Seoul’s New Inquisition: The Jailing of Pastor Son and Korea’s War on Churches

When governments start jailing pastors for preaching values, the line between democracy and despotism begins to blur.

By Massimo Introvigne

September 26, 2025

Massimo Introvigne with Chance Son, the son of incarcerated Pastor Son Hyun-bo.

On September 24, 2025, a South Korean court confirmed Pastor Son Hyun-bo’s detention, rejecting his appeal for review. To most Western readers, this name may mean little. But in Korea, Son is no fringe figure. He leads Segero Church in Busan, one of the country’s largest congregations, baptizing over 1,000 new believers annually. His arrest marks a chilling escalation in what many now call a war on religious liberty.

Son’s story reads like a Korean epic. In 1993, he took over Noksan Jeil, a dying Presbyterian church in Busan with twenty members. He renamed it “Segero”—“To the World”—and built it into a megachurch with over 4,000 weekly attendees. Before theology, Son served in the Special Forces, earning an Exemplary Soldier Award. He was beaten for his Christian faith but ultimately evangelized his entire platoon. A Buddhist monk funded his seminary education—a providential twist and a beautiful interfaith story.

His son, Chance Son, an American-educated and soft-spoken advocate, told me: “My father’s sermons were never about personalities. They were about values.” Between March and June 2025, Pastor Son allegedly endorsed candidates in his sermons. But Chance insists these mentions lasted no more than two minutes in 30–40 minute sermons and focused on electing leaders who uphold Christian values. “This is religious liberty,” Chance said. “Or should be.”

South Korea’s Public Official Election Act, Article 85, prohibits campaigning within religious organizations. It was upheld as constitutional in 2024, but traditionally interpreted with restraint. Pastors who crossed the line were fined modestly. Even the controversial Pastor Jun Kwang-hoon of Sarang Jeil Church—known for his profane sermons and theatrical style—was acquitted by the Supreme Court in 2022 and awarded damages for excessive restrictions.

However, with Pastor Son’s arrest on September 8 and the court’s confirmation on September 24, the tone has changed. Now, pastors don’t get fined—they get jailed. The grounds? Risk of flight and destruction of evidence. Chance scoffs: “My father’s sermons are online. He’s lived in Segero Church for thirty years. Escape? Ludicrous.”

Pastor Son Hyun-Bo with Charlie Kirk (1993–2025). A few days after this picture was taken, Kirk was assassinated, and Son was arrested.

Even more disturbing was the judge’s rhetoric. At the September 24 hearing, the judge referenced the Seobu District Court Incident—where Pastor Jun, not Son, was involved in assaulting a court of law—and compared Son to Yi Wan-Yong, Korea’s most reviled pro-Japanese collaborator. “This is character assassination,” Chance said. “It’s a malicious attempt to paint my father as a violent right-wing extremist. He’s not.”

Western media often fixate on Pastor Jun’s antics, but as Swiss scholar Adrian Gasser argues in a recent study for “Religioscope,” this is a mistake. Although part of it, Gasser believes that Jun’s Sarang Jeil Church “is not representative” of the broader conservative Christian movement. The Christian coalition that rallied behind President Yoon Seok-yeol—before his disgrace and imprisonment—was not enamored with his personality or his wife’s eccentricities. They rallied around their values: freedom of worship during the COVID lockdowns, opposition to Communism, to appeasement of North Korea and China, to same-sex marriage, and to the Anti-Discrimination Bill, which many Christians saw as a muzzle on preaching against homosexuality.

The one million member 1027 United Korean Church Worship, 2024. Source: Christian Concern.

The massive “1027 United Korean Church Worship” (with one million participants in October 2024) and the “Save Korea” rallies were not about Yoon. “They were about resisting ideological shifts that threatened the Christian worldview,” Chance said.

Pastor Son was a central figure in these rallies. His sermons were not political endorsements but moral exhortations. Yet now, he’s behind bars.

Son’s arrest is part of a broader purge. Churches and offices of prominent pastors have been raided. Pastor Lee Young-hoon of Yoido Full Gospel Church—one of the world’s largest Pentecostal congregations—and Pastor Kim Jang-hwan of Far East Broadcasting Company have been targeted for allegedly lobbying in favor of Lin Seng-geum, a former Marine commander now facing manslaughter charges following the death of Corporal Chae Soo-geun, who died in 2023 during a flood rescue mission. It is alleged that Corporal Chae was sent on this mission without proper safety equipment. Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon, the leader of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, was arrested on September 22. The charges vary, but the pattern is clear: conservative religious leaders are being silenced.

Rob McCoy, former mayor of Thousand Oaks and longtime pastor of Godspeak Calvary Chapel in California, came to Korea to preach at Segero. He was a close friend of Charlie Kirk, the conservative leader assassinated days after visiting Korea. Kirk met Pastor Son just before his arrest and vowed to mobilize U.S. support if Son was jailed.

Pastor Rob McCoy speaks at Kirk’s memorial service.

McCoy told me: “Never in seventy years has the Korean Church been treated this way—not even under Japanese occupation. This is the Communist playbook. Silencing churches. This is not what 36,000 American soldiers died for in the Korean War. They died for democracy and religious liberty.”

McCoy is adamant that the real violator of church-state separation is not Pastor Son—but the government itself. “Son is accused of violating the separation of church and state,” he told me, “but the left-leaning government was the first to violate that separation by harassing churches and trying to muzzle pastors who speak out for their values.”

And then came the thunder: “Make no mistake,” McCoy said, “I do not speak for the American administration, but the United States will hold the Korean government accountable for attacking the churches. This is not about the violation of some administrative regulation. It is about denying believers the freedom to worship God.”

“Bitter Winter” has protested the detention of Mrs. Hak Ja Han Moon. Her theology differs sharply from Segero Church’s. But when religious liberty is under siege, doctrinal differences must be set aside. Churches must unite in defense of the freedom to worship, preach, and live by their convictions.

Pastor Son’s case is not just a Korean story. It’s a warning to democracies everywhere: when values become crimes, liberty is already lost.

Source: bitterwinter.org