EOUL, KOREA: SPIFFY IN GRAY AND white outfit with perky brimmed hat, she gestures with rapid movements of white-gloved hands, bowing as each car drives into the Hotel Lotte. Periodically she substitutes a bobbing of the body-rapid bending and straightening of the knees-for the bowed head. The entire ritual, carried on without a break for the stream of autos, is intriguing and enchanting in its gracefulness.

I have been privileged to roam the world and encounter many cultures, but this is by far the kindest and most courteous one I have experienced. From the exquisitely beautiful traditional women's dress, to the marvelous level of music performance, to the Korean meal with its bite-sized offerings of individually wrapped masterpieces in red, white, yellow, and green, this land displays grace at every turn.

For me, Korea has been an untold story, as I suspect it is for many Review readers. During this visit-my first-I have discovered that the Seventh-day Adventist Church also has a story waiting to be told, a wonderful story, a story of grace.

Seoul headquarters the Northern Asia-Pacific Division of our church, which comprises China, Hong Kong, Macao, Japan, Taiwan, Mongolia, and Korea. One quarter of earth's people live within this territory-1.5 billion-most of them in China. Adventists count about a half million members, of whom some 300,000 are listed under Mainland China. In Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan our work remains small; in Mongolia we have just made a beginning (365 members). Because of political considerations our church in China cannot be organized, so that large membership field is not able to support the division in funds or personnel. In His providence God has raised up the Korean church to provide a base powerful in spiritual and material resources to serve the needs of the vast multitudes of northern Asia.

I was not aware of Korea's key role before this visit. I came as a guest of the division to attend its annual council at year's end, and stayed on for several days seeking to gain insights into the Adventist Church here. As I have traveled widely and talked with many people, I have been amazed and inspired as each day has brought to light features unique in Adventism or that debunk conventional wisdom.

God is working graciously in this land of grace.

Suffering
This isn't Disneyland!" the American staff sergeant barks as he steps back on the bus after checking the pistol at his side. From here on, he tells us, anyone who attempts to take a photograph will have their camera confiscated. Don't point or make faces. Be careful.

We are entering the joint secured area (JSA) of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates South Korea from the north. Before boarding the bus, we were given a briefing and required to sign a statement releasing the United States and the United Nations from any claim resulting from death or injury.

It's our third bus of the morning. The first one, run by a travel agency, brought us the 25 miles (41 kilometers) from Seoul to the DMZ. Then we changed to a United Nations vehicle, and now to the JSA bus. Along the way the staff sergeant pointed to a sign marked "The Most Dangerous Golf Course in the World." The par 3, 192-yard hole, testimony to grim humor in the face of death, is surrounded on three sides by land mines. This is one hole where balls from errant drives are best left in the rough!

At last we come to the line where conflicting ideologies meet toe to toe, eyeball to eyeball. We look across at North Korean troops less than 100 yards away. We enter the military hut with the table that straddles the line, where occasional meetings take place between the two sides. We stand on a bluff facing north, leaning into a bone-chilling wind. In the distance a huge North Korean flag moves languidly atop a 500-foot flagpole, one of the tallest in the world. We hear of deadly games of one-upmanship, see a monument to United States officers killed in a skirmish over a tree trimming, another to a South Korean soldier killed when a Russian tourist attempted to defect. We hear of tunnels dug into the DMZ from the north, of spies, attempted assassinations. As we head back, out of the JSA, an armored vehicle goes before.

Korea is a land divided, one country split between north and south, with both sides armed and ready for war. As it has been for 50 years.

This is a land where on June 25, 1950, forces from the north, armed with Russian tanks and airplanes, swept over the unarmed south. Seoul fell in three days; within a month only a pocket of resistance remained, at the end of the peninsula around Pusan. Then the fortunes of war reversed: General Douglas MacArthur, commanding United Nations forces from 17 nations, launched a brilliant counterattack at Inchon, just southwest of Seoul. He cut the North Korean forces in two, drove back the invaders to the borders of China. Then Chinese armies poured across the Yalu River and the war flowed southward again. MacArthur, relieved of his command by United States President Harry S. Truman, faded away like all old soldiers; at last an uneasy peace was brokered with the 38th parallel dividing the two Koreas.

The Korean War, or "the civil war," as several Koreans spoke of it, was deadly and devastating. Some 3 million people lost their lives; Seoul, changing hands four times, was reduced to rubble; shelling denuded the mountainsides of trees. And at war's end the line separated some 10 million people from family and friends.

Out of the suffering and carnage the South Koreans have built a nation that now ranks twelfth among the world economies. They export cars (Hyundai, Kia, Daewoo, etc.) and electronic wizardry (Samsung, etc.) to the West. They excel in IT (information technology): 80 to 90 percent of the population, even children, own cell phones; almost all homes are wired for high speed Internet services.

But the suffering of Korea goes back much further. "We have been shaped by centuries, even millennia, of domination," Professor Jong-Keun Lee, of Sahmyook University, told me. "You cannot understand Korea without understanding our suffering." He recapitulated the long period of Chinese lordship, followed by the 50-year Japanese occupation. And at last, at the end of World War II when freedom seemed within reach, the Allies arbitrarily drew a line on the map at the 38th parallel, assigning the north to the Communist world and the south to the United States sphere of influence.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church in South Korea likewise has suffered. And it too has emerged strong and determined.

Backbone
We are on our way to Juk Mong Lee, deep in the mountains 45 miles (70 kilometers) northeast of Seoul. No city, no settlement, marks this place, but municipal authorities recently erected a plaque that proclaims it a testimony to faith and courage (they are in process of recognizing a second site a short distance away).

My driver and guide is Jong-Keun Lee, whose research pinpointed this spot. "This is the place where about 70 Adventists fled into the mountains in 1943 to keep their faith," he tells me as we drive along. "The young men faced conscription into the Japanese Army, and the young women would have been taken for the sexual pleasure of their officers. So they made their way to the mountains and built bush shelters, foraging for food, eating bark from the trees, living outdoors through cold, rain, and snow until 1945."

We come to a small town. "This is where the railroad line ends," says Professor Lee. "From here on they walked for a full day along a rough track into the mountains."

The track is now a sealed road. We wind up and up. Then we see it-the monument by the side of the road. We get out and walk up through the trees. Lee points out a flat space where a rough chapel, built half below ground for concealment, once housed the believers' Sabbath services.

It is very quiet. It is a sacred place, Waldensian.

"Our students often come here," Lee tells me; "also our pastors. Whenever I come to this historic place I feel revitalized."

So do I.

Adventists in Korea know what it means to suffer for their faith. Under the ongoing threat of war with the north, the government enforces an uncompromising program of military service for young men. More than 100 Adventists have gone to jail for refusing to bear arms; union president Pastor Shin Kei Hoon served a 33-month sentence. Others have been beaten for refusing to work on the Sabbath. "I bear on my body scars from beatings in the navy," one pastor told me. "We all do." And apart from physical sufferings, Adventists live with the stigma of being branded a cult or sect by other Christians.

But suffering builds backbone-in the society and in the church.

Hi Tech
It's Friday night, and I'm overjoyed at what I am seeing and hearing. In the chapel of the Northern Asia-Pacific Division's headquarters the GraceLink International Children's Church is just under way, and I've never seen anything like it in my life.

The service is high-tech, with video cameras, video roll-ins, light and sound, music, news commentary, testimonies. But the whole service is being put on by children aged 8-13. They're running the TV cameras, mixing the audio, translating from Korean to English, dubbing in the captions, rolling in background video clips, reading the news. And sending the service out to the world on their Web site.

These kids prepare on Sabbath afternoons and during the week for this event and for the Sabbath morning service. Some travel a long way: one girl tells us of a two-hour journey by bus and train. And several give testimonies of how they heard about this church, joined it, accepted Jesus, and were baptized.

Everyone and everything about this service turns me on: the joy and energy of the kids, the confidence with which they speak into the camera and operate sophisticated equipment, the release of creativity, the development of talents, the glorification of Jesus as Savior and Lord. Here indeed is grace in action!

The church is the brainchild of division youth director Joshua Shin, who plans to take the idea to other countries in the division. And yes, you can catch this church on the Internet at www.gracelink-icc.com. The Sabbath morning service runs 10:00 to noon (in the United States, Friday evening 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. EST); the Friday evening service, 7:30 to 8:30 (5:30 to 6:30 a.m. EST).

Mission
White lilies line the pews in the women's dormitory chapel of Sahmyook University as three robed girls come forward on this Sabbath morning. Today they will be baptized, and the audience applauds as each is introduced, together with the girl who studied with her. Joy, adoration, and happiness overflow in this place.

"We have a baptism on campus almost every week," university president Nam Daegeuk tells us. "Some are large, some are small. Every year about 800 students take their stand. About 30 percent of incoming freshmen are Adventists, but by graduation only about 30 percent have not joined our church."

Set on a spacious, pleasant campus with well-kept buildings, Sahmyook University is the largest Seventh-day Adventist school in the world. Its college, junior college, graduate school, and seminary enroll 5,300 students; if you add academy, elementary school, faculty, and staff, the community numbers more than 9,000. The university offers a variety of courses, with doctoral programs in theology, pharmacy, and physical education.

With a balanced philosophy of education (sahmyook means "threefold": physical, mental, spiritual) and strong programs in English, computers, and music, young people from all over the country vie for a place on campus: only one in five is admitted.

"In Korea, we are strong in everything except one thing-English," remarks union president Pastor Shin Kei Hoon. With Korea increasingly a player in the global economy, the hunger to master the lingua franca of today's world-English-is huge. And Adventists have responded with the biggest English program in the country. Every day 38,000 students (250,000 per year) from the nation's educated and elite sit in classes at 33 language institutes.

I visit the Seoul institute and meet Pastor Kim Si Young, who directs the entire program. "We have a total of 1,056 staff members in our institutes, plus 81 pastors," he tells me. "In 2001 we opened six new schools; in 2002, two more.

"These institutes are really city evangelism, because they are located in major cities. Last year we baptized more than 1,000 young people who would not have come out to evangelistic meetings," he adds.

On the night before I leave Korea, Pastor Kim Si Young comes to see me with an urgent request. "We need teachers whose native language is English," he says. "They can be any age, but they must have a bachelor's degree. Please tell the world church we need help."

I was moved by the infectious enthusiasm and energy of the Seoul language institute with its spirit of love and devotion. Here also mission is paramount.

My hosts took me to several other Adventist institutions. I regret that space does not permit me to write more:

the Eden Sanitarium Hospital, opened in 2001 in an idyllic location, combines lifestyle change with conventional medicine.

And there are many more institutions in this vibrant union, including a large food factory that I did not have time to visit. On the surface, the church here might seem overinstitutionalized. But look closer: every one of the places I visited emphasizes mission, intentionally leading people to accept Jesus; and every one is financially self-sufficient. These institutions account for a large share of the accessions to the church-and they don't cost the union a penny. So much for the conventional Adventist wisdom about institutions!

Commission
Five young ministers and their wives kneel in solemn consecration. Commissioning hands are laid on their heads, and history is born for the Adventist Church in Korea and northern Asia. These couples will take their children and move to Japan, where they will spend a year in language study and then give at least five more years as missionaries, establishing churches in new areas of the country.

Reversal: the Adventist message came to Korea via Japan nearly a century ago. It has flourished here, grown strong, whereas in Japan the work has stagnated. Now the message flows back to Japan.

These five couples are the first in an ambitious plan formulated by division and union. During the next seven years more and more missionary families will go out to the countries of northern Asia, a total of 100 in all. Korea will supply the majority.

I sense a spirit of destiny, of divine calling as this church, so strong in mission, looks beyond itself. One leader captures the conviction: "God has raised up the church in Korea to be a major missionary force beyond its borders. He saved our nation for the gospel commission."

Power
It's a meal without parallel in my experience. Forty-two young men and women, sandaled and wearing dark tan jackets, eat in total silence.

As do I.

On my last day in Korea I am far from Seoul, in the mountains at the Adventist Training Center. To this place come about 1,000 Adventists each year-pastors, students (like the group I see, theology seniors from Sahmyook University), lay leaders. They arrive Sunday evening, receive orientation, then from Monday to Friday at 2:00 p.m. they pass the time in total silence, meditating on the sufferings of Jesus, on mission, on God's plan for their lives.

They come in groups of up to 52, and the reason for the number is this: Another building contains 52 small prayer rooms where each participant spends much of the time. I peek inside one room and see a student on his knees. The room is warm, heated against the cold-it's starting to snow-and I see bedding. "This student is fasting and spending the night here," explains center director Pastor Hong Yong Kwan. Of the center he says, "We call this the wilderness. Adventists have many schools of the rabbis, but no wilderness experience."

Here, at last-have I found it? Is this the place of power, the key to the vibrant Adventism in this country?

Of all the reports I have written for the Review, this one has perhaps been the most difficult. Not because I have little to share, but so much. Korea and its people have won my heart.

It has been a journey of discovery, and I have tried to share an untold story. No longer untold, I hope, although not fully told. Only God knows the whole.

_________________________
William G. Johnsson is editor of the Adventist Review.