South Korea’s secretive Shincheonji church in foreign recruitment drive after Covid-19 exodus

Controversial sect hopes foreign recruits can boost its numbers, which may have fallen by 100,000 after a super-spreader incident put the international spotlight on its secretive ways

Critics say it tricks people into joining its classes without revealing its identity, while a former recruiter admits preying on foreigners’ love of K-pop

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Former followers of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus at a rally condemning the group outside the presidential Blue House in Seoul. Photo: AFP

Published: 7:00am, 23 Jun 2021Updated: 2:53pm, 23 Jun 2021

When Elizabeth Peters* was invited by a close friend to attend a Christian workshop at a London cafe she was hoping to explore her religious views in a relaxed, informal setting with no strings attached.

Little could she have known it would be the start of a year-long entanglement with a South Korean sect that would leave her feeling drained, isolated and trapped.

The workshop was being run by the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a controversial and secretive religious movement established in 1984 by Lee Man-hee, 89, who claims to be the second coming of Jesus Christ and has a devoted following of hundreds of thousands in South Korea.

But nobody told Peters that. At first the meetings were passed off as informal gatherings of friends, but they soon grew into something more and Peters found her free time increasingly taken up by the group. Yet any attempt by her to find out more about who was running the group would only anger the other members.

“After attending the first session, people asked if we wanted one-on-one Bible classes taught by missionaries and scholars,” recalled Peters, 31. “I started out meeting the teachers twice a week before making it three times as the classes became more intensive.” The two-month course soon morphed into six months, and Peters was asked to take on additional commitments – daily morning services, educational sessions twice a week, and regularly going in public to proselytise. “They even had me walking the streets heavily pregnant to try and recruit others using the lies they always use on new people,” Peters said.

Lee Man-hee, leader of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus. Photo: AFP

While Peters learned about the teachings of Lee Man-hee – such as that only people accepted into Shincheonji will receive eternal life, that Lee is the only person who can fully interpret the Bible, that pastors in traditional churches are false teachers, etc – other members of the group warned her off trying to look up the group on the internet, saying it was a sin equivalent to “Eve being tempted by the serpent and eating from the tree of good and evil”. “They used a lot of scare tactics as time went on saying things like ‘if you don’t do this, then you and your whole family are going to hell’,” Peters said. “They even wanted me to keep my participation secret from my husband.”