Covidiots - South Korea's Wackadoodle Christians

88 year-old Lee Man-hee, "the Second Coming of Jesus"

Prosecutors raid branches of religious group at center of coronavirus outbreak

A wackadoodle Christian cult in South Korea has been linked to 50-60% of Covid-19 deaths. Now the cult's leader faces homicide charges! The cult was founded by Lee Man-hee who claims to be the Second Coming of Jesus. His followers believe the Bible contains secret messages and metaphors that only he can understand (where have we heard that before?).

They also believe they are immune to disease. Now 1.2 million South Koreans are calling for the cult to be disbanded.

According to this report in The Korea Herald

Prosecutors raided facilities of Shincheonji, a minor religious sect, on Friday as part of their ongoing probe into allegations that the group hindered state efforts to contain the new coronavirus in the early stages of the pandemic.

Some 100 investigators took part in the raids into the secretive group's branches nationwide, to seize materials in connection with the charges brought against the group's founder, Lee Man-hee. The branches include the group's headquarters in Gwacheon, just south of Seoul, and facilities in the cities of Busan, Gwangju and Daejeon.

The raid marks the prosecution's first forcible investigation into the group since February when a group of people who claimed to be victims of the religious group filed a complaint against the 89-year-old Lee for embezzlement, dereliction of duty and violation of infectious disease prevention laws.

[...]

The Shincheonji sect is accused of causing the country's biggest cluster outbreaks, accounting for some 47 percent of the country's total caseload of 11,142.

Its worship services, where members sit close together and chant loud in poorly ventilated spaces, are believed to have been a factor in the rapid spread the virus.

Also, Lee is accused of ordering group members not to fully cooperate with health officials, thus hindering state efforts to contain COVID-19 in the early stages of the pandemic.

On March 2, two days after the prosecutors launched an investigation into the leader, he appeared in front of live television cameras to make a deep bow and apologize for "unintentionally" spreading the virus.

Lee Man-hee is a psychopath who has lied and lied until he believed his own lie that he was the true messiah.

Jeong Ji-su, Former disciple who left last July.
Quoted in The New York Time

An archived report by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the estimate of the number of deaths attributable to the Shincheonji cult at 56.1%%

South Korea is culturally susceptible to these wackadoodle cults after years of war and deprivation and now heavily parasitized by American evangelical Christians. According to this article in The New Your Time:

Mr. Lee is far from the first person claiming to be a messiah in South Korea.

Shamanism — worshiping a multitude of deities including dead parents, ancient warriors and mountain spirits — has infused society for millenniums, interacting with new arrivals like Christianity and making some Koreans amenable to embracing new belief systems, said Koo Se-woong, a scholar who has researched Korean religions.

“Promising a new world and a ‘New Jerusalem’ in Korea is nothing new among Christian churches in South Korea,” Dr. Koo said.

As the country has suffered war and deprivation in the past century, 120 self-styled messiahs promising a new world of peace have emerged, 70 commanding sizable followings. The best known is the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, who died in 2012.

Some ended up in jail on fraud or rape charges or lived in disgrace after the rapture they had promised never came. But their apostles split and spread, rebranding themselves into new sects. Mr. Lee was one of them.

Very much like a virus spreading amongst vulnerable people with low resistance, in fact!

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