God has a destiny for Korea. Again today that ultimate spiritual purpose is under a test of human conflict and tension.

North Korea warned South Korea on today to stop staging artillery drills on the border island that Northern troops bombed last month. They threatened to strike back harder than the previous attack that killed four South Koreans.

South Korea is planning one-day, live-fire drills on Yeonpyeong, a tiny island just seven miles from the border and home to both fishing communities and military bases. Seoul explains that the timing of the drills will depend on weather. They have ignored the North’s threats, and say the exercises will proceed as planned.

North Korea which claims the waters off the island considers the drills an infringement of its sovereignty. They responded to similar exercises last month by firing artillery shells on Yeonpyeong, killing two marines and two construction workers.

The escalation of these tensions is the latest friction on a decades-long struggle between the communist regime of the North and the democratic-capitalist government of the South. Both governments claim legitimacy as the true expression of the Korean destiny. Korea as a whole, which has been invaded a thousand times in its long history has a strong sense of national and ethnic identity. This cultural pride is both a strength and a liability for Koreans. At its best it gives them a strong resilience and a sense of their manifest destiny as a people. At its worst it can tend toward a belief in ethnic superiority, cultural isolation, and suspicion of anything “not Korean.”  

God has a powerful purpose for Korea. In the past decades some of the largest and most influential churches in the world have grown up in Korea, and even today there are powerful Christian movements growing among Koreans both at home and those living abroad. Let’s pray that in this current conflict between Koreans – North and South – that God will meld them together by his Spirit into the people HE intends them to be.

“God, we pray today for Korea and the Korean people. Ease the tensions and threats and fears on the border between North and South. Bring supernatural peace there. Cause your covenant people in Korea to rise up and demonstrate the power of your Kingdom, the power of love and forgiveness and your reconciliation. Lead Godly Koreans to see their identity first as the family of God, and citizens of your great regime. Only secondly are they Korean, just as all of us who follow you are only secondarily a part of our own cultural traditions. God complete the revival in Korea. May it move to true national transformation, that your Kingdom would come in Korea and your will would be done there, as it now is done in Heaven. In Jesus…”