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On Thursday, a South Korean sect leader was convicted of multiple rape of eight followers – some of whom thought he was God – and jailed for 15 years.
Pastor Lee Jaerock's victims were "unable to resist because they were subject to the absolute religious authority of the accused," Judge Chung Moon-sung told the Seoul Central District Court.
Religious devotion is widespread in South Korea, a state-of-the-art country, with 44% of people identifying as believers.
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Most belong to traditional churches, which can accumulate wealth and influence with tens of thousands of followers giving up to 10% of their income. But marginal groups are also prevalent – experts claim that nearly 60 people in the country claim to be divine – and some have been implicated in frauds, brainwashing, coercion and other behaviors associated with sects in the world.
Lee established the Manmin Central Church in Guro, a poor district of Seoul, with only 12 followers in 1982. She now has 130,000 members, with an auditorium in the spotlight, a central seat and a site. Web full of miracles. cures.
Three of Lee's supporters were released earlier this year, as South Korea was swamped by a wave of #MeToo accusations, describing how he summoned them to an apartment and raped them.
I was unable to reject it. He was more than a king. He was God
Accuser
"I could not refuse it," said one of them on South Korean television. "He was more than a king. He was God. "
Lee told another that she was now in paradise and that she was undressing while Adam and Eve were naked in the garden of Eden.
"I cried while I hated doing it," she told JTBC television.
Eight women lodged a criminal complaint and the court found that Lee had been raped and assaulted "dozens of times" for a long time.
"By his sermons, the accused suggested indirectly or directly that he was the Holy Spirit, deifying himself," said the judge.
The victims regarded him as "a divine being exercising divine power," he added.
Lee, who denied the charges, held his eyes closed while reading the judgment, showing no emotion, while a hundred supporters invaded the courtroom, some sighing slowly.
The 75-year-old lawyers accused women of lying in revenge for being excommunicated for breaking church rules.
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South Korea has proved to be fertile ground for religious groups with strong and unambiguous ideologies, offering comfort and salvation bringing powerful appeal in times of great uncertainty.
More recent versions have claimed unique knowledge of the path to material and spiritual prosperity – a message that resonates in a highly competitive, status-based society.
According to a 2015 government survey, 28% of South Koreans claim to belong to Christian churches, and 16% say they are Buddhists.
But according to Park Hyung-tak, director of the Korean Institute for Research on Christian Heresy, about two million people are followers of sects.
In this country, about sixty Christian leaders are claiming the second coming of Jesus Christ or God himself.
Park Hyung-tak, Korean Institute of Christian Heresy Research
"There are about sixty Christian leaders in the country who claim to be the second coming of Jesus Christ or of God himself," he said. "Many cults denounce mega-churches mired in corruption and other scandals in order to put forward their own presumed purity and attract believers."
Lee says on his own website that God "anointed me with his power" but that the central Manmin church was condemned as a heretic by traditional Christian organizations, partly because of his claims to healing by miracle.
In an example on the church's website, Barbara Vollath, a 49-year-old German, said that he was born deaf, but that his bone cancer was cured and that she was able to to be heard in both ears after Lee Soojin, the daughter and apparent heiress, prayed handkerchief that he had blessed.
South Korean sects can have deadly consequences: in 1987, 32 members of an apocalyptic group called Odaeyang were found dead at their siege in a seemingly murderous and suicide pact, including its leader, who was responsible for # 39; object of a police investigation for embezzlement. And they can influence the highest spheres of power.
Choi Soon-Sil, the woman at the center of the corruption scandal that killed her close friend, President Park Geun-hye, is the daughter of the late religious leader Choi Tae-min.
The former Choi became Park's spiritual mentor after establishing his own church, Yeongsegyo ("Spiritual Life"), combining the principles of Buddhism, Christianity and shamanism.
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