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Quick To Listen

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What South Korean Christians Want for North Korea

Despite fearing its neighbor, the church won’t stop praying—and organizing a massive church planting strategy—for the authoritarian country.

Will North Korea’s recent diplomatic efforts be an answer to South Korean Christians’ prayers?

Hopefully, says Sang-Bok David Kim, the chancellor of a South Korean evangelical graduate school, Torch Trinity Graduate University.

“North Korea has been threatening South Korea two or three times a year. [They say], ‘We want to make Seoul a city of fire.’ They make weapons. They shoot our navy boat down. They shoot cannonballs into South Korean islands,” said Kim. “We are very sorry they have behaved like that.”

But this aggressive behavior hasn’t kept South Korean churches from praying for their Northern neighbors.

Instead, South Korean Christians pray frequently for “freedom, for evangelism, for the transformation of the North Korean leaders, that God will be merciful to them and to us so our nation will be unified so we can go up there and evangelize in North Korea and plant 15,000 churches,” he said.

Kim joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss his ambitious North Korea church planting plan, how the South Korean church has welcomed refugees from the North, and the surprising way God entered his family’s life.

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Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee, Richard Clark, and Cray Allred

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