Dedicated to Jean Junk, who lovingly collected this information over many years.
Although this line of the Junk family originated in Ulster, Ireland, Junk is not considered a particularly Irish name. If you have the chance to browse the phone book from Trier, Germany, however, you'll find column after column of Junks. At the time the Junks most likely left Trier for Ulster, however, Trier was part of France.
Religious unrest in France began about 1517, but peaked in 1685 with the Edict of Fontainebleau, which made being a Protestant illegal. As a result of persecution, hundreds of thousands of "Huguenots" fled to Protestant countries such as Holland and England. Some ended up in Ireland, and its not hard to imagine that these Junks are part of that group.