Korean cults: the missing link between the coronavirus, Sewol ferry disaster and President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment

It’s not just the coronavirus and the Shincheonji Church of Jesus
Fringe religious groups have been linked to a host of Korean scandals, from the Sewol ferry disaster to President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment

Coronavirus pandemic

John Power

Published: 1:45pm, 1 Mar 2020

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When the Sewol ferry capsized off South Korea in April 2014, killing 304 people, most of them schoolchildren, the head of a controversial religious sect emerged as the ship’s de facto owner whose profit-driven remodelling of the vessel to carry extra passengers and cargo doomed it to a watery grave.

During the impeachment of then President Park Geun-hye amid corruption and influence-peddling allegations less than three years later, the daughter of a shamanistic cult leader who was among Park’s closest confidantes was revealed to have orchestrated government policy and solicited bribes from behind the scenes.

Now, as South Korea battles the largest outbreak of the novel coronavirus outside China, a fringe religious group is yet again at the centre of public outrage and scandal, casting a light on the shadowy world of Korean sects accused of misdeeds and villainy, ranging from deception and brainwashing to embezzlement, rape and murder.

More than half the cases of Covid-19 in South Korea have been traced to a regional branch of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a controversial sect founded in 1984 and regarded as a cult by most mainstream Christian churches. After recording just dozens of cases as recently as last week, the country has confirmed more than 3,500 infections – by far the biggest cluster outside China. Its death toll – 17 as of Sunday – is the highest outside China after Iran.

Workers disinfect the front of the Shincheonji Church in Daegu, South Korea, to guard against the coronavirus. Photo: AP

A HISTORY OF SCANDALS

Shincheonji is just one of numerous sects in South Korea whose number includes groups implicated in some of the most notorious scandals in the country’s history, such as the Evangelical Baptist Church, which was tied to the Sewol disaster, and the Church of Eternal Life, which was linked to the impeachment of Park.

“Criminal behaviour and eventual convictions do seem to follow a lot of groups, although much of a cult’s growth and recruitment strategies may border on immoral but not necessarily be illegal,” said Peter Daley, a university lecturer in Seoul who has spent more than 15 years researching Korean cults and beat criminal defamation charges pursued by one sect, which he is not allowed to talk about as part of a later legal settlement with them.

“The line between legal and illegal activity can be a fine one, and most groups court it,” Daley said. “When your leader is God, the lesser laws of humans pale in comparison and significance.”

In July, a South Korean court sentenced Shin Ok-ju, founder of the doomsday Grace Road Church, to six years in prison for trapping several hundred of her followers at a compound in Fiji, where they were subjected to forced labour and regular beatings.

The impeachment of President Park Geun-hye was linked to the Church of Eternal Life. Photo: AFP

In 2018, Lee Jae-rock, the founder of the fringe Manmin Central Church in Seoul, was convicted of raping eight of his female followers who had regarded him as a God-like figure with “divine power”.

Nearly a decade earlier, Jung Myung-seok, the leader of the Jesus Morning Star sect, was sentenced to 10 years in prison after being found guilty of raping or sexually assaulting four of his followers.

In perhaps the most notorious case, in 1987, the bodies of 33 members of the Odaeyang sect were found bound and gagged in a factory attic about 80 kilometres outside Seoul in an apparent mass murder-suicide. The cult, of which the founder of Evangelical Baptist Church, Yoo Byung-eun, was once a member, had believed the world was about to end due to the decadence of mankind.

Tark Ji-il, a professor of religion at Busan Presbyterian University who is an expert on cults, said most fringe sects owed their origins to the Korean people’s desire for hope and comfort during periods of hardship during the 1910-1945 Japanese occupation, the Korean War and the dictatorial era prior to democratisation in the late 1980s.

“The church talked about the kingdom in heaven but the cults promised the kingdom on earth and the imminent end of the world so that everything was able to be changed,” said Tark, who estimates that there are more than 100 fringe sects and cults in the country.

Tark, whose pastor father was murdered by a cult member in 1994, said that fringe churches also had skilfully exploited the nationalism and patriotic sentiment that flourished in the country after liberation from Japanese rule at the end of World World II.

“Korean cult leaders claim the second coming of Christ is Korean, the new revelation is written in Korean, and most people who are going to be saved are Koreans, which is very attractive to those who have experienced so many hardships in the modern history of Korea,” he said.

South Korean pastor Lee Jae-rock was convicted of the rape of eight female followers – some of whom believed he was God – and jailed for 15 years. Photo: AFP

PUBLIC RECKONING

Public outrage towards Shincheonji mounted amid revelations that a 61-year-old member in the southeastern city of Daegu who is believed to be behind the sudden jump in coronavirus cases had initially refused to be tested for the virus and attended church services after developing a sore throat.

Although the authorities have said the woman, known as “Patient 31” because she was the 31st person in South Korea diagnosed with the disease, had not travelled overseas recently, members of the sect had held meetings in Wuhan, China, the epicentre of the outbreak, until December, when the virus was first detected, the Post reported on Tuesday – offering a potential explanation for how the virus spread between the countries.

Public ire has been inflamed by reports that hundreds of followers of the sect have ignored the efforts of the authorities to contact them for testing, and by doubts raised about the accuracy of information the church has supplied about its membership.

On Wednesday, officials said the sect had provided a list of more than 200,000 followers, a day after the authorities seized computers from its headquarters near Seoul amid growing distrust of the church’s insistence that it would fully cooperate with the government.

The sect’s founder, Lee Man-hee, who portrays himself as the second coming of Jesus Christ, has told followers the virus is a “devil’s deed to stop the rapid growth of Shincheonji”.

More than a million people have signed an online petition demanding that the government of Moon Jae-in forcibly dissolve the sect, which has long faced allegations that it brainwashes members and breaks up families. Shincheonji, which has insisted that it is “thoroughly tackling the coronavirus” and has denied telling its members to lie about going to services, did not respond to a request for comment. “Shincheonji is a pernicious and insidious organisation that slowly infiltrates all aspects of their members’ lives,” said Gareth Millar, an English professor in the central city of Daejeon, who attributes the breakdown of his marriage to his wife devoting “all of her waking hours” to the group.

“In this instance, I feel that the government has been wholly negligent and derelict in its responsibility to protect the public,” said Millar, who believes South Korea should enact legislation similar to France’s controversial About-Picard law, which outlaws “mental manipulation” and allows the courts to order the dissolution of sects whose members have committed crimes.

Rescue operations following the sinking of the ferry Sewol in waters off Jindo Island, South Korea. Photo: EPA

PARSING THE HERETICAL

Although South Korea’s National Assembly on Wednesday rushed through a set of bills to manage the outbreak, including mandatory testing of suspected carriers of the infection, and the government has ordered the temporary closure of Shincheonji’s churches, more sweeping measures targeting sects would face major hurdles due to constitutional provisions around religious freedom and the separation of church and state.

“Such enforcement measures are possible because they are to prevent infectious diseases and are the minimum measures necessary, but can’t be seen as a law to regulate the evils of specific sects or denominations,” said Bang Seung-ju, an expert in constitutional law at Hanyang University in Seoul.

“Regular traditional sects and denominations, and sects and denominations distinguished as cults, can’t be regulated because a country cannot decide what is legitimate and what is heretical,” Bang said.

Apart from Shincheonji members who have decried a “witch hunt” against the sect, some religious experts have cautioned against blaming religion or spiritual belief for a complex public health crisis.

“The secretive nature of the church, the shoulder-to-shoulder forms of religious practices, along with the Korean traditional notion of ‘uncritical and unquestioning loyalty’ could have added to the spread of the coronavirus,” said Chammah J. Kaunda, an assistant professor at Yonsei University’s United Graduate School of Theology in Seoul. “However, it is also easy to use Shincheonji as a scapegoat in order to protect a national global image.” ■

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