David Yonggi Cho

David Yonggi Cho (born February 14, 1936, South Kyŏngsang province, Korea—died September 14, 2021, Seoul, South Korea) was a Korean religious leader and Christian evangelist who cofounded the Yoido Full Gospel Church (YFGC) in Seoul in 1958. He presided over the Pentecostal megachurch until 2008.

From humble beginnings to megachurch pastor

Cho was raised Buddhist. When he was 17, he became gravely ill from tuberculosis. He subsequently recovered, and, attributing his healing to the God of Christianity, he became a Christian. In 1958 he graduated from Seoul’s Full Gospel Theological Seminary (now Hansei University), which was operated by the Pentecostal Assemblies of God denomination. Eager to begin ministry, Cho and his future mother-in-law, Choi Ja-Shil, also a recent graduate of Full Gospel Theological Seminary, inaugurated a new church in Choi’s living room in May 1958. Its first service was attended by the two pastors, Choi’s three children, and an older woman who had come to get out of the rain. (Cho would marry Kim Sunghae, Choi’s daughter, in 1965.) By the spring of 1959, the young church had grown to 50 members, and services were moved to a tent in Choi’s front yard. At that time many Koreans were homeless and jobless as a consequence of the Korean War. The pair’s hopeful message and reports that Cho had performed faith healings attracted many of those suffering misfortune to the new church.

As the congregation grew, Cho and Choi moved the church first to downtown Seoul and then in 1973 to a new sanctuary on Yeouido (then romanized as Yoido), an island along the Han River in Seoul that was then largely undeveloped. Cho served as the head pastor and was a charismatic and compelling preacher. Fluent in English and Japanese, his sermons were broadcast on television and radio in South Korea, the United States, Japan, and elsewhere. In alignment with the Assemblies of God, he taught that believers who are “baptized by the Holy Spirit” may receive spiritual gifts, such as speaking in tongues or faith healing. He also espoused a form of prosperity gospel in which belief in Jesus—expressed through positive thoughts, positive declarations, and donations to the church—brings not only salvation but also blessings in the form of health and wealth in this life. By 1981 the church had attracted about 200,000 people.

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Cho founded a newspaper, the Kook-min Daily, in 1988. The church operated its own television station (Full Gospel Television), a publishing house, and a Web site. The 1990s and 2000s were banner years for Cho and Yoido Full Gospel Church. In 1993 church membership reached 700,000 members, and Yoido’s size caught the attention of the publishers of The Guinness Book of Records, who officially recognized the church as the largest in the world. Having become a sought-after international religious figure, Cho was elected chairman of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship in 1992 (a position he held until 2000) and led the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., in 1994. Two years later he was awarded the Mugunghwa Medal—the highest Order of Civil Merit—by the South Korean government for supporting the no-cost treatment of children with heart disease. Indeed, the church undertook many social programs, including a welfare center in Seoul that provided care for older citizens who had no supporting families and vocational training to poverty-stricken young adults, and Bread of Love, a program providing food to the poor and hungry. Perhaps one of most inspiring moments for Cho and the church was the 2007 groundbreaking ceremony for a cardiac hospital in Pyongyang, North Korea, which the governments of South and North Korea gave him special permission to build. (Construction was halted as inter-Korean relations soured in the following years. As of 2025 the hospital remains unfinished.)

Financial scandal

In 2008 Cho stepped down as senior pastor of Yoido Full Gospel Church, passing on most of his responsibilities to his democratically elected successor, Younghoon Lee. Although it seemed as if Cho would enjoy a peaceful retirement as the most successful pastor in history, he was beset by scandal in the 2010s. On November 14, 2013, dozens of elders from Yoido Full Gospel Church accused Cho and his family of embezzling as much as 555.6 billion won ($500 million) from the church. The allegations were never proved, but in 2014 a court found that Cho had directed Yoido Full Gospel Church to buy 13 billion won ($12 million) in stocks from his eldest son, Cho Hee-Jun, for four times their market value in 2002—causing a significant financial loss for the church. Moreover, the reverend had dodged 3.5 billion won ($2.9 million) in taxes. In 2014 Cho initially received a prison sentence of three years with a five-year suspension and was fined 4.7 billion won ($4.2 million). Later that year, however, he was acquitted of tax evasion, his fine was reduced, and he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, with a four-year suspension. His son was also sentenced to three years’ imprisonment beginning immediately but was released with the revised sentencing.

Cho died of a brain hemorrhage on September 14, 2021.