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53

A Contextual Analysis  
of Onnuri Church’s
“Love Sonata” “Cultural Evangelism 
Gatherings” in Japan

Rev. J. Nelson Jennings
Mission Pastor, Consultant, International Liaison 
Onnuri Church, Seoul

Abstract

Since its beginning in 2007 through 2019, Onnuri Church’s 
Love Sonata musical outreach extravaganza has been held thirty 
times in cities all across Japan (and four elsewhere in Asia). Capi-
talizing on the wildly popular 2002 “Winter Sonata” Korean TV 
drama (“Fuyu Sonata” in Japan), Pastor Ha Yong-Jo instigated a 
“cultural evangelism gathering” involving Christian Korean musi-
cians performing and himself preaching an evangelistic message. 
Hundreds of Onnuri Church volunteers have paid their own way 
to go and pray, make gift boxes, greet newcomers, and otherwise 
support each Love Sonata event.

As a Korean outreach to Japan, Love Sonata provides an il-
luminating case study of cross-cultural missions in challenging 



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54

circumstances. Korea and Japan are close in many ways, yet in 
other ways they are very far apart. Studying various aspects of the 
interpersonal interactions involved in the Love Sonata enterprise 
sheds instructive light on how mission service is embedded in ac-
tual history, often involving significant cultural barriers.

Supported by qualitative research from interviews with both 
Japanese and Korean participants, plus drawing on the author’s 
thirteen-year Japan-based experience and five-year Korea-based 
experience, this study offers a multifaceted analysis of Love Sonata 
in order not to evaluate or make recommendations but to under-
stand its overall contextual characteristics.

Introduction

No one could have foreseen, when it was first broadcast in 
South Korea from mid-January to mid-March in 2002, the broad 
ripple effects of the TV mini-series “겨울연가” (Gyeoul Yeonga 
in Korean; “Winter Sonata”). This twenty-episode drama of love 
and heartbreak accelerated the “Korean Wave” sweeping over the 
rest of Asia (Lee 2011), including when the series aired multiple 
times in Japan in 2003–2004 (KBS 2004; Ito 2006, 60, 62). The 
Korean-Japanese cultural connection forged by 「冬のソナタ」 (Fuyu 
no Sonata in Japanese; “Winter Sonata”) set the stage for the Seoul-
based Onnuri Church’s “Love Sonata,” an innovative evangelistic 
outreach in Japan that began in 2007 and continues to this day.

Two early studies of “Love Sonata,” one in English (Takam-
izawa 2008) and one in Korean (Do 2010), explored the event for 
its missiological strategy. This article updates and locates “Love 
Sonata” in a wider historical and multifaceted setting. Love Sonata 
is analyzed through considering the initiative’s origins, planning, 
execution, reception, effects, and prospects.



J. Nelson Jennings—A Contextual Analysis of Onnuri Church’s 

55

Background

Several factors coalesced to prepare the way for Onnuri Church’s 
Love Sonata. There were additional historical trends that stretched 
back further than the “Winter Sonata” TV melodrama. The central 
figure who conceived the Love Sonata phenomenon was Onnuri 
Church Senior Pastor Ha Yong-Jo.

Ha Yong-Jo

The late Rev. Ha Yong-Jo (1946–2011) grew up in poverty and dis-
placement. Ha was born to a Christian family in northern Korea in 
the immediate aftermath of the 1910–1945 Japanese Occupation. 
His family fled southward during the Korean War, and Ha’s lifelong 
suffering from acute illnesses began soon thereafter. After coming 
to his own deepened personal faith at age twenty, Ha passionately 
gave himself to evangelism and eventually came to terms with his 
calling to become a pastor. Ha wanted to be a foreign missionary, 
but health limitations kept him in Korea. After beginning a church 
for celebrities, followed by a medical sabbatical in England, in 
1985 Ha began with twelve families what became Onnuri Church. 
Especially after Ha began a Charismatic “Holy Spirit ministry” in 
the early 1990s, the church exploded in growth over the next two 
decades until Ha’s death in 2011 (Ha 2017, 24–85, 275).

Onnuri Church’s programmatic growth was spurred along 
by an awe-inspiring vision, announced by Pastor Ha in 1994, to 
send out two thousand missionaries and raise up ten thousand 
supporting lay ministers (Moon 2017, 210). Specifically regarding 
Japan, five years earlier Onnuri Church had begun a Japanese Sat-
urday school and Sunday worship service for the several Japanese 
residents living nearby in Seoul. The first Onnuri “Vision church” 
(international branch church) in Japan began in 1994. Four more 
Vision churches were started in Japan around the time Ha was on 
a medical sabbatical there in 2001. During a 2002 retreat for the 
growing Onnuri network in Japan, Ha declared, “I have a vision 
that the church in Japan will stand up and jump. .  .  . Revival is 



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on its way, soon to be met by the Japanese church” (Moon 2017, 
235–37).

Under Pastor Ha’s visionary leadership, Onnuri Church’s 
ministries grew dramatically with the launch of Onnuri TV in 
2000, which expanded further into Onnuri’s global satellite TV 
network, Christian Global Network (CGN) TV, in 2005. Particu-
larly noteworthy in terms of reach and capacity was the live broad-
cast of the Jerusalem Peace March in August 2005 (Moon 2017, 
194–98). Soon afterward, Ha and some associates began visiting 
live productions in Las Vegas and elsewhere to research lighting, 
stage setting, sound control, and special effects. Ha described how 
God had given him a vision to direct Onnuri Church’s resources 
to Japan in 2007, which was surprising since that year was the cen-
tenary celebration in Korea of the 1907 Pyongyang Revival. After 
extensive prayer gatherings, Love Sonata events were held in Oki-
nawa, Fukuoka, Osaka, then Tokyo (Ha 2017, 327–28, 334–37).

In Ha’s words, Love Sonata was “God’s love song for Japan,” 
using culture and evangelism directed toward the next generation 
as its main methods (Ha 2017, 328, 334). Ha’s heartfelt repentance 
before God, and public apology to Japanese, for being proud to-
ward Japanese for having been the ones persecuted (CGNTV 
2018, 9:50–12:14), as well as for not forgiving and harboring anger 
toward Japanese people for their atrocities against Koreans, is of-
ten cited within Onnuri circles as a special act of forgiveness and 
reconciliation (Ha 2017, 329–30; Takamizawa 2008, 158). While 
some critics point to his misuse of business models (Ha 2017, 
255–62), it was Rev. Ha Yong-Jo’s vision, passion, innovation, 
leadership, use of entertainment techniques, and spirituality that 
instigated and shaped the Love Sonata phenomenon.

Korean Christianity

Rev. Ha Yong-Jo and Onnuri Church are part of Christianity in 
Korea. Like many other megachurches and their pastors in South 
Korea, Onnuri Church and Ha Yong-Jo came to prominence in 
the long wake of abject poverty, displacement, war, and suffering. 



J. Nelson Jennings—A Contextual Analysis of Onnuri Church’s 

57

Korean Christians were among those most targeted for persecu-
tion by the Japanese military from 1910 and then by Korean Com-
munists during the Korean War. Economic transformation slowly 
began to progress in the 1960s (Cha 2008). Revival, growth, pas-
sionate prayer, and zealous evangelism allowed many churches to 
emerge from those ashes of hardship and suffering, with Onnuri 
Church beginning in 1985.

Korean Christianity had experienced both struggles and 
revival before the Japanese Occupation. The Korean Catholic 
Church, its seeds sown through Chinese Christian literature in 
the seventeenth century and first confession of faith in 1784, suf-
fered greatly under Korean authorities, particularly with the loss 
of around eight thousand martyrs in 1866 (Grimaldi 2014; Kim 
and Ko 2018). Korean Protestant Christianity marks its beginning 
in the 1880s in connection with the arrival of Western mission-
aries and their establishment of churches, hospitals, and schools. 
Korean Christians worked alongside missionaries in planting new 
churches and experienced sweeping revivals in the early 1900s, 
especially around Pyongyang in 1907, accelerating the depth and 
breadth of churches throughout the Korean Peninsula. Zealous, 
early morning prayer became a hallmark of Korean Christianity 
to this day. The 1910 Japanese Occupation ushered in a mixture of 
struggle, complicity, and displacement for many Koreans, includ-
ing Christians, over the next half century. Transport of many Ko-
reans to Japan contributed to the large presence today of Zainichi, 
or Koreans living in Japan.

All sorts of churches have taken root in Korea, including 
many with charismatic characteristics. Several churches experi-
enced explosive growth alongside the rapid growth of the South 
Korean economy in the 1970s and 1980s. Megachurches mush-
roomed and became known worldwide, most famously Yoido Full 
Gospel Church and Pastor Cho Yonggi (David). Mission zeal pro-
pelled Korean missionaries over the twenty thousand threshold, 
serving in Japan, the rest of Asia, and indeed worldwide.



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Korea-Japan Relations

Historically, relations between Korea and Japan have been mixed. 
Positively, there has been robust economic trade, given the two na-
tions’ proximity. Cultural exchanges have ranged from religion to 
Chinese script to food to entertainment and sports. Even species 
of cherry blossoms have been exchanged. Negatively, Japan has on 
occasion militarily invaded Korea as part of its wider ambitions, 
for example under Hideyoshi Toyotomi’s grandiose ambitions 
in the 1590s. Japan’s 1910–1945 occupation of Korea left a par-
ticularly bitter sentiment among most Koreans, accompanied by 
unresolved disputes such as over islands (Dokdo or Takeshima), 
Japanese treatment of Korean laborers and “comfort women,” and 
whether or not Japan has ever genuinely apologized. The author’s 
recent and extensive encounters with younger Koreans, none of 
whom directly experienced the Japanese Occupation, suggests that 
unresolved trauma persists almost without exception with respect 
to Japan and Japanese people.

Increased travel and reporting back and forth during the 
1980s, which included the “극일” (“beat Japan”) campaign of South 
Korean President Chun Doo-Hwan (1980–1988), had succeeded 
the more restricted period of information flow during the authori-
tarian presidency of Park Chung-Hee (1963–1979). South Kore-
ans’ freedom to explore and express unresolved historical disputes 
with Japan, changing relations in all of East Asia introduced by the 
end of the Cold War, and heightened lambasting by some Koreans 
and Japanese of each other on the new Internet offset greater un-
derstanding and appreciation of each other that developed further 
through greater cultural and interpersonal exchanges (Isozaki, 
2017).

A 2010 opinion poll of Japan-Korea relations, jointly con-
ducted by the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) and the Japan 
Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), revealed a wide range of feel-
ings and beliefs among Japanese and Koreans, both about them-
selves and about each other. As to their feelings about each other, 
more Japanese liked Koreans than vice versa. Comparison with 



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59

two previous surveys indicated that both Japanese people’s like 
of Koreans, as well as Koreans’ dislike of Japanese, had increased 
over the previous twenty years. Concerning Korea-Japan relations, 
more Japanese than Koreans felt relations were “good,” while far 
more Koreans than Japanese considered themselves knowledge-
able about the Japanese Occupation of Korea (Kono and Hara 
2011, 6–7, 9–10, 23–24, 32–33). These results revealed the con-
flicted mixture of positive and negative feelings and images that 
Japanese and Koreans hold about each other.

The 2010 poll also asked, “Whose name come [sic] to mind 
first when you think of Koreans/Japanese?” Korean respondents 
overwhelmingly noted Ito Hirobumi, the first Japanese colonial 
resident-general of Korea. Of particular relevance to this study 
is how the Japanese responded—by an even greater margin over 
the next person mentioned than with the Koreans’ list—with the 
name of Bae Yong-Joon, Korean actor and lead male star of “Fuyu 
Sonata.” Moreover, when looking at the names overall that respon-
dents listed, poll interpreters have noted,

The genres of important names chosen by Japanese 
(“entertainers” and “politicians and businessmen”) are 
completely different from those chosen by Koreans 
(“historical figures” and “athletes”). .  .  . These results 
suggest the strong influence of Korean popular culture 
(“Hanryu”) in Japan today while Korea still feels the 
strong influence of certain historical figures. (Kono and 
Hara 2011, 27–28)

The results also suggest the particular importance in Japan, at least 
as of 2010, of the Korean TV drama “Fuyu no Sonata.”

Fuyu No Sonata

As mentioned earlier Pastor Ha Yong-Jo, according to his own tes-
timony, was led by the Holy Spiri to instigate “God’s love song for 
Japan.” As just described, it was from within Korean Christianity 
and thorny relations between Japan and Korea that Ha launched 
this new venture. The megahit, twenty-episode TV melodrama 



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“Winter Sonata” provided the cultural catalyst that helped to 
trigger Ha’s decision to pursue the cultural evangelism gathering 
“Love Sonata,” beginning in 2007.

When “겨울연가” (“Winter Sonata”) first aired in 2002, “The 
sob-fest love story [was] regarded as just another popular TV se-
ries in Korea” (Lee 2011). In Japan, however, the series’ 2003–2004 
four airings on NHK (Hayashi and Lee 2007, 198) captivated 
record-setting audiences. Top-selling books, videos, and DVDs, 
popular websites, and travel packages to the filming site in Korea 
soon followed (Ito 2006, 60–61; Kamiya 2004), as did a twenty-
six-episode 2009 anime version shown in both Korea and Japan 
(Kyodo News, 2009). 「冬のソナタ」 (“Fuyu no Sonata,” “Winter So-
nata”), or 「冬ソナ」 (“Fuyusona”), as it popularly came to be called, 
was unquestionably a social and cultic phenomenon of major 
proportions in Japan (Lee 2011). While the 2002 World Cup co-
hosted by Korea and Japan would be more widely considered to 
have been a bridge-building event for the two countries, in actual 
fact it was “Winter Sonata” that more successfully broke down the 
invisible dividing wall (Kubo and Katase 2016).

As noted earlier, the lead male actor Bae Yong-Joon was cata-
pulted into “heartthrob” status in Japan, particularly among mid-
dle-aged women, who endearingly called him “Yon-Sama” (Lee 
2011). Bae was mobbed by thousands of female fans at Haneda 
Airport when he visited Japan in 2004 (Yasuko 2004), prompting 
Japan’s Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro famously to quip that 
Bae was more popular in Japan than he was (Lee 2011). Bae and 
lead female co-star Choi Ji-Woo, who had also risen to stardom 
in Japan, appeared together before an overflow crowd packed into 
Tokyo Dome in 2009, coinciding with the anime release.

There have been numerous studies as to why “Winter So-
nata,” and the actor Bae Yong-Joon, became such a megahit in 
unprecedented fashion for a Korean drama in Japan. Many point 
to the numerous subplots involving attractive actors enmeshed 
in various types of slowly revealed, complicated relationships 
(including pseudo incestuous). Some credit the excellent act-
ing, experienced directing, melancholic music, and breathtaking 



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scenery. Undoubtedly it is the deep, heartfelt, and ever-evolving 
but undying central storyline of the love between Kang Joon-Sang/
Lee Min-Hyung (spoiler alert: the same character, played by Bae 
Yong-Joon) and Jeong Yoo-Jin (played by Choi Ji-Woo). This made 
watching “Fuyu no Sonata” essentially a “spiritual or religious ex-
perience” for many Japanese (Ito 2006, 65).

Particularly strategic for casting light on both why and how 
“Winter Sonata” made the cultural connection that it did for Pas-
tor Ha’s and Onnuri Church’s “Love Sonata” venture is comparing 
Japanese and Korean perceptions of what the melodrama’s popu-
larity actually entailed. Given the substantial volume of analyses 
of “Fuyusona” mania, naturally there are numerous explanations, 
both Japanese and Korean. As representatives of both a certain 
level of cultural expertise and popular thinking, each country’s 
media presentations exhibit identifiable characteristics that enable 
meaningful comparisons. In general, Japanese media have pointed 
to Japanese middle-aged women falling for the melodrama and 
its handsome and romantic “Yon-Sama,” Bae Yong-Joon. Korean 
media, by contrast, have tended to describe the Fuyu no Sonata 
phenomenon as part of Hallyu, or the “Korean Wave” of cultural 
impact throughout China and Southeast Asia that Japan had fi-
nally joined (Hayashi and Lee 2007, 199).

Capitalizing on the expansion of the “Korean Wave” into 
Japan, and sensing the deep resonance that many Japanese had 
experienced through the love story in “Winter Sonata,” Rev. Ha 
Yong-Jo launched Onnuri Church’s “Love Sonata” venture of “cul-
tural evangelism” into Christianity-resistant Japan (Moon 2017, 
238). Ha envisioned riding the crest of hallyu to cause a “wave of 
love” and of “reconciliation and forgiveness” to sweep over Japan, 
then the rest of Asia and the entire world (Ha 2017, 328–29, 332, 
337). While Ha’s vision is open to criticism as having been much 
too grandiose, his expectation for revival to envelop Japan as it had 
Korea a century earlier, spearheaded by “Love Sonata,” cannot be 
exaggerated.



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The Love Sonata Program

By the end of 2019, Onnuri Church had put on thirty Love So-
nata events across Japan (Love Sonata n.d.). (Four additional Love 
Sonata events were held in four different Southeast Asian coun-
tries between 2008 and 2011, before Pastor Ha’s death in August 
2011.) The first two were in March 2007, on consecutive nights 
in Okinawa and Fukuoka. Two-day events became the continu-
ing pattern in Osaka in May. The Tokyo Love Sonata in July was 
particularly noteworthy for its sheer size: five thousand came from 
Onnuri Church in Korea, and the main event drew a crowd of 
twenty thousand at the Saitama Super Arena (Ha 2017, 346–47). 
Love Sonata’s were also held in Sapporo and Sendai in 2007. Hence 
from an Onnuri Church point of view the Love Sonata wave had 
swept across all of Japan, from south to north. There were another 
four events in 2008 (plus one in Taiwan), then a pattern of semi-
annual events that began in 2009 (Moon 2017, 248).

As noted earlier, Rev. Ha and Onnuri Church describe Love 
Sonata as a “cultural evangelism gathering” (“문화전도집회”; “文
化伝道集会”). As Ha put it, “I thought that if we invited Korean 
celebrities who are popular and influential in Japan, many Japa-
nese would show interest. Many Japanese who do not know Jesus 
may very well be interested in the Korean Wave, and many Korean 
celebrities are Christians” (Ha 2017, 334). Onnuri Church had al-
ready been using “customized evangelism” and “seeker-friendly” 
approaches since the mid-1990s (Ha 2017, 250–62; Moon 2017, 
238–39), so instigating the Love Sonata approach was effectively 
taking the same, familiar tack. The newly established CGNTV-
Japan enabled wider networking of churches in Japan and broad-
casting of Love Sonata, further creating a cutting-edge feel.

The Climactic Meeting

An evangelistic meeting on the second evening culminates every 
Love Sonata event. A major civic venue is rented, which in itself 
is almost always unprecedented and unimaginable for the small, 



J. Nelson Jennings—A Contextual Analysis of Onnuri Church’s 

63

under resourced Japanese local churches taking part. Admission 
tickets are offered free through churches, as organized by the local 
planning committee.

After varied openings with videos, choral welcomes, and 
exquisite sand animations, the gala performance features several 
individual Korean Christian musicians giving vocal or instrumen-
tal performances and sharing their Christian testimonies. Many 
of these musicians have performed in multiple Love Sonatas. The 
first Japanese ever to perform at a Love Sonata was classical guitar-
ist Antonio Koga. Having recently confessed his faith in Christ and 
received baptism, Koga appeared at the 2017 Tokyo Love Sonata. 
Also noteworthy at that same 2017 Tokyo Love Sonata was Winter 
Sonata co-star Choi Ji-Woo walking on stage to give her Chris-
tian testimony. Choi also narrates a nearly one-hour Love Sonata 
ten-year retrospect, available on YouTube (CGNTV 2018). Other 
Christian Korean celebrities widely popular in Japan have made 
appearances, including several from 2009 to 2011 by Han Hye-Jin, 
who had recently become known in Japan for her starring role in 
the eighty-one-episode TV series and Korean historical drama “주
몽” (“朱蒙,” “チュモン,” “Jumong”).

Amidst the celebrities’ appearances and musician’s perfor-
mances, Pastor Ha always gave an evangelistic message and invita-
tion. Ha’s successor, Onnuri Church Senior Pastor Lee Jae-Hoon, 
has continued to give those messages since Ha’s death in August 
2011. Attendees are asked to complete a response card indicating a 
confession of faith or new commitment to Christian service. After 
the cards are collected by several Korean volunteers from Onnuri 
Church walking the aisles with baskets, guests open a box of gifts 
specially prepared by the Onnuri Church volunteers.

Other Meetings

Starting with the 2007 Osaka Love Sonata, church revival semi-
nars are held on the first day (Moon 2017, 240). The current 
pattern is to have three seminars, two in the morning and one 
in the early afternoon after lunch. All are led by Korean, Onnuri 



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Church-related experts. The first seminar presents Pastor Ha’s 
(and Onnuri Church’s) ecclesiology and philosophy of ministry, 
while the second and third address concerns like education and 
church-society relations. As with the other events held during the 
two days, ample CGNTV cameras and personnel are present to 
record the proceedings. Duranno Publishing, also associated with 
Onnuri Church, has numerous books and related items on display 
for sale.

In keeping with the first day’s focus on Christians, a “Gospel 
Night” of praise and a message is offered by and for area churches. 
While planning and results of Love Sonata events will be examined 
below, this “Gospel Night” gathering brings different churches to-
gether for planning, joint choirs, and strengthened relationships. 
While Onnuri Church musicians lend support, for the most part 
the evening is Japanese-led.

An additional feature that emerged at the 2007 Tokyo Love 
Sonata has been a “Korea-Japan Leadership Forum” (Moon 2017, 
241). Onnuri Church’s newly constituted “Christian CEO Forum 
(CCF)” sought to bring together Korean and Japanese leaders in 
business and society in order to strengthen ties and opportunities 
for collaboration (Moon 2017, 293–96). Currently a luncheon is 
held on the second day of the Love Sonata event, with Japanese 
and Korean leaders sitting together in groups of ten at round 
tables, facilitated by multilingual participants. Various dignitaries 
offer greetings, along with a special speaker or two.

Love Sonata focuses on children and younger adults as 
well. Along with spiritual study sessions, children learn song and 
dance numbers that they perform for the adults (CGNTV 2018, 
27:07–31:07). A “Passion” rally focuses on middle and high school 
students, while an “Ezra” rally brings Korean and Japanese college 
students together for interaction. While Onnuri Church staff and 
organize these gatherings, Japanese speakers are invited to partici-
pate as speakers (Do 2010, 93–94; Takamizawa 2008, 152).

These four adult and youth gatherings comprise each two-day 
Love Sonata event. Other activities take place behind the scenes, 
including gift and venue preparation, a joint breakfast for Japanese 



J. Nelson Jennings—A Contextual Analysis of Onnuri Church’s 

65

and Onnuri Church leaders, and an intense prayer gathering spe-
cially focused on the culminating evangelistic gala affair. Thirty 
Love Sonata events have been offered, some returning to the same 
city where a previous Love Sonata was held. The ten-year mark, 
especially the second Tokyo Love Sonata held in 2017, would have 
been a convenient stopping point. However, those responsible for 
such a decision have made a renewed commitment to continue 
this “Love Song for Japan” for the foreseeable future.

Planning and Preparation

An ongoing, international event of the magnitude and complexity 
of Love Sonata clearly needs a great deal of advanced coordination 
and planning. Indeed, before Love Sonata debuted in 2007 there 
was Japanese input (Moon 2017, 239), stage-event research by 
Pastor Ha, and initiatives by multiple organizations affiliated with 
Onnuri Church, including the aforementioned Vision churches in 
Japan, CGNTV, Duranno Publishing, and CCF. The entire project 
was bathed in fervent prayer by Onnuri Church who, like many 
other churches in Korea, held special year-end prayer meetings at 
the end of 2006 and at the beginning of 2007, particularly in one-
hundred-year commemoration of the 1907 Pyongyang Revival. A 
special forty days of prayer for Japan highlighted the importance 
of 2007 for Onnuri Church (Ha 2017, 328–30).

Onnuri Church

러브소나타 (“Love Sonata”) is one of several Onnuri Church minis-
tries that has its own structure and website (lovesonata.org) while 
functioning under the Onnuri umbrella. All of these ministries 
are major enterprises in their own right and have Onnuri Church’s 
Senior Pastor, currently Lee Jae-Hoon, as the official executive 
director. For Love Sonata, a semi-annual pattern of spring and 
fall events developed in 2009 after the flurry of the first two years. 



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Prayer, publicity, and other preparation now fit comfortably into 
Onnuri Church’s annual rhythm.

A small Seoul-based staff coordinate record-keeping, calen-
dars, recruitment, publicity, travel arrangements, and countless 
other particulars. CGNTV’s central role of creating promotional 
videos, broadcasting and recording the actual Love Sonata events, 
and expanding antennae receptivity in upcoming Love Sonata 
event areas requires ongoing planning. The prominent place of the 
second-day leadership forum requires CCF’s participation. Plan-
ning includes the arrangements for the several hundred Onnuri 
Church volunteers, who travel at their own expense for gift-mak-
ing, sign-holding, prayer, and other often unsung roles.

Japanese Churches

Each site has a local steering committee, composed largely of area 
Japanese pastors. The committee takes shape at least one year in 
advance and attends at least two Love Sonata events prior to the 
one that they plan and manage in their own location. This com-
mittee bears much responsibility for local publicity, the logistics of 
event planning, and follow-up. Each event’s committee coordinates 
with the ongoing committee of previous event chairpeople, the 
lone Japanese staff member, and Onnuri Church-related people in 
Seoul to provide continuity and expertise.

The important place of sharing finances merits particular at-
tention. As a megachurch, Onnuri Church and its associated min-
istries far outstrip the Japanese churches that are involved in terms 
of people and financial resources. Even so, the Japanese churches 
underwrite certain portions of each Love Sonata event, as part of 
a conscious effort to bear their share of the financial responsibility.

Cross-Cultural Dynamics

Love Sonata is full of cross-cultural interactions. Pastor Ha and 
other Onnuri leaders have been well aware of such cultural 



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67

realities, listing two of Love Sonata’s four main “dreams” (along 
with “revival” and “mission”) as Korean-Japanese “reconciliation” 
and use of “culture” for evangelism (Love Sonata n.d.). The sev-
eral different groups of people involved experience the cultural 
dynamics in various ways.

Japanese

Church leaders in Japan who become involved as organizing com-
mittee members welcome the stimuli and challenges from Onnuri 
Church, but they also work through some difficult adjustments. 
Accustomed to existing as a small religious minority in Japan, 
the prospect of openly sponsoring a large, public, and expressly 
evangelistic event “helps stagnant Japanese local churches reignite 
a passion for evangelism” (anonymous interview with the author, 
November 2019).1 This process can be stretching and uncomfort-
able. Japanese church leaders and members alike are not used to 
the free expressions of “愛します” (“I love you”) that the Korean 
volunteers ring out verbally and on placards welcoming event at-
tendees. Indeed, while many Japanese are favorably disposed to 
Korean celebrities and pop culture, confronted at the event with 
bright Korean colors, lines of Korean greeters, and the specially 
hand-made gifts of wreaths placed on attendees’ heads at the main 
event’s conclusion—a special Korean custom of honoring some-
one but a practice unknown and strange in Japan (and explicitly 
mentioned as such by a Japanese participant—amounts to a cul-
tural shock for many Japanese attendees).

For Japanese people interacting with Koreans at Love Sonata 
events, hearing Korean spoken and sung, as well as hearing Japa-
nese spoken with varying degrees of Korean accents, can have a 
deep effect. Through actual personal encounters, ingrained preju-
dices and misconceptions can bubble to the surface in numerous, 

1. In November 2019, I conducted thirty-nine personal interviews with 
both Korean and Japanese parties variously involved with Love Sonata, in-
stigated by the question, “What has been the most important effect of Love 
Sonata?”



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unpredictable ways. For example, as one Japanese observer put it, 
“Japanese have benefitted from receiving Koreans’ love when they 
didn’t want to” (anonymous interview with the author, November 
2019).

Korean

Many of the Korean program leaders, including staff with Love So-
nata, CGNTV, CCF, and Vision church pastors, speak Japanese well 
and have been connected with Love Sonata since its 2007 begin-
ning. Some of them serve as language interpreters, along with a few 
Korean-speaking Japanese. They become cultural bridge-builders 
and seek to utilize both Korean and Japanese cultural strengths. 
As Korean Onnuri Church-related leaders, they help to maintain 
the focus of Love Sonata on evangelism and worship, all the while 
remaining sensitive to the input of Japanese counterparts. Interest-
ingly, while some local Japanese organizing committee members 
might want to soften or otherwise adjust the direct appeal of some 
of the meetings, one long-time Japanese participant observed that 
in large part it has been the Japanese leaders who wish to maintain 
the event’s overall character and structure, even while some of the 
Korean leaders have considered making substantial adjustments.

Some Korean features of the various programs are obvious: 
church seminar speakers, leadership forum presenters, gala per-
formance musicians and main speaker. Many of the other Korean 
contributions are intentionally hidden, including gift preparation 
and prayer. Whether intentional or not, some Korean characteris-
tics of the event are unmistakable, from conversations overheard 
to bright colors to expressive welcoming greetings.

Some of the hundreds of Korean volunteers from Onnuri 
Church have attended repeatedly. Others serve for their first or 
second time. Depending on their familiarity or experience with 
Japan, their experiences vary. Most Koreans carry unresolved trau-
ma with respect to Japan, so traveling there touches deep-seated 
and conflicting emotions. Whatever the Korean volunteers’ indi-
vidual experiences may be, their sacrificial presence is mentioned 



J. Nelson Jennings—A Contextual Analysis of Onnuri Church’s 

69

regularly at all events, in order to stress the Korean Christians’ love 
for Japan and the Japanese attendees.

Reception and Effects

Most likely, few if any readers of this study will have ever heard of 
Love Sonata or Onnuri Church. Even so, there have been signifi-
cant effects among various related constituencies.

Onnuri Church

Pastor Ha Yong-Jo indicated that the 2007 focus on Japan was a 
major shift for Onnuri Church. By no means has that meant an 
exclusive focus on Japan. However Love Sonata is accompanied by 
several missionaries, short-term mission teams, Vision churches, 
CGNTV, publicity, Better World (Onnuri’s NGO) relief efforts, 
and Onnuri’s Japan ministries in Korea. These ministries represent 
a major commitment of prayer, people, finances, and other efforts.

Conversions

According to cards returned at the end of all 30 evangelistic events 
in Japan, there have been nearly 3,400 professions of faith in Christ 
(Love Sonata n.d.). That amounts to almost 4.4 percent of the to-
tal of over 77,000 Japanese attendees. Interestingly, the highest 
(approximately 8–9 percent) percentages of professions of faith 
occurred in three of the early Love Sonatas, in 2007 (Okinawa, 
Fukuoka, and Sendai).

Discerning what has taken place in, and through, the lives 
of these Love Sonata attendees who indicated they had confessed 
faith in Jesus Christ requires further extensive and detailed re-
search. While a significant number, the almost 3,400 conversions 
indicated—when set against Japan’s total population of over 126 
million (World Population Review 2020)—amount only to an in-
finitesimal 0.0027 percent. This tiny percentage is hardly a “wave” 



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70

sweeping across the country. Nor would the percentage of the 
cumulative number of Japanese Love Sonata attendees out of Ja-
pan’s total population (0.0611 percent) fare much better, including 
when compared to the well over 20 percent TV ratings of “Fuyu no 
Sonata” in Japan by the end of only its first airing in 2003 (Yasuko 
2004). The significance of the numerical results varies according to 
expectations and measurement standards employed.

Churches in Japan

The consensus among experienced observers (both Japanese and 
Korean) of Love Sonata is that the greatest beneficiaries have been 
Japanese churches. Along with Onnuri Church’s encouragement 
and example to evangelize, the cooperation between area church-
es—which otherwise would not have occurred—in planning and 
executing the event has been a much cited positive effect, par-
ticularly in smaller cities in Japan. The relationships formed have 
continued, both personally and through ministry collaboration. 
The fact that 3,033 churches from many different denominations 
have participated in Love Sonata events—out of about 13,800 total 
churches in Japan (Johnson and Zurlo 2019, 436–37), or almost 22 
percent—indicates the extensive reach that Love Sonata has had 
among Japanese churches.

The Wider Christian Landscape in Japan

A historical viewpoint helps in determining where the Love So-
nata phenomenon fits in the wider picture of Christianity in Japan. 
Japan has experienced periods of modest Christian growth (and 
suffering) in association with Western influence, namely in the 
late sixteenth century (followed by severe persecution in the sev-
enteenth century), late nineteenth century (followed by pressures 
from increased Japanese nationalism), and mid-twentieth century 
(preceded by government suppression). Korean Christianity has 
added its energy to foreign missionary efforts in Japan since the 



J. Nelson Jennings—A Contextual Analysis of Onnuri Church’s 

71

late twentieth century, including such ambitious movements as 
David Yonggi Cho’s “Salvation Campaign for Ten Million Japanese 
People” initiated in the late 1970s (Shigaki 2014). Christianity’s 
foreign image in Japan has been both altered and reinforced by 
such non-Western mission initiatives. The shapes of Love Sonata’s 
effects on new Christian converts and Japanese churches will help 
paint Love Sonata’s place in the ever-developing picture of Japa-
nese Christianity.

Korea-Japan Relations

The different types of interactions between Koreans and Japa-
nese—particularly those involved with planning and leadership 
forum luncheons—have undoubtedly had a positive effect on 
interpersonal relations. Ha Yong-Jo’s example of apologizing to 
Japanese has impacted Onnuri Church members who have exam-
ined their own attitudes towards Japan. Increased cross-cultural 
interactions would be needed to heighten mutual awareness of 
each other’s historical suffering.

It is noteworthy that periods of strained political rancor 
have not detoured Love Sonata from continuing: only COVID-19 
managed to postpone events planned for 2020. The positive views 
among many Love Sonata participants (Japanese and Korean) of 
improved Korea-Japan relations are noteworthy. The integrity and 
humility of members of both Onnuri Church and participating 
Japanese churches have been fundamentally important.

Prospects

High costs, predictable fatigue, modest results, and decreased Jap-
anese interest in the “Korean Wave” (Roehrig 2015, 90–91) have 
suggested to some that Love Sonata has served its purpose and 
should be discontinued. However, at the ten-year mark in 2017 
Onnuri Church made a renewed commitment to continue Love 
Sonata with a particular emphasis on reaching next-generation 



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Japanese. Moreover, wildly popular K-pop bands and Korean dra-
mas are currently providing a third phase of the “Korean Wave” 
to “almost all age groups” of Japan’s “hallyu fandom” (Park 2020). 
After the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions and resumption of Love 
Sonata events, Onnuri Church members and Japanese churches 
will need to respond with fresh vigor to sustain what has been a 
major undertaking.

Through examining its wider historical and multifaceted set-
ting, this study has sought a deeper understanding of Love Sonata’s 
origins, planning, execution, reception, effects, and prospects. As 
noted earlier, the four stated “dreams” of Love Sonata are “revival” 
of Japanese churches, Korean-Japanese “reconciliation,” “mission” 
to Japan, and use of “culture” for evangelism. The hope is that, 
through contextual analyses like this one, participants and observ-
ers alike will have a more informed understanding of how those 
dreams were formed and of how they are being realized.

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