Beginning in 2002, South Korean national Helen Lee served as a missionary in Bengaluru, India for five years. In 2015, she embarked on another mission trip to the country’s capital, New Delhi.
It was a new city and a different team, but one thing remained the same: She was the youngest missionary there.
Lee, 45, sees this same dynamic playing out in her work as a member care coordinator in a mission agency that reaches out to Muslims.
“In the last three or four years, we never had any young families candidate [to become long-term missionaries from South Korea],” said Lee.
By the first half of the 21st century, South Korea became a missionary-sending powerhouse. In 2015, the country was ranked second in terms of overall missionary-sending activity, according to the World Christian Database.
The East Asian country is now in third place, after the US and Brazil, in terms of missionary-sending activity, according to 2020 statistics from the World Christian Database that were cited in the Lausanne Movement’s State of the Great Commission report.
But the explosive growth of the country’s missions force does not appear to be sustainable.
“The Korean church and mission have recently plateaued due to secularization, a general disinterest in religion among young people, and the possible impact of megachurch scandals,” wrote Uchenna Anyanwu, Cristian Castro, and David Ro in the Lausanne report. “For this reason, the Korean missionary population is gradually aging.”
Data from the Korea Research Institute for Mission (KRIM) reflects steady growth in the number of missionaries over the past two decades, with a slight downturn beginning in the 2020s.
In the ’90s, the Korean church called for 10,000 missionaries to go and preach. This vision was realized in a decade, and the number of missionaries doubled to 20,000 by 2010.
Since then, growth has been marginal, KRIM’s data shows. Last year, South Korea sent a total of 21,917 missionaries, down from 22,204 in 2022 and 22,259 in 2020.
One reason for a slower missions pipeline in the aughts may be the 2007 kidnapping crisis in Afghanistan, where the Taliban killed two believers after abducting 23 South Korean church volunteers on a medical aid trip.
“The number of Korean missionaries continued to grow, but at a much lower rate since the hostage case in 2007,” said Steve Sang-Cheol Moon, founder and CEO of South Korea’s Charis Institute for Intercultural Studies. (More recently, two South Korean missionaries were kidnapped in Kenya this August.)
The incident, in which the Taliban claimed it received $4 million from the South Korean government to release hostages, prompted intense criticism of mission efforts from both Christian and non-Christian Koreans.
Many came to regard churches as self-serving and critiqued the exclusivity of the faith after this happened, Moon said.
The Taliban murder-kidnapping also created a “huge phobia” against Muslims among the Korean people, particularly in Christian circles where believers feel the need to protect the faith against Islam, said Lee.
“A lot of people in church are still very afraid of [Muslims]. … [They think] the Muslims are terrorists,” she noted.
Korean missionaries and leaders CT interviewed agree with the data and the trends observed by the Lausanne report. Still, most are optimistic about the future of South Korea’s missionary movement as they see growth in new conceptualizations and expressions of missional living among younger Korean Christians.
A prophetic push
In 1973, Billy Graham predicted that South Korea would become a base for evangelism and outreach across Asia. The history of the South Korean church has reflected this ardent devotion to missions that Graham pinpointed.
The first Korean missionary was ordained at the 1907 Pyongyang revival. In 1974, the Korean missionary movement (KMM) began when Korean churches sent out 24 missionaries. Since then, South Korean missionaries have brought the gospel to 170 countries.
Nationwide evangelistic events such as Explo ’74 in Seoul, attended by 300,000 believers from South Korea and around the world, contributed to boosting missionary fervor in that period. And after the country hosted the Olympics in 1988, the government allowed Koreans to travel freely, further propelling the KMM forward.
Central Asia and China were some of the places where Korean missionaries had a large impact.
In countries like Mongolia, they were instrumental in growing the Christian population. “In 1989, there were just four Christians; by 2008, that number had grown to 40,000,” a 2019 Lausanne article on the gospel movement in East Asia revealed.
Missions to China began when the Presbyterian Church of Korea sent three ministers and their families to the province of Shandong in the 1900s.
This was “the greatest and most significant missionary work of the Korean church,” wrote Timothy K. Park in Korean Church, God’s Mission, Global Christianity. “It was the first Asian mission by Asian people since the days of the apostles.”
By 2017, there were about 500 officially registered South Korean missionaries in China, although the actual number may have been closer to 2,000, a CT report stated. Many served in Jilin Province due to its proximity to North Korea, helping refugees resettle after they defected.
But after China expelled Korean missionaries that year, along with the Afghanistan kidnapping crisis a decade earlier, South Korean missionaries have had to look elsewhere for opportunities to serve.
Many missionaries stopped serving in Afghanistan and other creative access countries where sharing the faith is restricted or prohibited because “local people were more aware of the presence of Korean missionaries in their regions,” Moon says.
The COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a decline in church growth, has also caused the KMM to stagnate in recent years, Korean Christian leaders told CT. Churches are more financially strapped, which means less funding for missionaries.
And yet, while the number of Korean Christians going on overseas missions is decreasing, missionaries are venturing farther.
Today, South Korean missionaries serve in countries like the United States, the Philippines, Thailand, and other Southeast Asian countries that have more restrictions on preaching and sharing the Good News.
In the Hindu-majority country of Nepal, which has an anti-conversion law in place, a South Korean missionary couple has planted nearly 70 churches in the Dhading district as of last year. Kenya has also become “a bridgehead for Korean missions to Africa,” with more Korean missionaries based there compared to other nations on the continent, said a 2014 report.
Going gray
Only around 7 percent of South Korean missionaries are in their 20s or 30s. The majority (67.9%) of long-term missionaries are 50 years old or over, according to KRIM’s 2023 report.
These “silver missionaries” often enter the mission field after retirement, said 35-year-old Eun Hee Kim, who served as a church planter in northeastern Thailand and is currently on sabbatical.
Kim was 23 when she decided to serve God full-time in cross-cultural missions. There are young South Korean Christians interested in doing the same thing today, but how missional their church is plays a part in determining whether they pursue it, says Kim.
“If the churches no longer see missions as essential and cease to pray, support, or mobilize for missions—that would indeed mark the beginning of the end for Korean missions,” she said.
Traditional church sending structures may also inadvertently impact the age of missionaries being sent out. Most South Koreans think that to be a missionary, you have to be ordained as a pastor and undergo theological training, which takes around five to six years to complete.
While that perception is gradually changing, whether churches are willing to send people in their 20s and 30s on the mission field without theological study is debatable, said Kyungnam Park, international director of WEC International, which focuses on evangelizing unreached people groups.
Parents’ opinions also matter more in Korean culture compared to the Western world, says Sung-Min Park, Korean Campus Crusade for Christ’s (KCCC) vice president for East Asia. As a form of filial piety, young graduates feel pressured to work in a well-known company and become financially stable rather than serve the Lord as a long-term missionary in a faraway country.
Hyerin Kim, 26, went on two short-term mission trips with KCCC. After graduating from college in 2022, she moved to Japan for a short-term mission stint a year later.
When she told her family she wanted to be a full-time missionary, they opposed the decision fiercely. “They think that I am giving up a lot of good things and taking a particularly harder and more difficult path to be a missionary,” she told CT.
“But I don’t see it that way,” she said. “I am not giving up any of the good opportunities I have, but I am taking the best and most unique opportunity to please and honor God more than any other.”
Mission Korea Congress, an ecumenical and biannual conference for high school and college students, has also seen a drastic dip in attendance over the years, particularly after the new millennium.
At its peak in 1998, the conference had 6,300 participants. In 2010, the number of participants dropped to 3,975. Last year, there were 1,403 people.
Still, the waning attendance doesn’t faze the congress’s executive director, Job Choi. God’s ministry is not dependent on numbers, he asserted.
As they seek ways to live out their faith, Gen Z and Gen Alpha believers are asking different questions compared to previous generations, in Choi’s view. Young Christians are pondering questions like “What is beautiful, good, and human?” rather than “What is true or real?” he said. They’re also wondering: “If your gospel is right, why is your church not beautiful?”
Creating change
Not everything that has transpired in recent times has weakened the Korean church. To some leaders, the events of the last few years have helped to strengthen and reshape the Korean missionary movement, especially in its posture.
The pandemic has allowed the Korean church to reckon with its pride, arrogance, and sense of triumphalism in carrying out missions, opined Daewon Moon, senior pastor of Daegu Dongshin Church.
“We no longer emphasize that the Korean church will and should play a pivotal role in fulfilling the Great Commission,” he said. “We don’t want to repeat the same mistakes of European missionaries.”
The Fourth Lausanne Congress in September, held in the South Korean city of Incheon, is not a time for “the Korean church to celebrate its missional achievement before the global church,” said Moon, who serves on the board of the Korea Lausanne Committee.
Instead, it is a time for the Korean church to reflect, repent, and learn from the global body of Christ, Moon argues.
Some leaders pointed to the Korean wave—the booming popularity of South Korean pop culture in music, film, food, and more—as a propitious opportunity for mission work. “When we go to Latin America and Africa, a lot of people already know the songs [from K-pop groups] BTS and Blackpink,” said KCCC’s Park.
“Particularly notable is a new energy to combine worship and mission ministries among young Korean Christians,” said Moon, the pastor.
The birth of mission-oriented worship collectives like Isaiah 6tyOne is representative of this new movement. Recently, the group visited a high school in Iloilo, Philippines, where they shared God’s Word and taught students how to play musical instruments. “Jesus, you’re victorious / with the angels sing / the wonder of the risen King,” the teenagers sang.
Another discernible trend, say leaders, is that although long-term missions are decreasing, short-term missions are on the rise.
Many churches and mission agencies offer a range of options in duration, from week-long to three-month trips and one-year commitments. This summer, Moon’s church sent 17 short-term mission teams to countries like Japan, Cambodia, Turkey, Tanzania, and the UK.
KCCC is also “doing better than before” when it comes to sending short-term missionaries overseas, said Park. This year, the ministry has already sent 3,000 students and full-time staff on two- to four-week-long mission trips.
Going on a short-term mission trip helped Kim, the young missionary in Japan, to experience deeper and more authentic fellowship with God. “I felt that everything I did, whether it was eating, drinking, meeting up with friends to laugh and talk, or just walking around campus, was a mission and for the glory of the Lord,” she said.
A favorable future
While South Korea’s rankings in terms of missionary sending may have slipped, most leaders still think the country can be considered a powerful mission-sending force. Many expressed optimism about the future of mission in South Korea because they’ve noticed a shift toward a more holistic understanding of what being a missionary is all about.
“The division between evangelism and social responsibility (which older generations argued [about] and maintained) does not seem to bother younger generations,” said Moon, the pastor.
In the past, Korean missionaries would prioritize evangelism and church planting over other types of ministries such as area development, medical services, and relief work. Today, there are more missionaries seeking to care for a local community’s physical needs instead of solely focusing on their spiritual needs, said Charis Institute’s Moon.
In a 2006 cover story for CT, Moon also critiqued the lone ranger approach that many Korean missionaries possessed when starting projects. While this may still ring true in many cases, younger Korean missionaries are better at collaborating with local churches and leaders than before, he said.
Korean missionaries today also have a more “flexible missionary identity,” continued Moon. Previously, they would often link their identity with a certain country, but now they are more aware that their country of service can be changed.
Mission Korea Congress’s Choi experiences both worry and welcome when thinking about the future of missions. He also finds that the Korean Christian conceptualization of missions is healthier and more balanced now.
The dimensions of what missions entails are expanding, he says, where everything in life—education, government, creation care, social justice—is part of a believer’s missional identity.
“Revival is dependent on God’s time,” said Choi. “Our responsibility is to keep the fire holy and pure.”
Kim, the missionary in Japan, stressed the importance of living for God in the prime of one’s life.
“The young adult years are a time of great strength, energy, and possibility, and I think it’s the best time to think about what to do with your life and to discover your purpose, meaning, and values,” she said. “Whether we spend that time living according to the flow of the world or giving ourselves fully to the work of the Lord will shape the rest of our lives.”
Lee, the member care coordinator, also believes that young Christians might be missing out on opportunities to encounter God’s transformative love if they only stick to short-term mission trips.
“When you live [in another country] for a long time, I think you can see better how much God is really passionate about missions, and how God really cares for these people,” she said.
“Through those decades [as a missionary], I learned so much about his love.”
