A Candid Look at Shincheonji. 2. The Making of a Church

Chairman Lee gathered some 300,000 followers and launched impressive international peace education campaigns. Accusations of having spread COVID-19 were recognized by the courts as false.

By Massimo Introvigne and Alessandro Amicarelli

February 18, 2025

One of the early sermons of Chairman Lee. Source: Shincheonji.org.

The first temple of Shincheonji was opened in June 1984 in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. The beginnings of the new church were not easy. Branch churches were opened between 1984 and 1986 in Busan (now Busan Metropolitan City), Gwangju (now a Metropolitan City, then in South Jeolla Province), Cheonan (South Chungcheong Province), Daejeon (now a Metropolitan City, then in South Chungcheong Province) and in the Seongbuk district of Seoul. However, the total membership in 1986 did not exceed 120.

A key event for the expansion of Shincheonji was the establishment of Zion Christian Mission Center in Seoul in June 1990. Members started the Zion Theology program through courses and exams. The first graduation ceremony, in 1991, involved twelve graduates. In South Korea, the work progressed through the territorial division of the members into Twelve Tribes, formally established in 1995. The South Korean tribes were also assigned responsibility for missions abroad, which led to the inauguration of the first church in a Western country in 1996, in Los Angeles, the first in Europe, in Berlin, in 2000, the first in Australia, in Sydney, in 2009, and the first in Africa, in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2012.

In 1999, the headquarters were moved from Anyang to Gwacheon, an area with great spiritual and prophetic significance in Shincheonji’s theology. Shincheonji became also known to the public through the activities of the Shincheonji Mannam Volunteer Organization (established in 2003) and the Shincheonji National Olympiads, started in 1993. By 2007, membership had reached 45,000, and the growth accelerated in subsequent years. According to the movement’s own statistics, there were 120,000 members in 2012, 140,000 in 2014, 170,000 in 2016, and 200,000 in 2018. One of the by-products of the COVID-19 investigation was the official confirmation that by 2020 membership had exceeded 300,000.

This growth could not go unnoticed from mainline Christian churches, particularly because most new members of Shincheonji were converted from among their flocks. They started increasingly vocal campaigns against Shincheonji, which continue to this very day and influence international media.

Controversies, however, did not stop Shincheonji’s growth, nor the development of its peace and humanitarian activities. In May 2012, Chairman Lee conducted his first World Peace Tour. On May 25, 2013, he proclaimed a “Declaration of World Peace,” and Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), an NGO also including non-members of Shincheonji, was incorporated. One of the main events HWPL organized was the HWPL World Peace Summit in Seoul, on September 18, 2014. On March 14, 2016, the Declaration of Peace and Cessation of War (DPCW) was proclaimed. In 2017, HWPL was granted special consultative status at the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Chairman Lee continued to conduct world tours and visiting heads of states, religious leaders, and chiefs of international organizations.

A moment of the World Peace Summit in Seoul, 2014.

For several years, Lee was accompanied in his tours by Kim Nam Hee, a close female disciple whom critics argued may become his “successor” in leading the movement.

Shincheonji, however, dismissed these as mere rumors, and stated that there were no projects for electing a successor of Chairman Lee. In fact, it seems it was Kim herself who was fueling the rumors. When it became clear that Shincheonji would not accept her as leader or “successor,” Kim started creating her own splinter group, which met with limited success. She was expelled from Shincheonji in January 2018 and had to face a trial at the Seoul Central District Court, on charges of embezzling 1.4 billion won from the Shincheonji-owned SMV Broadcasting and occupying the broadcasting station by force. On July 26, 2019, the Seoul Central District Court sentenced her to two years in prison, with three years of probation, for embezzlement. Some congregation members of Shincheonji also accused her of having fraudulently collected 16 billion won from church devotees.

These cases had a modest echo in Korean media and almost none abroad.

However, Shincheonji became internationally famous overnight on February 19, 2020. At that date, news spread that one of its members in Daegu, South Korea, had been infected with COVID-19. After being hospitalized following a car accident, she showed symptoms of a cold and was diagnosed with pneumonia. At that time, there was no mention of COVID-19. As tests conducted showed worsening of the pneumonia, the medical staff recommended transferring her to a larger hospital and mentioned the possibility of a taking a COVID-19 test. The compliant patient underwent testing at a public health center, which confirmed the diagnosis. At the time, both the public and medical professionals lacked accurate information about COVID-19 and the testing criteria. It is believed that this delay in making the diagnosis of COVID-19 in her case is what led to its rapid spread among people she met. This set in motion a chain of events that resulted in thousands of her co-religionists testing positive to the virus, and a media and political outcry against the “secretive cult” allegedly responsible for the spread of the epidemics in South Korea. Few articles about Shincheonji were accurate, and some spread, based on hostile or low-level Internet sources, what can only be called fake news.

Few independent scholars had studied Shincheonji before the COVID-19 crisis, and even fewer had interviewed his founder. Introvigne was part of this small minority and had written the first English-language academic articles about the movement. All of a sudden, his opinion was sought by media from different countries, and in some cases, he succeeded in telling an alternative version of the story of the movement.

In Korea, however, the avalanche of unfounded accusations could not be stopped. Accused of lack of cooperation with health authorities, Chairman Lee was arrested in the night between July 31 and August 1, 2020. Eventually, truth came out. Lee and his co-defendants were declared not guilty of any COVID-related offenses in first degree by the Suwon District Court on January 13, 2021, and on appeal by the Suwon High Court on November 30, 2021.

The Supreme Court of Korea. Credits.

On August 12, 2022, the Supreme Court of South Korea confirmed the verdict, dismissing all the prosecutor’s arguments. But what about the story hundreds of media carried, that Shincheonji members refused to respect the COVID regulations believing their faith would protect them? This never happened, the Korean Courts said—and in fact Shincheonji moved its services online before most other Korean churches did.

Did Shincheonji, when requested after the original incident to give to the authorities full details of its members and properties, deliberately supply partial and inaccurate lists? Fake news, again. The Korean courts confirmed that the inaccuracies were minimal, and Shincheonji was not even compelled by the law to submit the extensive lists requested by the authorities.

The Supreme Court left standing the lower courts’ conclusion that “there was no evidence of obstruction” of anti-COVID efforts by Shincheonji. On the contrary, after an agreement with the authorities about the lists to be submitted to them was concluded, “Shincheonji actively cooperated with the submission of data and promptly provided them to the CDCH [Central Disease Control Headquarters].” Shincheonji and Chairman Lee, the Supreme Court said, did not obstruct in any way the anti-COVID campaigns but “promptly” and “actively” cooperated with the health authorities. This was confirmed in three degrees of judgement.

In a country where accusations raised by prosecutors are accepted by judges in more than 90% of the cases, the result was remarkable. Prosecutors, however, can never totally lose in South Korea, and Chairman Lee was declared guilty of other charges that had been simultaneously filed. They concern episodes that had allegedly happened long before the COVID-19 crisis started, including mismanaging funds and holding events in facilities whose owners had canceled the corresponding rental agreements under pressure by opponents of Shincheonji.

I have explained elsewhere that these accusations did not make sense, but they served as a parachute for the prosecutors after their COVID case has collapsed. The Supreme Court confirmed for these alleged offenses a sentence of three years for Chairman Lee, suspended for five years.

Everybody understands that the additional charges were thrown in to save the face of the prosecutors and the politicians who had backed them. The crucial point was that all the propaganda about Shincheonji as spreader of the COVID-19 virus was definitively exposed as a lie. Unfortunately, none of the media that had depicted Chairman Lee and his followers as “plague-spreaders” apologized to them. Some still try to manipulate the fact that, after the first accusations were launched, Chairman Lee in a press conference went to his knees to apologize for any mistake he or the movement might have committed. This was a very noble and also a very Korean attitude.

However, the Supreme Court clarified that Shincheonji did what he could to confront COVID-19 and did more than other churches and organizations did. If it made mistakes, they were in its communication and reaction to media slander. Yet, some continue to this day to report the incident in ambiguous terms, without clearly stating that Korean courts have declared the movement innocent of all COVID-related charges.

Source: bitterwinter.org