In South Korea, Facebook Group Nurtures Young Adventists

Sahmyook University students Hyunho Kim, left, Taegyun Bong, center, and Hansu Hyun discussing their efforts to reach out to Korean young people. Image by Andrew McChesney/Adventist Mission

May 8, 2017 | Seoul, South Korea | Andrew McChesney, Editor, Adventist Mission

South Koreans are among the most diligent Seventh-day Adventist gospel workers. Visit the Middle East, and you will find faithful Koreans in Turkey and Lebanon. Koreans live in Africa and South America. Even remote places in Bangladesh and India have an active Korean presence.

But despite this mission spirit, many young people in South Korea are struggling, local church leaders say. The problem is connected to a cultural generation gap and career challenges in a country where Saturday is a workday. But widespread derision from other Christians also hurts. While a quarter of South Korea’s population of 51 million is Christian, Adventists represent a tiny minority. The Adventist Church is dismissed as a cult, and members are mockingly referred to as “sdas,” a word that is a play on the church’s acronym, SDA.

Six Adventist university students decided that they had seen enough. They created a Facebook group and an online radio station aimed at nurturing fellow young Adventists.

“Our focus is to reach young people who feel that they don’t belong to mainstream Adventism,” said project cofounder Hansu Hyun, 27, a graphic design student at church-owned Sahmyook University in South Korea’s capital, Seoul.

It is unclear how many young people may have stayed in the church, returned to the church, or been baptized through the project.

“We don’t know the results,” Hyun said. “We are just sowing.”

But young Adventists have taken notice. The Facebook group, opened in 2014, has about 900 followers, a significant number for the Adventist Church in South Korea. It offers colorful memes with vegetarian recipes and testimonies. For the testimonies, administrators interview a young church member or sometimes a nationally recognized singer or actor who is Adventist, and the resulting testimony is spread across five or more memes. A big hit came with a series of memes highlighting historical facts about Adventist war hero Desmond Doss during the theatrical release of “Hacksaw Ridge.”

“We have found that informal content like this is easy for young people to embrace,” said project co-founder Taegyun Bong, 25, a theology major at Sahmyook University. “Young Adventists who have left the church have told us that they are finding healing through our ministry. We are so happy about that!”

The radio station, linked to the Facebook group, has the cheeky name RadioSda in a nod to the slur toward Adventists, and it offers a two-hour weekly broadcast. Broadcasts have included Korean church youth leaders talking about how they spend their Sabbath afternoons and a law school student discussing the challenges of keeping the Sabbath.

Some 700 to 2,000 people tune in every week, said co-founder Hyunho Kim, 27, an English literature student.

“Our whole project can be described in one word: willingness,” he said. “It’s easy to become passive in our Christian life, but we are young people who are willing to act to have an impact on the Adventist community.”

This story was originally posted at AdventistMission.org