Founder of Yoido Full Gospel Church, Pastor Cho Yong-gi, Passes Away

The late Cho Yong-gi, Senior Pastor of Yoido Full Gospel Church.

[Asia Economy Reporter Donghyun Choi] Cho Yong-gi, the founding senior pastor of Yoido Full Gospel Church, passed away on the 14th at the age of 86.

Yoido Full Gospel Church announced that Pastor Cho died at 7:13 a.m. that day at Seoul National University Hospital in Yeongeon-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul. Pastor Cho had collapsed from a cerebral hemorrhage in July last year. Although he underwent surgery and received inpatient treatment at Seoul National University Hospital, he was unable to recover.

Pastor Cho was born in 1936 in Ulju-gun, Ulsan, Gyeongnam Province. He was the eldest son among five brothers and four sisters. While hospitalized with tuberculosis in his second year of high school, he embraced the Christian faith through a friend of his sister who came to visit him. In the 1950s, he first encountered Full Gospel theology through American Pentecostal missionaries. In 1956, he entered Full Gospel Theological Seminary and, together with evangelist Choi Ja-sil (1915?1989), whom he met at the same school, he began joint ministry near the Daejo-dong cemetery with five believers.

As the number of tent church believers increased, Pastor Cho founded the predecessor of Yoido Full Gospel Church, the Full Gospel Central Church, in Seodaemun, Seoul, in 1962. With the rapid increase in congregants, he built a church on about 10,000 square meters of sandy land in Yeouido, Seoul, in 1968 and moved in by 1973. Yoido Full Gospel Church grew rapidly, surpassing 100,000 members in 1979, 200,000 in 1981, 400,000 in 1984, and 700,000 in 1992. The message Pastor Cho preached at the time can be summarized as the "threefold salvation" doctrine, meaning that believing in Jesus brings not only spiritual salvation but also wealth and health.

Pastor Cho stepped down from his position as chairman of the session in May 2008 and served as senior pastor thereafter. Through the Youngsan Cho Yong-gi Foundation, he supported vulnerable groups such as children, youth, the elderly, and the disabled.

Pastor Cho is survived by three sons: Cho Hee-jun, Cho Min-je (chairman of Kukmin Ilbo), and Cho Seung-je (director at Hansei University). Pastor Cho’s wife, Kim Sung-hye, president of Hansei University, passed away in February at the age of 79.

The funeral parlor will be set up at Yoido Full Gospel Church. The funeral service will be held on the 18th at 8 a.m. as a Korean church funeral. The funeral committee chairpersons will be pastors So Kang-seok, Lee Cheol, and Jang Jong-hyun, co-chairmen of the National Council of Churches in Korea.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.