897 sanctuary remains legible inside a building altered by the congregation that continued using it. Korea designated the church a Historic Site in 1977

Jeongdong puts the church in context

Appenzeller’s church never stood alone institutionally. Paichai school, Methodist publishing, women’s education and foreign legations all developed within the same compact district, close to Deoksugung Palace

A short walk around Jeongdong therefore adds meaning to the sanctuary. The church’s red brick belongs to a streetscape where Korean royal institutions, foreign diplomacy, missionary schools and new civic organizations were occupying neighboring blocks at the same time

Before you go

The History Museum is the easiest structured way to enter the church’s documentary history before seeing the sanctuary itself. Pair the church with the former Paichai buildings and Deoksugung/Jeongdong-gil if you want the late-19th-century institutional landscape to read as one compact walk