Photo by Dong-Hee Lee, Newsmission

The Scriptures’ power to change an entire nation is as real today as it was in Ezra’s time. In The Book That Transforms Nations, author Loren Cunningham describes South Korea’s remarkable spiritual and economic transformation during the 20th century. But the founder of Youth With A Mission believes the seeds of change were planted five centuries earlier, when Korea's King Sejong acted on what he believed was divine guidance.

Because reading Korean required memorizing thousands of Chinese characters, only the educated class could read. So King Sejong took the lead in inventing a simplified phonetic writing system called hangeul.

The new writing system was strongly opposed. But somehow it survived and by the late 1800s, hangeul was used in the first translations of Scripture and other gospel literature. By the beginning of the 20th century, the number of Christians in this primarily Buddhist nation had increased to roughly one half of one percent of the population—less than 43,000.

Today, the largest Christian church in the world can be found in Seoul. Some estimate that at least a third of South Koreans follow Christ and the country has sent out more than 12,000 missionaries. Christianity’s growth came at great cost, through the deaths of many thousands of martyrs in the 19th and 20th centuries.

“Korea is not a sin-free utopia,” writes Cunningham, “but biblical influence has permeated every area of Korean society.”

The poverty that crippled the country during much of the 20th century has been replaced by prosperity. Great strides have been made in technology, education and literacy.

Although Korean Christians were once persecuted for their faith, they now “give themselves to prayer and Bible study in an unusual way,” writes Cunningham. “If you visit South Korea today, you’ll find hundreds of thousands filling churches every morning…to pray and read their Bibles for two hours before heading to work.

“I found their congregations filled with vital, praying, Bible-reading people,” he writes. “These are disciples who have a firm hold on The Book that tells people how to live.”

Excerpts from Loren Cunningham's book used by permission from YWAM Publishing.  See The Book That Transforms Nations: The Power of the Bible to Change Any Country (YWAM Publishing, 2007)