Moonie offshoot in trouble in Fiji

[Rocky]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/grace-road-churchs-dream-life-in-fiji-threatens-to-fall-apart

SEOUL—Authorities in Fiji have smashed a South Korean cult that threatened to take over the South Pacific nation’s economy, arresting four of its leaders and sending two of them back to Korea.

The crackdown on the Grace Road Church shocked its 400 Korean and foreign adherents, who had moved to Fiji after being warned of an apocalypse about to annihilate South Korea. They submitted to regular thrashings, some of them caught on camera, in what their founder, a middle-aged woman named Shin Ok-su, claimed were needed to knock the devil out of them.

Shin was expelled back to Korea, arrested for child abuse, assault and false imprisonment, and sentenced to six years in prison in 2019, but the church survived until Fijian authorities this week rounded up church members in a drive to stamp out the influence of a cult that’s been madly buying up Fijian companies and property. The church, founded in South Korea in 2002, decided in 2014 that Fiji, an archipelago with a population of slightly less than 1 million people, was “the center of the world.”

Fijian authorities turned a blind eye as the church took over construction companies, beauty salons, restaurants and much else, establishing a mini-conglomerate called GR Group, modeled after the chaebol or conglomerates that dominate Korea. [...]

 

The leaders of the church allegedly controlled their adherents by confiscating passports, forcing some to live in virtual imprisonment, ordering them to work on church-owned projects and beating them periodically into submission.

It was not until a new government took over early this year that authorities recognized the seriousness of the inroads the cult had made into Fijian life and decided to clean house. Fiji’s previous prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, six years ago gave Grace Road an award for business excellence, recognizing it had “invested heavily in Fiji.”

Now the seven top leaders of the church are listed as “prohibited immigrants” while authorities search for two of them, including Daniel Kim, son of founder Shin Ok-su. In charge of the church’s sprawling business interests, he remains on the lam while the GR Group, “very enraged by all the lies,” claims to have been “working proudly as owners.”

All the stories of “passport confiscation, forced labor, incarceration and violence,” said GR Group, were “unspeakable lies” created by “those who wish to slander us.” [a likely story... one we've heard way too many times before] [...]

 

“The reason for so many new religions among Koreans is that a) there is real freedom of religion in Korea even compared to Christian countries,” said Breen, a long-time businessman in Seoul. “That’s one reason they thrive. People come up with all sorts of interpretations and shifts in theology and practice.”

Like Moon’s Unification Church, smaller cult-like groupings feel the urge to expand overseas in the same spirit as Korean big business and K-pop. Blind adherence to the dictates of a single leader is characteristic of Korean life.

 

The Rev. Tim Peters, a Protestant pastor in Seoul with a long background working with North Korean defectors, placed the rise of Grace Road in the context of “the 5,000-year history of Korea.”

“A strong leader with a stirring message resonates deeply in the Korean psyche,” Peters told The Daily Beast.

Charisma helps. “A congregation’s appetite for an emotionally stirring sermon often eclipses a congregant’s individual spiritual growth,” Peters said. “Joining a new religious movement that has radical doctrines sometimes fulfills a need for young adults to break free from their parents’ or grandparents’ suffocating spiritual traditions.”

Chang Sung-eun explained the appeal of Grace Road Church more simply. “Koreans are passionate and energetic,” she said. “They have a strong yearning for salvation. They believe somehow, ‘God will save me.’ That’s the baseline. They tend to fall victim to pastors and ministers who have strong disciplinary policies.” [more]

[Rocky]

Steven Hassan (cult expert and former Moonie himself] tweeted this link and

I am very happy to see Hak Ja Han, Sun Myung Moon's wife, who took over the Moon cult after he died in 2012, featured in this article on Korean cults. She paid Trump $2 million for endorsing her cult- a few weeks after the Jan 6th attack on the Capitol.

[Nathan_Jr]

Mmmph

[Nathan_Jr]

20 minutes ago, Rocky said:

“They have a strong yearning for salvation. They believe somehow, ‘God will save me.’

Save them from what?

[Twinky]

Save them from themselves, Nathan? 

Definitely out of the frying pan into the fire.

 

I can see that "strong leadership and a stirring message" would work well in Fiji and a lot of Polynesian locations.  They tend to be very group- or family-oriented, with large extended family connections.  It's very hard for individuals to break out of those connections.  Very tribal; even if they venture out on their own, they are still subject to unwritten rules and expectations of looking after their families, and are expected to send their wages back to their families.  So once the head of a household is hooked in, so the rest must follow.

Possibly how early Christianity took hold.  Gospels, Acts: "He and all his household believed/were baptised/..."

[Nathan_Jr]

4 hours ago, Twinky said:

Save them from themselves, Nathan? 

Definitely out of the frying pan into the fire

Wow. That’s some salvation.

 

4 hours ago, Twinky said:

I can see that "strong leadership and a stirring message" would work well in Fiji and a lot of Polynesian locations.  They tend to be very group- or family-oriented, with large extended family connections.  It's very hard for individuals to break out of those connections.  Very tribal; even if they venture out on their own, they are still subject to unwritten rules and expectations of looking after their families, and are expected to send their wages back to their families.  So once the head of a household is hooked in, so the rest must follow.

Insight.

 

4 hours ago, Twinky said:

Possibly how early Christianity took hold.  Gospels, Acts: "He and all his household believed/were baptised/..."

At least possibly. Probably? Wasn’t ancient Greco-Roman society structured as you describe Polynesia? 

[Nathan_Jr]

12 hours ago, Rocky said:

“Joining a new religious movement that has radical doctrines sometimes fulfills a need for young adults to break free from their parents’ or grandparents’ suffocating spiritual traditions.”

Sounds familiar. 
 

Out of the frying pan into the fire. 

[Rocky]

Intriguing insight from observing cult behaviors SIMILAR to OUR experience. We bit, hook, line, and sinker. Were we conditioned during childhood for a Christian-flavored cult? It seems that way to me.