BOSTON -- About 100 young adults got a preview of next year's World Youth Day in Seoul, South Korea, when the Archdiocese of Boston hosted a Korean Culture Night at St. Anthony Shrine in Downtown Boston on Feb. 7.

The night was a celebration of all things Korean, and a way for the Archdiocese of Boston to advertise its upcoming pilgrimage to World Youth Day.

"World Youth Day around the world is actually intended for young adults, not high school students," said Melissa Kalpakgian, an evangelization consultant for the archdiocese. "So we wanted the young adults to get a taste of Korean culture, get them excited about World Youth Day and be able to share the pilgrimage with them."

World Youth Day will officially take place from Aug. 3-8, 2027, but the Archdiocese of Boston's pilgrims will be there from July 29 to Aug. 10. The pilgrimage is planned to begin with a 15-hour flight from Boston to Incheon. Incheon's first bishop, Bishop William McNaughton, was a Boston priest and Maryknoll missionary who was ordained a bishop by Cardinal Richard Cushing.

The current bishop of Incheon, John Baptist Jung Shin-chul, is a friend of Archbishop Richard G. Henning. The two men met when Archbishop Henning was in Providence, and Bishop Shin-chul has granted Boston's pilgrims a special invitation to his diocese.

After visiting Incheon, the Boston pilgrims will head to Seoul, where they will experience a whirlwind of Masses, visits to shrines and other holy places, catechesis, and prayers with Pope Leo XIV. There will be a 12 to 15-mile walking pilgrimage to an overnight vigil with the pope, where the faithful will sleep under the stars and wake up for a closing Papal Mass. The pilgrims will also have time to explore Seoul's many tourist attractions.

With Korean culture exploding in popularity around the world, Kalpakgian sees the so-called "Korean wave" as an opportunity for evangelization.

"Through this exposure to the culture here, telling them about World Youth Day, have them ask questions," she said, adding, "All that stuff is a great introduction to talking about Jesus."

David Han, a member of Boston's Korean Catholic community and owner of Hanmaru Gamjatang Korean restaurant in Allston, provided a buffet of Korean favorites, including fried chicken, bulgogi, kimchi, and japchae. Music was provided by Sangsoon Kim, who played the gayageum, a traditional 12-stringed Korean instrument, and the Boston Pungmul Community. Pungmul is a traditional Korean folk music art form where synchronized drummers march and dance in colorful costumes. There were also games imitating the hit Korean TV show "Squid Game," a station for trying on traditional Korean dress, a trivia game about Korean culture, and a photo booth with a backdrop of Seoul and a cardboard cutout of Pope Leo XIV.

"We wanted to give people what it would be like to be able to experience Korean culture right here," said Risa Kim, president of the young adult community at St. Antoine Daveluy Parish in Newton, hub of the Archdiocese of Boston's Korean Catholic community.

Kim was born in Korea and grew up attending Mass with her parents and grandparents. Her Catholic faith is linked to her Korean identity.

"It was a way for me to connect with my parents as well, and to be able to talk about my faith and see them be really faithful," she said.

She said that the popularity of Korean culture worldwide is an opportunity to teach people about the history of Catholicism in the country. Christianity is the largest religion in South Korea, which is one of the most Catholic countries in Asia. Kalpakgian said that Catholicism came to Korea when Koreans traveled to China seeking "books of wisdom." They found Bibles that had been translated into Chinese and brought them back to their country. Kalpakgian said that this makes Korea the only country that wasn't baptized by foreign missionaries -- it was Koreans who brought the faith to themselves. Next year's World Youth Day is the first ever to be held in Asia.

"It's meant to be a pilgrimage to encounter Christ and to experience different cultures," Kalpakgian said.