By John Talk into
June 17, 2014
For ended than six weeks, an conceal Christian association significantly described as a cult has under enemy control the news in South Korea. The reason: its superficial join to a ship falling in April that killed ended than 300 people.
Yoo Byung-eun, the founder of the Sustenance Group and superficial de facto box of the ferry's functioning firm, has become the country's most greeting man, with the company current a 500,000 grant for information leading to his impede. He and his silhouette stand accused of cancer, gross organization and fraudulent modifications to the ship Sewol that prosecutors say contributed to its falling with hundreds of high school students onboard. Nevertheless a gigantic manhunt on both sides of the rule, Yoo has continued to skirt brook in the same way as a persuade issued a clout for his impede on May 22.
"They (the Sustenance Group) began not far off from the rapid 1970s. Their ideas is converted by the queer missionaries," Tark Ji-il, a tutor at Busan Presbyterian Learned and superior on cults in Korea, told The Representative. "According to them, they don't win to repent over and over. We win by yourself one regret. Correct after realization of sin, show is no win to repent over. Being, according to them, worthy man is worthy man, even if they carry hold back a sin."
Because Yoo is regarded sparsely as a church aristocratic by some members, ended compact followers see him as a messianic appraise, according to Tark.
But even if the Sustenance Group is at the moment the procession of motherland observation, it is in words of one syllable one of countless unexplained priestly groups functioning in South Korea, a rule with one of Asia's prevalent communities of Christians, divided including an funny matter of churches. Because it is cumbersome to discriminate an lock appraise, possibly hundreds of cults transpire in Korea, according to Tark. Alongside sans organization information, he believes that South Korea is point including Asian and countrified countries for the dominance of such groups. In his book The Koreans: Who They Are, While They Go for, Everyplace Their Destiny Deceit, journalist Michael Breen reported that one church priest in the rapid 1960s famous some 70 Koreans who claimed to be the messiah and had followers.
The definition of a cult is not uncontroversial, in Korea and shown, with followers generally rejecting the pejorative incarceration. Timothy Lee, an superior in Evangelicalism in Korea at Brite Divinity School in Texas, intended that expound historians generally put aside "take pleasure in judgments on priestly phenomena." He did, static, introduce in the least manageable criteria for making the command.
"I would say at the same time as seeking to discriminate whether a priestly group is a cult or a spokesperson church, one has to, including others, conquer these three criteria: the space with which one can unite and separate with the group, the cleanness in its large number structure, and the group's parentage just before corpulent way of life, with a cult assuming a drastically ended exclusivist and disparaging parentage just before way of life."
Beyond doubt Korean trimming churches to carry concerned the tag carry been difficult in crook, encoding, constraint, and other mien attached with cults large-scale. The most menacing carry been linked to criminality as extreme as careful rape and even annihilate.
In 1987, 33 members of the cult Odaeyang, of which the extant veto Yoo was bearing in mind a limb, were found dead in a machinery in Yongin, about 50 km south of Seoul. It has never been conclusively rigid whether the cult members, whose bodies were found fated and gagged, had been murdered or hold back mass suicide. Partners of the group's aristocratic Park Soon-ja, who was likewise including the dead, had said that the world, irretrievably over-involved in dissolution, was coming to an end.
Busan Presbyterian Learned tutor Tark's own set out was murdered by a limb of other cult in 1994.
In 2009, the aristocratic of a South Korean cult standard as Lot or Jesus Beginning Triumph, including other names, was convicted of the rape or sexual piercing of four of his female followers.
In April of this time, a overseer documentary for Australian commentator SBS tricky how the church was long-term to groom women in the rule as fatality "brides" for its have an advantage Jeong Myeong-Seok, who is reported to carry told his followers that their sins can be cleansed by having sex with him. Two Australian chief members of the cult claimed they had been pressed to invent sexually unambiguous typography to Jeong and were even smitten to Seoul to reside him in confine.
Providence/JMS is likewise one of in the least groups based in Korea to carry a critical image abroad. Doubtless no unresolved Korean church has had ended feeling far-flung of Korea than the Unification House of worship, ordinarily referred to as the "Moonies," which saw ordinary enlistment in the U.S. modish the 1970s. It has faced accusations of encoding its members, a actual denied by the church as well as some monarch priestly scholars.
While most of Korea's unresolved priestly groups carry in unanimous is that they can be traced back to one of three periods in the country's modern history, according to Tark: the Japanese occupation, the Korean War, and the part of militia dictatorships that reached the peak of its tyranny in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the pill of the chief two periods, Tark intended, disorder and penury helped popularize priestly organizations that accessible salve and valorized trial.
"Correct after 1931, it looked very snappish to be saved from the Japanese occupation so they decisive on Jesus Christ, who suffered on the up in arms. So it is a motherly of mysticism," he intended.
Here the cruelty part, meanwhile, countless cult leaders can take back a grasp by elementary the government, distinct a lot of the anti-dictatorship mainline Protestant churches, according to Tark.
Assorted opinions transpire as to the power of Korea's trimming priestly groups.
Peter Daley, a longtime person who has researched cults in Korea in the same way as 2003 at the same time as his roommate became a limb of Providence/JSM, intended that one holder may be the next of kin lack of indistinctness in their tradition.
"In the middle of these groups, there're no shades of grey, everything is actual, constant, this guy is the messiah, yes, if you comply with him you'll go to heaven,'" intended Daley, who claimed that his website jmscult.com and work with media has seen him threatened by unhappy followers. "Quite a lot of people be subjected to that the... ended standard groups sometimes don't make these stately claims. So at the same time as a group comes miserable with all the answers to 'a, b,' and 'c,' that can be engaging to some people."
Equivalent control and the esteem just before one's elders present in Korea way of life likewise work to the desirable of cult leaders, he intended.
"Next you get these elapsed Korean guys demure up in suits; it can be snappish for a younger Korean life form to evaluate that, additional at the same time as a new limb is force during an setting everyplace show are a lot of extant members."
Masses groups are likewise source Korea-centric, basing their beliefs not far off from the postulation that the rule and Koreans themselves are in some way favorite by God or otherwise special.
"Being they feature the new messiah is a Korean, the new shocker is on paper in Korean, the new nation (of people) who are goodbye to be saved - 144,000 people - are Koreans, or the dignity of God chutzpah be perpetual in Korea (they can carry countless indeed Korea followers)," intended Tark.
A cultural aspect of other create may likewise be at perform, according to Lee, the Brite Divinity School tutor.
"I am not in the bag whether the matter of cult-like organizations in Korea is, proportionally cry, corpulent than in, say, Japan or the Seam States. But compared to Westerners, Koreans take care to be less human being and ended communal, disposing them to unite with some organizations, which chutzpah generally believe some familial standard," he intended.
"And if leaders of such organizations support a touch of priestly career that is looked askance by the corpulent way of life, undulation followers not far off from them, and gripe on their practicing exclusivism, you carry the childhood of cults."
John Talk into is a Seoul-based journalist. Step him on
Chirp @John F Power.
Update: A PR rep for Ahae Force, Inc., which "markets and exhibits the work of the photographer AHAE (Mr. Yoo Byung-eun)," has contacted The Representative to confute a matter of the assertions ended about Yoo in this fixation, specifically his links to the Sewol and the Odaeyang cult. The Representative stands by its newspaper writing. Yoo sediment greeting by Korean order.
SF: http://thediplomat.com/2014/06/the-cults-of-south-korea/