Jinjam

Jinjam was a small Joseon district among the hills bordering Chungcheong and Jeolla. Its local Confucian school, the Jinjam Hyanggyo, was established in 1405 for instruction and ritual. Education and the commemoration of Confucian worthies gave the district an institutional centre alongside the magistrate's government. The district's educated households also formed part of a social order in which exemptions from taxation could place heavier demands on other inhabitants.

A different religious network appeared late in the eighteenth century. Following the Jinsan controversy of 1791, when Catholic rejection of ancestral rites provoked persecution, believers formed communities in nearby districts. Catholicism reached Jinjam in the latter half of the 1790s through Thomas Gim Yu-san's residence at Sanmak-dong. A group of believers was living in Jang'an-dong before 1836. Mountain paths and movements between neighbouring settlements helped sustain these communities, giving the district a religious history that joined established Confucian institutions with new congregations in its upland margins.