Guide to Seongji Stamp

What this is

Seongji Stamp carries all 193 places from the national list of shrines and martyrdom sites that the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Korea compiles from each diocese, and lets you note a visit when you are standing there. Three waves of persecution ran through the late Joseon period, in 1801, 1839 and 1866; the places from that time and the churches built afterwards are spread across 16 dioceses.

If you have ever collected stamps in a paper pilgrimage booklet, this will feel familiar. The difference is that this stamp is a note you keep for yourself, not the official stamp given by the Church.

How it works

Pick a place from a diocese or from the map and you get its address, plus the heritage record and description when the place carries a national designation. Go there, press the stamp button, and the browser asks once for your position. If you are close enough the stamp is kept.

No account, no install. Records live in this browser and do not follow you to another device.

The rules of this app

The stamping radius is function() { throw Error("Attempted to call STAMP_RADIUS_M() from the server but STAMP_RADIUS_M is on the client. It's not possible to invoke a client function from the server, it can only be rendered as a Component or passed to props of a Client Component."); } metres. Shrine grounds are wide and the walk from a car park is often long, so the radius is generous.

Your position is compared with the place on this device only. The distance appears on screen; the coordinates themselves go nowhere. The server learns that a stamp happened, and not which place it was.

Of the 193 places listed, 23 have confirmed coordinates. The other 170 cannot be stamped by location, because open data carries coordinates only for places with a national heritage designation. For those you can note a visit by hand instead, and the screen keeps the two apart in words. A location checked stamp and a hand written note are different records.

27 places carry a description. It is the description field of the Korea Heritage Service open API, quoted without edits. The rest carry a link to the shrine's own site. Text written by the Church is not copied here.

The 61 places gathered under martyrdom are those whose name or heritage record actually uses that word. It is not a route set by the Church.

Practical notes

Open the place before you travel and read the address. Places with coordinates open straight on a map; the others carry an address search link. Several shrines share similar names, so going by name alone can send you to the wrong one.

If a stamp does not take, usually location permission is off, or you are indoors and the signal is weak. Step outside, wait a moment, and press again.

Mass times and opening hours differ from shrine to shrine and are not carried here. Check the shrine's own site or its diocese.

Going deeper

Heritage descriptions exist to record why something was designated, so some tell the story of a martyrdom in detail while others describe only a building. The link to the original record opens the Korea Heritage Service entry.

Planning a day around one diocese works well. Daejeon, Jeonju and Seoul hold the most entries here, which reflects how many places each diocese put on the list rather than where the persecutions fell hardest.

The official pilgrimage stamp is given at the shrine itself, through the book and the stamp programme of the Bishops' Conference. This app does not stand in for that. It helps with where things are and where you have been.

When something does not work

If your records are gone, browser data was cleared or you opened the site in a different browser. They are kept in this browser only.

If a place you are looking for is missing, it may not be on the Bishops' Conference list yet. That list is compiled from what each diocese sends, so dioceses update at different times. The link to the original list is on the home page.

If a description reads oddly, that is because it is the wording of a heritage designation record and not our writing. We quote it rather than rewrite it.