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.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS