The Korean background to the 1973 Seoul crusade

Around four months before the Seoul crusade started, Kyung-Chik Han published an article in a Christian newspaper, urging readers to join and support the crusade. Han highlighted that ‘this is the time … to raise a banner for the movement to evangelise fifty million people’, a movement which stretched beyond denominational boundaries.Footnote ¹⁵ Despite the divisions among major Protestant denominations in South Korea in the 1950s, Korean Protestant Christians in the 1960s and 1970s were to a great extent united in the pursuit of national evangelisation.Footnote ¹⁶ Although some more liberal Protestants were gradually diverging from the missiological stance, by prioritising Christian involvement in the socio-political sphere, the majority of Protestant Christians believed that socio-political and economic prosperity would follow if the nation were evangelised.Footnote ¹⁷ They often emphasised that the contemporary socio-political situation provided a crucial opportunity to accomplish national evangelisation. For instance, the interdenominational National Evangelistic Campaign, launched in 1965, was stimulated by a desire among Korean Protestant leaders to capitalise on the socio-political turmoil at this time. In 1964, President Chung-Hee Park’s government dispatched Korean troops to the Vietnam war and attempted to legislate to restrict the media, steps which caused controversy. His government also pressed ahead with the normalisation of diplomatic relations with the former colonial power, Japan, raising fierce public resistance which began to emerge in 1964. In the same year Korean Protestant leaders like Kyung-Chik Han perceived such socio-political turmoil as a promising time to spread the Gospel.Footnote ¹⁸ According to Hyun-Sul Hong, later a vice-president of the Korean executive committee for the 1973 Seoul crusade, Protestant leaders had in 1965 ‘a solid belief that this is the time to save the nation and the people … only through the Gospel’.Footnote ¹⁹ Based on this belief, the 1965 National Evangelistic Campaign adopted ‘Thirty Million to Christ’ as its slogan. At the time thirty million was the approximate total population of South Korea: its Protestant population encompassed roughly 6 per cent.Footnote ²⁰ It was clearly an ambitious goal.

If the socio-political turmoil around 1965 was a stimulus to the National Evangelistic Campaign, in the case of the 1973 Billy Graham crusade two developments enabled Han to assert that ‘this is the time’ for a national evangelisation movement. The first was the Movement to Make the Whole Army Believers which was launched within the military in 1970. The late 1960s was marked by an escalating crisis of national security: in 1968, North Korean armed agents attempted to penetrate the Blue House (the Korean presidential residence) to assassinate Park; in 1969, the North Korean Air Force shot down an American reconnaissance plane over the East Sea; in the same year, North Korea again dispatched armed forces and a spy hijacked a Korean Airlines plane and flew it to North Korea. With the growing threat to national security, the First Field Army Commander, Shin Han, initiated a movement to reinforce the morale of soldiers by promoting the three major religions of South Korea (Protestantism, Catholicism and Buddhism) among the armed forces.Footnote ²¹ Korean Protestant leaders saw this as a chance to forward national evangelisation and established the interdenominational Military Evangelisation Supporters Association in 1972 to assist the military.Footnote ²² These efforts gained significant numerical success. Between 1971 and 1974, twenty-six mass baptismal ceremonies where more than 1,000 soldiers were baptised at the same time were held.Footnote ²³ The number of Protestant Christians in the military surged from 78,176 in 1970 to 199,623 in 1973.Footnote ²⁴ This success, which Kyung-Chik Han called ‘flames of new revival’ in his 1973 newspaper article, exerted a direct influence over the 1973 Billy Graham crusade by providing Korean Protestant Christians with the confidence that national evangelisation could be achieved.Footnote ²⁵ The second development, which Han revealed as another significant background to the crusade in his 1973 newspaper article, was ‘a new condition’ in the relationship between the North and South Koreas which ‘has been inconceivable before’.Footnote ²⁶ The early 1970s also witnessed détente between the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States.Footnote ²⁷ Thus, in the context of changing international political circumstances, and despite the South Korean national security crisis, the South Korean government changed their policy toward North Korea from one of hostility to dialogue and exchange.Footnote ²⁸ As a result, a Joint North-South communiqué for peaceful unification was announced in July 1972. One month later, the issue of family reunion was discussed during Inter-Korean Red Cross talks. This improved relationship led the Korean executive committee of the crusade to adopt ‘Fifty Million to Christ’ as its slogan. This was the approximate total population of the two Koreas.Footnote ²⁹ Expanding the 1965 National Evangelistic Campaign’s slogan ‘Thirty Million to Christ’ demonstrated increasing confidence in Korean Protestantism’s prospects for numerical growth.

Kyung-Chik Han concluded his 1973 newspaper article by asserting that the interdenominational Billy Graham crusade would demonstrate the spiritual leadership of Korean Protestant Christians within Korean society.Footnote ³⁰ In the words of Hyang-Rok Cho, a vice-president of the Korean executive committee, The Christian role would provide ‘spiritual resources’ during South Korea’s post-1960 period of industrialisation.Footnote ³¹ Economic development through industrialisation was the top priority for Park’s government from the time of its seizing power through a military coup in 1961.Footnote ³² The United States was committed to assisting South Korea, given its front-line position in the Cold War.Footnote ³³ As a result, the South Korean economy started to grow rapidly. South Korea’s per capita GNP in 1961 was half that of North Korea.Footnote ³⁴ It grew sharply however, from $12.7 billion in 1962 to $57.4 billion in 1980 with an average GNP growth rate of 8.5 percent per year.Footnote ³⁵ But rapid industrialisation and economic growth posed various social problems, such as poor labour conditions and human alienation.Footnote ³⁶ In this context, Korean Protestant leaders felt that they had a responsibility to offer the spiritual resources of the Gospel because they believed that, as Cho remarked a few weeks before the crusade, ‘there is no way to solve every problem which our people are now facing without evangelising the whole nation’.Footnote ³⁷

On 20 November 1970 Han sent a letter of invitation to Billy Graham. Graham had already visited twice, during the Korean War in 1952 and again in 1956.Footnote ³⁸ The two men’s relationship had begun when Han acted as Graham’s translator during his visits, and continued through Han’s deep involvement in the international evangelistic conferences of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), such as the 1966 Berlin World Congress on Evangelism.Footnote ³⁹ In what Han called ‘a most urgent letter’, he invited Graham, on behalf of Korean Protestant leaders, to hold a crusade in South Korea.Footnote ⁴⁰ Han confidently penned that ‘We now feel the appropriate time has come’, because he and other Korean Protestant leaders believed that Korean people at the time were in ‘spiritual hunger’.Footnote ⁴¹ They hoped that their American partners would help them to achieve their aim of national evangelisation by holding a crusade. Graham agreed to their request.

‘Not the crusade of “Billy Graham”, but “the Korean crusade”’Footnote ⁴²

On 10 September 1972, Korean Protestant leaders formed the Korean executive committee of the Billy Graham crusade.Footnote ⁴³ Kyung-Chik Han was elected president alongside four vice-presidents, including Hyun-Sul Hong and Hyang-Rok Cho. Graham had accepted invitations to hold crusades on condition that local Christian leaders across denominational lines generally gave consent.Footnote ⁴⁴ Following this tradition Christian leaders from almost every major Protestant denomination in South Korea collaborated with the committee.Footnote ⁴⁵ The National Council of Churches in Korea also decided to support the crusade.Footnote ⁴⁶ However, the Korean Council of Christian Churches, the Korean branch of the International Council of Christian Churches founded in 1948 by the American fundamentalist Carl McIntire, declined to take part because of McIntire’s stance against Billy Graham.Footnote ⁴⁷ The Korean Catholic Church also did not collaborate officially.Footnote ⁴⁸ As Kyung-Chik Han made clear in his article ‘The vision and aim of the Billy Graham Crusade’, the Billy Graham crusade in South Korea originated in the desire of Korean Protestant leaders for national evangelisation, at a time they considered a golden opportunity. The crusade’s singular aim was the evangelisation of fifty million people on the Korean peninsula.Footnote ⁴⁹ For the Korean executive committee, in the words of Cho, the event was ‘the crusade of the whole Korean church, not of Billy Graham’.Footnote ⁵⁰ It had a clear national goal – ‘Fifty Million to Christ’. Cho elucidated this point in detail in a Christian newspaper article immediately after the crusade:

For the Korean executive committee, religious ties with Billy Graham were primarily a means to fulfil their national agenda. These ties were supported by religious and political commonalities between the committee and Billy Graham. Firstly, both believed that a transformation of society would follow individual conversions to Christianity and were therefore committed to preaching the Gospel. Graham largely prioritised the transformation of the heart over the reform of society during his whole ministry.Footnote ⁵² His sermon on the first day of the Seoul crusade highlighted receiving Jesus Christ as the solution to every problem on a personal, societal and global level and therefore exemplified that theological stance.Footnote ⁵³ Kyung-Chik Han also firmly believed that the numerical increase of converted people was a significant key to economic growth, peaceful unification of the Korean peninsula and democratisation.Footnote ⁵⁴ He hoped that the Billy Graham crusade would contribute to that.Footnote ⁵⁵ Secondly, Graham and the Korean executive committee shared the same political stance towards Park’s authoritarian government. In 1972, a year before the crusade, Park consolidated his authoritarian regime by establishing the Yushin constitution under martial law. The constitution granted enormous power to the president over legislative, judicial and administrative systems and enabled a permanent presidency by removing term limits.Footnote ⁵⁶ Using these powers, Park suppressed the democratisation movement in which more liberal Christians played a significant role.Footnote ⁵⁷ Against this background, the Seoul crusade had clear support from the government, which not only permitted the use of the Yoido Plaza which had been restricted to governmental use, but also lifted a curfew around the area of the plaza.Footnote ⁵⁸ Some politicians, including Park, gave personal financial support to the crusade.Footnote ⁵⁹ Such support demonstrated the amicable relationship between Billy Graham, the Korean executive team and Park’s government. This was a time when Park’s suppression of the democratisation movement, which was known internationally and particularly through international Christian networks, faced criticism on the global stage.Footnote ⁶⁰ Park’s government needed to counter this criticism and supporting Graham’s involvement in the crusade was a useful option. When Park met Graham on 25 May 1973, the day after his arrival in South Korea, he highlighted that religious freedom was guaranteed in South Korea, unlike in Communist North Korea where religions were persecuted .Footnote ⁶¹ Graham then complimented South Korea as a spiritually though not politically powerful nation, and prayed for the president.Footnote ⁶² Echoing Park’s remarks, the Korean executive committee proudly presented the active support of the government as solid evidence of the guarantee of freedom of religion in South Korea.Footnote ⁶³

However, despite the religious and political commonalities that sustained the link between the Korean executive committee and Billy Graham, the committee’s agenda for the crusade soon generated significant tensions with the BGEA. For instance, in response to Han’s letter of November 1970, the BGEA at first suggested June 1972 for the crusade.Footnote ⁶⁴ Following this, Korean Protestant leaders held a meeting on 9 March 1971 to form an executive committee.Footnote ⁶⁵ The vice-president of the BGEA Walter H. Smyth was present, and Kyung-Chik Han was elected as president.Footnote ⁶⁶ But the date of the crusade was then postponed to 1973 due to Graham’s health.Footnote ⁶⁷ The Korean executive committee had to be dissolved, to be re-established on 10 September 1972. Moreover, the original plan for Graham’s visit, which was designed by Korean Protestant leaders and was initially accepted by Graham, was that he would cover the Seoul crusade and preach on the final days of crusades in six major provincial cities.Footnote ⁶⁸ However, again due to his health, the plan had to be altered and Graham led the Seoul crusade only. The crusades at the six provincial cities were covered by BGEA’s associate evangelists.Footnote ⁶⁹ This revision, which was a ‘great shock to provincial church leaders’ in the words of one 1973 Christian newspaper article, raised complaints among the leaders and the Korean executive committee.Footnote ⁷⁰ Shin-Myung Kang, who was a member of the committee and the interpreter for the crusade at Busan – one of the six provincial cities – complained that: ‘Americans, they always follow [the] medical doctor’s way. But [for] the Oriental, even though his health is a little bad, if we promise, then we should be there.’Footnote ⁷¹

After the crusades in the six major cities, the Seoul crusade was held at the Yoido Plaza from 30 May to 3 June. The hosting of the event was also marked by tensions between the Korean executive committee and the BGEA. Dong-Jin Cho, an associate secretary of the committee, recalled with displeasure in a discussion meeting after the crusade that the BGEA ‘fully intended to make the crusade a Billy Graham revival movement’, while the Korean executive team urged that ‘this Billy Graham crusade is a Korean crusade’.Footnote ⁷² At the same meeting Hyang-Rok Cho complained that ‘the Billy Graham team showed a plain intention to make the crusade Billy Graham’s revival movement’.Footnote ⁷³ He provided evidence of this. First, Cho reported that although the Korean Church was the host, the BGEA wanted to have a press conference, which Graham subsequently held with around 100 journalists after the meeting with President Chung-Hee Park on 26 May 1973.Footnote ⁷⁴ Second, Cho went on to say that the Graham team insisted that their personnel took the role of praise- and worship-leaders.Footnote ⁷⁵ The crusade choir, which consisted of around 7,000 members and had been preparing with a Korean conductor before the Seoul crusade, was directed during the event by BGEA’s musical evangelist Cliff Barrows.Footnote ⁷⁶ As Barrows directed the choir, George Beverley Shea stood at the podium and led the audience in singing ‘How Great Thou Art’, alternating between Korean and English.Footnote ⁷⁷ Hyun-Sul Hong reported that ‘the fact that even hymn singing was led by an American aroused a degree of displeasure among us’.Footnote ⁷⁸ After listing these points, Cho proudly argued that ‘Revd Kyung-Chik Han and other Korean leaders made efforts to lead this event as the crusade of the Korean Church and I think that we attained some success.’Footnote ⁷⁹ He then offered critical advice to the BGEA: ‘I think the Billy Graham team would do well to behave in humility as a witness of God’s word and as those who are invited, and to abstain from stamping their own imprint, when they are invited to other places.’Footnote ⁸⁰ Some other Korean Protestant leaders expressed criticism of the BGEA’s fund-raising methods and of Graham’s departure at the end of the Seoul crusade. Hong pointed out that ‘collecting an offering on each day of the conference, even if that was an original tradition of the Billy Graham team’, was foreign to Korean Protestant Christians.Footnote ⁸¹ John Pollock’s biography of Graham also pays attention to the growth of tensions between the Korean executive committee and the BGEA over fund-raising.Footnote ⁸² After finishing his final sermon on 3 June, Graham boarded a helicopter to the airport.Footnote ⁸³ As the helicopter lifted off and circled twice around the Yoido Plaza to say farewell to the crowds, they responded by waving their paper hats or handkerchiefs.Footnote ⁸⁴ For some Protestant leaders, this moment interrupted the event and gave the impression that it was a performance by Billy Graham, rather than a crusade.Footnote ⁸⁵

In his article after the end of the crusade, Hong mentioned another factor which elicited complaints among Korean Protestant Christians. This was Graham’s preaching. During the crusade, Graham followed his typical revivalist preaching style and delivered simple messages focusing on the seriousness of sin and the importance of personal conversion through the decision to be a follower of Jesus.Footnote ⁸⁶ Hong reported that he had heard many complaints that Graham’s preaching was very weak for ‘Korean Christians who have a comparatively high standard for sermons’.Footnote ⁸⁷ For instance, two Korean participants at the Seoul Crusade (a pastor and a high school student) assessed Graham’s preaching: ‘It was very shallow’ and ‘Too simple for me’.Footnote ⁸⁸ Some Korean Christians, according to Hong, argued that ‘most competent Korean pastors can also preach at this level’.Footnote ⁸⁹ Hong was one of those who complained about Graham’s preaching, particularly its irrelevance to Korean audiences. For him, the fact that Graham barely touched on the themes designated by the Korean executive team was very disappointing.Footnote ⁹⁰ He then concluded that Graham’s message ‘was not very relevant to the Korean context’.Footnote ⁹¹ Hong’s evaluation of Graham’s preaching is particularly striking because before the start of the crusade Hong expressed a different expectation: ‘I believe that he will bring a relevant message to Korea.’Footnote ⁹²

Graham’s revivalist preaching contrasted with another type of revivalism during the crusade. Korean Christian rituals were markedly more charismatic than Graham’s revivalism. For instance, after Graham’s sermon on the second day of the crusade, Korean participants engaged in Tongseong Gido (통성 기도, audible prayer in unison) for the liberation of the North Korean people – the theme for the day.Footnote ⁹³ Many of them remained at the crusade venue for Cheollya Gido (철야 기도, all-night prayer) and Saebyeok Gido (새벽 기도, early morning prayer), rather than joining in the massive traffic congestion as people rushed home before the curfew.Footnote ⁹⁴ According to the hosts, the aggregate attendance for these voluntary all-night prayer meetings reached 29,000.Footnote ⁹⁵ These indigenous revivalist rituals, characterised by vocal and emotional expressions, had been a notable feature of Korean Evangelicalism from its beginning in the late nineteenth century when the rituals were invented under some degree of influence from Shamanism and Daoism.Footnote ⁹⁶ This Korean version of revivalism, in contrast with the American kind, resonated with the Korean hosts’ desire to make the crusade their own, not Billy Graham’s.

Growing Korean exceptionalism against its American counterpart

Protestant Christianity in South Korea had experienced a sharp increase in numbers from 4,595 churches and 1,045,454 believers in 1958 to 13,037 churches and 3,217,996 believers in 1971.Footnote ⁹⁷ Within this upward trend, Korean Protestant Christians had a firm objective: to evangelise the nation; and they were in an increasingly optimistic mood regarding their capacity to achieve it. The Korean executive team viewed the Billy Graham Crusade as a vehicle to advance their domestic agenda with Billy Graham and the BGEA as a catalyst. The BGEA, however, had a long tradition of holding crusades, which included a press conference, a crusade choir directed by Cliff Barrows and Beverley Shea’s hymn-singing, and insisted on following this pattern during the Seoul crusade.Footnote ⁹⁸ The Korean executive team’s requests were not always met, as evidenced by the postponement of the crusade and the alteration of plans due to Graham’s health. These factors provoked the Korean executive team, leading to tensions.

Despite this, the crusade was a remarkable success in drawing huge numbers of people. Although it did not live up to its ambitious slogan ‘Fifty Million to Christ’, according to Korean estimates the crusade attracted 1,100,000 people on the final day alone. The aggregate numbers of attendees and those who submitted decision cards – cards indicating a commitment to accept Christ, a signature practice of Graham’s crusades – during the crusade reached 3,213,000 and 37,358 respectively (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Estimated attendance and decision card numbers at the Seoul crusade

Cho, Great feast, 269.

The crusade’s success drew attention not only from America, but also from within South Korea. A small but vocal number of Protestants criticised the crusade for the absence of a message about socio-political issues and for not criticising the authoritarian government. For instance, Hyeong-Gyu Park, a liberal Protestant leader who was deeply involved in the democratisation movement, complained that ‘while Korean Christianity gathered its 1.1 million believers in the grand plaza of Yoido, attention was not given to the reality of the working masses, who are sacrificing their lives at the bottom of Korean society to sustain this society’.Footnote ⁹⁹ Jong-Ryul Kim also disapproved of the crusade’s lack of ‘a prophetic message’ on topics like ‘freedom, democracy, and people’s liberation’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Combining the image of Graham’s departure by helicopter with the angelic message about the Second Coming of Jesus in Acts i. 11, Dong-Hwan Moon sarcastically criticised the excessive emphasis on the numerical success of the crusade: ‘I am concerned that the man who left by helicopter is going to come back by helicopter again.’Footnote ¹⁰¹

However, many other Korean Protestant Christians applauded and took pride in the success of the crusade.Footnote ¹⁰² Kyung-Chik Han recognised the crusade as ‘a new epoch in the history of the Korean Church’.Footnote ¹⁰³ Believing that its success was the work of the Holy Spirit, one Protestant leader compared it to the events of Pentecost described in Acts ii and marked by the multiplication of Christian believers.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Both the Christian and the secular press praised the crusade, perceiving it as providing people with the spiritual resources necessary in a materialist society.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ One secular newspaper article understood the massive attendance at the crusade as solid evidence of people’s pursuit of inner freedom, peace and stability in a society marked by economic growth and prosperity.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ This acclaim demonstrated that the Korean hosts’ intention of accomplishing national evangelisation at a time of perceived spiritual hunger gained some success. The methods of pursuing this spiritual mission, however, revealed an interesting dynamic. While the Korean hosts promoted evangelisation through the Seoul crusade as a spiritual remedy for social problems related to rapid economic development, their way of pursuing this task reflected and embraced Korea’s growing economic power. For instance, after the crusade, Hyun-Sul Hong praised the Korean Church’s ability to raise more than 70 million won for a five-day event which, he believed, demonstrated its substantial financial resources.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ This confidence in the Korean Church’s financial capacity led Hong to envision future evangelistic movements fully led by them.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ This intertwining of evangelisation and economic logic was also evident in Graham’s approach.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ In his public messages during his visit for the Seoul crusade, Graham appeared to take a critical stance toward materialism and economic prosperity, emphasising spiritual salvation over material wealth.Footnote ¹¹⁰ However, his Evangelical message was often couched in business language, as when he urged his audience to ‘invest’ in God’s Kingdom: ‘In America when a rich man died some time ago, all the neighbors began to say, “How much money did he leave?” And one of the neighbors said, “He left it all”. You don’t take anything with you. Except the part that you’ve invested in the Kingdom of God.’Footnote ¹¹¹ The business-like aspects of Graham’s ministry were further highlighted in Hyang-Rok Cho’s critical reminiscence. Cho recalled receiving a request to mobilise 200 church members for Graham’s airport reception: he viewed this as exemplifying ‘American commercialism’.Footnote ¹¹² When Cho suggested a more modest welcome, he was told that if a nation’s ambassador deserved a grand reception, surely an ambassador bringing God’s message deserved no less.Footnote ¹¹³ For Cho, this grandiose approach seemed at odds with Graham’s message, at the airport press conference, about not living by material things alone.Footnote ¹¹⁴ These examples from both the Korean and the Graham sides reveal how closely economic logic and evangelistic practices had become intertwined, even as they sought to provide spiritual resources.

The numerical success of the Seoul crusade increased confidence among Korean Protestant Christians in the potential of national evangelisation and encouraged them to pursue it more vigorously, as is demonstrated by the subsequent launch of denominational evangelistic campaigns by major Korean Protestant denominations.Footnote ¹¹⁵ More important, the crusade’s success reinforced Korean Protestant belief in the exceptional role of their nation in the accomplishment of world evangelisation. Many Korean Protestant Christians understood the success of the crusade as a sign that South Korea was transforming from a missionary-receiving into a missionary-sending nation.Footnote ¹¹⁶ For them, this transformation represented more than just becoming a missionary nation; it signalled a fundamental reversal in their relationship with the Western countries. This reflected the broader shift in global Evangelicalism between the 1966 World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin and the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelisation in Lausanne. During this period, American dominance receded and national Evangelical movements in the Global South gained increasing spiritual and political influence.Footnote ¹¹⁷ This shift was evident in the Korean hosts’ growing confidence in their role in the task of evangelisation, particularly in relation to Western missionary nations. For instance, after finishing the crusade, Hyun-Sul Hong remarked that ‘one significant point which we found in this time was that the Korean Church contains great human and financial resources’, and that ‘we have become confident that there is nothing that we cannot do if we are united and eager to do so’.Footnote ¹¹⁸ He then asserted that ‘the time to re-export Korean evangelists like Billy Graham to Western nations’ would come.Footnote ¹¹⁹ This changing dynamic was further illustrated in the evolving self-perception of Billy Jang-Hwan Kim, Graham’s translator at the Seoul crusade and an associate secretary of the Korean executive committee. In 1957, as a student at Bob Jones University attending Graham’s New York crusade, Kim merely ‘aspired to be an evangelist like Billy Graham’.Footnote ¹²⁰ When he attended the 1966 Berlin Congress, he had begun to dream of becoming a world evangelist himself.Footnote ¹²¹ During the 1973 Seoul crusade, Kim’s role transcended mere translation. As he recalled, he became so immersed in his role that ‘it felt as though he was preaching and Billy Graham was interpreting in English’.Footnote ¹²² This shifting dynamic, as Helen Jin Kim pointed out, was tellingly captured in the progression of subheadings in Kim’s autobiography: from ‘Preparing for Graham in Korea’ to ‘Billy and Billy, side by side’ to ‘Two voices as one’ and finally ‘After the crusade: Kim in the spotlight.’Footnote ¹²³ These titles chronicle Kim’s progression from seeing himself as Graham’s subordinate partner, to considering them as equals, to finally emerging as the preeminent evangelist in his own right, eclipsing Graham.

South Korea’s transformation into a missionary nation also implied the positioning of South Korea as having an exceptional role in the task of world evangelisation, replacing Western nations like America which previously held that role. In his article penned after the crusade, Nam-Kyu Choi, a minister of the Full Gospel Central Church (later the Yoido Full Gospel Church), whose senior pastor Yong-Gi Cho was one of the Korean hosts, clearly represented this recognition among Korean Protestants. Borrowing the biblical image of the removal of the golden lampstand in Revelation ii.5,Footnote ¹²⁴ Choi argued that Jesus’ lampstand had moved to South Korea from America and other Western countries:

Before the start of the Seoul crusade, Billy Graham had on several occasions described South Korea as a powerful nation spiritually, albeit not economically or politically.Footnote ¹²⁶ However, after his direct observation of the crusade’s success, he remarked on the crusade’s last day that ‘perhaps the gravitational center of Christianity is now moving here to the Far East. Christianity began in the Middle East, moved westward to Europe, then to America, and now perhaps to the Far East’.Footnote ¹²⁷ His remark on the shift of ‘the gravitational center of Christianity’ was in stark contrast with his earlier belief in American exceptionalism,Footnote ¹²⁸ and marked the gradual waning of this belief.Footnote ¹²⁹ Moreover, his official acknowledgement of the importance of Korean Christianity markedly strengthened Korean exceptionalism among Korean Protestant Christians.Footnote ¹³⁰ For instance, in an article written after the crusade, Kyung-Chik Han ruminated on Graham’s acknowledgement of Korean Christianity. Han underscored the responsibility of South Korea as a chosen nation under God’s providence for evangelisation beyond South Korea:

The growing sense of Korean exceptionalism found clear expression at the International Congress on World Evangelisation held in Lausanne, one year later. In their National Strategy Group Report, Korean delegates interpreted the Seoul crusade not as Graham’s achievement, but as evidence of their Church’s ‘greatness’ bestowed by ‘God’s special blessing’.Footnote ¹³² The report went on to assert that God had ‘richly blessed our Korean Church’ and given it ‘the potential and thus the responsibility to play an important role in the evangelisation of our own country, of Asia, and of the world’.Footnote ¹³³ This confident articulation of Korea’s divine calling demonstrated that Korean Protestants were moving to claim an exceptional role in world evangelisation.

The success of the crusade and the increasing number of Protestant Christians in the 1970s promoted the growth of Korean exceptionalism, even challenging its American counterpart. In non-religious spheres, South Korea could not realistically compete with the United States, a global superpower and their most important ally, upon which their economy, political life and military were heavily dependent. But their religious successes, as typified in the Seoul crusade, provided Korean Protestants with new confidence in the task of evangelisation beyond South Korea, as an activity in which they could take the lead, asserting themselves against American supremacy.Footnote ¹³⁴ Moreover, religious success also had economic and socio-political implications. Korean Protestants believed that the growth in the number of people who converted to Christianity would result in the transformation of society into a more prosperous and powerful one. Religious success was understood by Korean Protestants as a prerequisite for economic and socio-political advance. For instance, Joon-Gon Kim, an associate secretary of the Korean executive committee of the Seoul crusade and the founder of the Campus Crusade for Christ in Korea which hosted Explo 74, wrote a journal article in 1973 on the biblical principle of the blessing of a nation. Kim asserted that if Korean Christians were faithful in fulfilling the responsibility of evangelisation, ‘Korea will literally become the number one country in the world’, not just in a religious sphere, but also in the economic and political spheres.Footnote ¹³⁵ In other words, for Korean Protestants, religious success was the foundation of their growing recognition of South Korea as the world-leading nation in world evangelisation, and of their hope of attaining a similar position in non-religious realms.

The 1973 Billy Graham crusade in South Korea took place within specific Korean contexts, conceived by its Korean hosts as a Korean Protestant crusade, not as Billy Graham’s own crusade. Throughout, they held firmly to a clear agenda of evangelising their nation and perceived the crusade as an opportunity to realise it. In a context where confidence among Korean Protestants in their capacity to accomplish this task was increasing, they intended to accelerate the national movement using their religious ties with Billy Graham. However, from the outset there were tensions generated by the national priorities which have been neglected in the literature. These tensions encouraged Korean Evangelical leaders to pursue independence when holding evangelistic conferences in the future: for instance, in 1977, four years after the Billy Graham crusade, the Holy Assembly for the Evangelisation of the Nation ran under the slogan of ‘To Evangelise the Nation, by Koreans and only through the Holy Spirit’.Footnote ¹³⁶ When Graham re-visited South Korea for the 1984 Missionary Conference for the Centennial of Korean Protestantism, he was one of thirteen speakers at the event, all of whom were Korean except for him.Footnote ¹³⁷ The proportion of national speakers at the event displayed the growing confidence among Korean Protestants in pursuing their own national agenda without support from their international partners.

The crusade’s numerical success provided Korean Protestant Christians with confidence in the work of evangelisation not just of South Korea, but beyond. This stimulated their interpretation of South Korea as a nation providentially selected by God, an idea which even challenged American exceptionalism. Korean exceptionalism in Christian mission was a primary driver of the interdenominational solidarity for evangelisation in the evangelistic conferences following the 1973 Seoul crusade. After the 1970s, however, Korean Protestant growth, once acclaimed as ‘the Korean Christian phenomenon’, began to flatten and even to show slight decline.Footnote ¹³⁸ In this demotivating situation, the number of attendees at evangelistic conferences gradually diminished from its peak at the 1980 World Evangelisation Crusade with approximately 16.4 million people in aggregate according to the host.Footnote ¹³⁹ The unifying effect of Korean exceptionalism for Christian mission was under threat, as James H. Moorhead has analysed in his research on American exceptionalism: ‘Unless the myth [exceptionalism] places the people at the center of a sacred cosmos, it loses power to inspire or to bind.’Footnote ¹⁴⁰ However, many Korean Protestants in the 1970s were preoccupied with the triumphalism of numerical success like that experienced at the Seoul crusade. They did not contemplate the possibility that the golden lampstand, in Nam-Kyu Choi’s description, might also be removed from their nation, just as it had moved from America to South Korea. Furthermore, belief in South Korea’s unique providential destiny as a Christian nation was in tension with the emerging reality of Christian mission ‘from everywhere to everywhere’.Footnote ¹⁴¹ The idea of mission flowing in multiple directions challenged not only their concept of unidirectional mission but also the exceptionalist notion that South Korea held a special place in the divine purpose. The contradiction between these two perspectives would become increasingly apparent as the global landscape of Christianity continued to shift.