Bruce Hunt was born in Pyeng Yang, Korea, on June 4, 1903, the son of Presbyterian missionaries William Brewster and Bertha Violet Finley Hunt. He grew up in Korea and attended the Pyeng Yang Foreign School. In 1919, he came to the United States and lived with relatives in St. Louis, MO, for a brief time before enrolling as a Greek major in Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL. In his senior year, his parents came to the United States on furlough and, since they were living in Princeton, NJ, he transferred to Rutgers University so that he could stay with them. He graduated from Rutgers in 1924 with an A.B. He worked in Maine for a summer for the Presbyterian church and then enrolled in Princeton Seminary. After graduating in 1928, he returned to Korea as a missionary under the Presbyterian board of Foreign Missions in the U.S.A., but shortly afterwards switched to the Independent Board for Foreign Missions because of that board's defense of a conservative interpretation of the Bible. In later years, because of a procedural dispute, Hunt left the Independent Board and came under the Orthodox Presbyterian missionary organization.

Hunt's first station after he returned to Korea was Chungju. He spent seven years there, dividing his time between attendance at language school and visiting Korean churches for which he was responsible. While in Chungju, he became engaged to Katherine Blair, a teacher at a mission school, and they were married before they both returned to the United States for furlough in 1935. They were to have five children: Lois, Bertha, Katharine, David, and Mary.

Hunt attended Westminster Seminary during his furlough when he and Katherine returned to the United States. After a year's leave, the Hunt family moved to Harbin in Manchuria where Hunt continued to work among Koreans. When the Japanese satellite state of Manchuko was set up, Christians were increasingly pressured by the government to participate in rites of Shintoism, which included worship of Japan and the Japanese emperor. Hunt and other missionaries were arrested by the Japanese in 1941 for their refusal to accept this practice, just as Korean pastors had been arrested earlier because of their resistance. He was released briefly but then was arrested again after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He and his family were exchanged along with other civilian internees in August, 1942, and went to Philadelphia to live with his parents for a year. For the rest of the war, he worked with the Orthodox Presbyterian churches on the west coast of the United States.

In 1946, Hunt returned to Korea, this time to Pusan, the town which remained his base and his family's home for the rest of his period of service. By 1947, he was on the faculty of Korea Theological Seminary, a new Presbyterian school in Pusan. Besides teaching, Hunt's time was occupied with evangelism trips and Bible conference work. Kathy Hunt, his wife, handled the mission's relief work correspondence and taught at a local college. In later years, Hunt taught at Koryu and Pusan Hap Dong Seminary. In July, 1976, the Hunts retired from the Korean mission field and moved to Abingdon, PA. Hunt died on July 26, 1992 in Quarryville, PA, and his wife Katharine on December 8, 1994.