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President Brigham Young sent Hosea Stout, James Lewis, and Chapman Duncan to China in August 1852. They reached Hong Kong on April 28, 1853. Although they preached the gospel to the people, they could not gain a foothold and sailed home after fifty-six days. On January 9, 1921, David O. McKay, an apostle, visited Beijing and dedicated the Chinese realm to missionary work, but the Church did not attempt to go to China until 1949.Efforts to establish the Church in Japan came almost fifty years after the unsuccessful first Chinese attempt. In February 1901, President Lorenzo Snow announced plans to open a mission in Japan, with Heber J. Grant, an apostle, as president and Louis A. Kelsch, Horace S. Ensign, and eighteen-year-old Alma O. Taylor also to serve. Elder Grant dedicated Japan to the preaching of the gospel on September 1, 1901, at Yokohama. Learning the language, customs, and traditions was so difficult, however, that the new missionaries spent eighteen months studying before they ventured out among the Japanese people. The slow start was symptomatic of the entire mission until its closure in August 1924. Although they had baptized only 166 people in 23 years, they did publish a Japanese translation of the Book of Mormon (1909), several tracts, and a hymnal. In the spring of 1947, the First Presidency assigned Edward L. Clissold to reopen the Japanese mission, and missionary work was resumed in Japan in 1948. President Clissold had served in the U.S. occupation forces in Japan and was acquainted with government offices and procedures. The first group of missionaries arrived on June 26, 1948. They were helped by LDS service personnel, who contributed much to the success of the postwar mission. For example, Sato Tatsuo, the first Japanese to join the Church after World War II, was taught the gospel by Boyd K. Packer, later an apostle, and three of his fellow servicemen. Sato organized the first Sunday School in Nagoya in 1946. He later translated the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price, and retranslated the Book of Mormon into contemporary Japanese. By August 1949, missionaries were proselytizing in at least ten major cities and Japanese members numbered 211.The Church has grown steadily in Japan, and native Japanese serve in all levels of leadership in the Church. When the Tokyo stake was organized on March 15, 1970, the president was Tanaka Kenji, and all the stake officers were Japanese. Most of the mission presidents have been either native Japanese or Americans of Japanese ancestry, and by 1990 almost one-third of the more than two thousand LDS missionaries in Japan were local Japanese. In 1977, Yoshihiko Kikuchi became the first Japanese and Asian called as a general authority of the Church.Although the Church did not officially move into Korea until 1955, LDS military personnel had taught and baptized some twenty Koreans by May 1953. Kim Ho Jik, a Korean who had studied for a doctorate at Cornell University, joined the Church in New York in 1951. On returning home he became an influential member of the Church and of the Korean government. Until his death in 1959, Kim facilitated the founding of the Church in South Korea. As in Japan, the Church in Korea is in the hands of local leaders.The newly appointed mission president, Paul Andrus, sent the first two elders from Japan to Seoul in April 1956. By the summer of 1962, when Korea became a separate mission with Gail E. Carr as president, there were over 1,600 members. In 1968, the Church was established in every major city and all provincial capitals. Unlike most other areas of the world, the majority of Koreans baptized were men, and even in the late 1970s, 55 percent of converts were male. Korea has remained the most fruitful Asian mission other than the Christian Philippines.The second and third mission presidents, Spencer J. Palmer and Robert H. Slover, did much to enlarge the Church in Korea. Both men emphasized public relations, translation work (the Book of Mormon was published in Korean in 1967 and the Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price in 1968), leadership training, the purchase of property for chapels and other uses, and preparation for stakes. President Edward Brown later supervised the beginning of the seminary and institute program. In March 1973, Rhee Ho Nam was sustained as president of the first Korean stake. Two years later, in 1975, the Korea Seoul Mission was divided and a new mission was organized in Pusan with Han In Sang as president. On December 14-15, 1985, President Gordon B. Hinckley dedicated the Seoul Korea Temple. Information from http://www.lightplanet.com

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