A South Korean cult leader yesterday was convicted of raping eight female followers — some of whom believed he was God — and was jailed for 15 years.
Pastor Lee Jae-rock’s victims were “unable to resist as they were subject to the accused’s absolute religious authority,” Judge Chung Moon-sung told the Seoul Central District Court.
Religious devotion is widespread in South Korea, with 44 percent of people identifying themselves as believers.
Photo: AFP
Most belong to mainstream churches, which can accumulate wealth and influence with tens of thousands of followers donating as much as 10 percent of their income.
However, fringe groups are also widespread — experts say that about 60 people in the country claim to be divine — and some have been implicated in fraud, brainwashing, coercion and other behavior associated with cults.
Lee set up the Manmin Central Church in Guro, once a poor area of Seoul, with just 12 followers in 1982. It has grown to 130,000 members, with a spotlight-filled auditorium, sprawling headquarters and a Web site replete with claims of miracle cures.
However, three of Lee’s followers went public earlier this year describing how he had summoned each of them to an apartment and raped them.
“I was unable to turn him down,” one of them told South Korean television.
“He was more than a king. He was God,” added the woman, who had been a church member since childhood.
Lee told another that she was now in heaven and to strip, as Adam and Eve went naked in the Garden of Eden.
“I cried as I hated to do it,” she told JTBC television.
Eight women filed criminal complaints and the court found that Lee raped and molested them “tens of times” over a long period.
“Through his sermons the accused has indirectly or directly suggested he is the holy spirit, deifying himself,” the judge said.
The victims believed him to be “a divine being who wields divine power,” he added.
The 75-year-old had denied the charges, his lawyers accusing the women of lying to seek vengeance after being excommunicated for breaching church rules.
About 100 followers filled the courtroom to overflowing, while former congregants denounced Lee outside.
“The Manmin Central Church is all about worshiping the pastor Lee Jae-rock,” said Kim Yu-sun, who was a member for 20 years.
“Now that I go to a different church, I worship Jesus and pray to God,” she added.
South Korea has proven fertile ground for religious groups with strong, unambiguous ideologies that offer comfort and salvation, which appeal strongly during times of deep uncertainty.
More recent versions have claimed a unique knowledge of the path to material and spiritual prosperity.
According to a 2015 government survey, 28 percent of South Koreans say they belong to Christian churches, with another 16 percent describing themselves as Buddhist.
However, about 2 million people are followers of cults, Korea Christian Heresy Research Institute president Park Hyung-tak said.
“There are some 60 Christian-based cult leaders in this country who claim to be the second coming of Jesus Christ or God himself,” he said.
“Many cults point to megachurches mired in corruption and other scandals in order to highlight their own presumed purity and attract believers,” he added.
The Manmin Central Church has been condemned as heretical by mainstream Christian organizations, partly because of its claims of miracle healing.
In one example on the church’s Web site, Barbara Vollath, a 49-year-old German, said she was born deaf, but her bone cancer was cured and she gained hearing in both ears after Lee’s daughter and heiress apparent Lee Soo-jin prayed for her with a handkerchief Lee Jae-rock had blessed.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
RSS