Back in 2007, one of our then PhD students, Sungho Choi, was helping out at a large international prayer meeting for revival being held not far from Carmarthen in South West Wales.
To his astonishment he found himself sitting next to a woman whose face he instantly recognised from the Korean media. Sungjoo Kim had gained celebrity status as a businesswoman who had succeeded spectacularly against all the odds in a fiercely male-dominated society.
But Sungho soon discovered that, like many Korean Christians, she had also developed a strong affection for Wales. Why? Because Robert Jermain Thomas, the first evangelical missionary to Korea, killed while distributing Bibles outside Pyongyang, the capital of modern North Korea, was a Welshman. Moreover, the roots of the great Korean Revival of 1907 can be traced unmistakably back to the Welsh Revival of 1904.
