World Vision

Overview

World Vision is an international relief and development nongovernmental organization (NGO, a private organization not affiliated with any government) grounded in Christian principles. It originated during the Korean War in 1950, when the American missionary Bob Pierce, together with Korean church leaders including the Rev. Han Kyung-chik, began helping war orphans and women who had lost their husbands. The official name of the Korean corporation is World Vision Social Welfare Foundation, and it is commonly called World Vision Korea. Until 1998 it used the name Seonmyeonghoe (宣明會).

Founding and History

Pierce worked both as a missionary and as a war correspondent during the Korean War. In 1950 he opened a World Vision International office in the United States and began relief work in Korea together with Han Kyung-chik; the Korean organization began as Korea Seonmyeonghoe. Some church press reports give 1953 as the founding date, but World Vision's official history treats 1950 as the year of its founding.

Its early work centered on supporting orphanages and infant homes for war orphans, as well as facilities for children with visual and hearing impairments. It is reported to have supported 150 facilities through the 1970s. In 1954 it opened a children's clinic at Dongsan Christian Hospital in Daegu, and in 1959 it opened a leprosy (Hansen's disease) clinic in Seoul. It opened comprehensive community welfare centers in Chuncheon in 1987 and in Songpa, Seoul, in 1988.

In October 1991, Korea Seonmyeonghoe stopped receiving the foreign aid that had come through the international headquarters and became self-supporting. With this, Korea went from being a country that received aid to one that gave it. In 1998 an international meeting held in Johannesburg, South Africa, decided to unify the names of the national Seonmyeonghoe organizations under the English name "World Vision." Accordingly, Korea Seonmyeonghoe has used the name "World Vision" since October of that year.

Major Activities

• Child sponsorship: A program that connects sponsors with children in need. As of the late 2010s, roughly half of all donations were sponsorship funds for children overseas.
• Emergency relief and development: The organization provides relief in disaster and conflict zones and carries out community development projects. This work became widely known to the public through Han Bi-ya, who served as head of the international relief team for eight years beginning in 2001.
• Aid to North Korea: In the 1990s it provided corn and seed potatoes, and in 1999 it brought in the first harvest from a hydroponic farm in North Korea.
• Global citizenship education: It operates global citizenship schools in partnership with many schools in South Korea.
• Choir: The World Vision Choir, founded in August 1960 as the Seonmyeonghoe Children's Choir, is described as Korea's first children's choir. In 1978 it won the top prize at a world choir competition hosted by the BBC in the United Kingdom.

Organization

World Vision is not an ecumenical body to which various denominations belong. Rather, it is an international organization in which each national World Vision participates as a member of World Vision International. According to its official description, World Vision International is based in London, United Kingdom, and employs some 30,000 staff in about 100 countries. World Vision Korea is one of these member offices and is governed by a board of directors and a president. The chair of the board has customarily been a minister: the Rev. Chung Jin-kyung became the second chair in 1989, and as of 2018 the chair was the Rev. Lee Chul-shin, senior pastor of Youngnak Presbyterian Church.

Assessment

Around 2010, the organization's 60th anniversary, World Vision Korea became the fourth-largest provider of overseas aid among member offices, after those of the United States, Canada, and Australia. The president of World Vision International at the time described Korea as a model case of a country that had gone from receiving aid to giving it.

Because the former name "Seonmyeonghoe" resembled the name of Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, the organization was sometimes mistaken for a group associated with the Unification Church. The 1998 name change was intended in part to dispel this misunderstanding. "Seonmyeonghoe" was a rendering of the meaning of "World Vision" in Sino-Korean characters and has no connection to the Unification Church.