Angola Mrs. Doneta Esperanca Andre President Association of Women
Journalists
Angola Hon. Dr. Lucas Benhim Gonda Assemblyman National Assembly of the
Republic of Angola
Angola HRH Daniel Nhanga Traditional Chief Traditional Authorities
Association of Angola
Angola Rev. Elias Pedro President Association of Evangelical
Churches in Angola
Angola Dr. Francisco Tunga Alberto President and Founder Forum of Non-Governmental
Organizations

To be continued…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Young women in Australia are being actively recruited to be “spiritual wives” of a South Korean cult leader using modeling classes and bible studies as fronts.

Members of the notorious Korean group Jesus Morning Star (JMS) have been prowling universities and shopping malls in Australia’s major cities such as Canberra, Sydney, and Melbourne to lure women into joining their group, reports Daily Mail.

The cult allegedly used mind conditioning techniques to influence the members into performing sexual acts with its founder Jung Myung-seok, a convicted rapist serving his prison sentence in South Korea. Myung-seok, who was jailed for the rape and molestation of cult members, is set to end his 10-year sentence next year.

The group, also known as Providence, encourages members to sever relationship ties with families in order to gain complete influence.

In an interview with Daily Mail Australia, a former member identified only as “Elizabeth” shared how she was recruited five years ago.

“I was shopping inside the Canberra Centre in April 2011. A Korean woman came over and said she was holding a Christian art show. It looked good so I thought I would check it out,” Elizabeth recounted.

A few months later, she moved in with the group’s local leader where she was allegedly subjected to indoctrination processes that focused on depicting its leader as a Jesus-like messiah.

“We had to wake up at 3 a.m. everyday to pray because they said this brought us closer to god. It’s a mind control technique: when you’re deprived of sleep you can’t critically think,” Elizabeth said. “They encouraged us to write letters to him like he was our lover. He wrote sexually explicit replies saying things like ‘your white skin arouses me,’ or ‘your vagina would look pretty.’”

She was eventually flown to Seoul to see the cult leader in prison where she and other members spent 15 minutes with him.

“He blew kisses at us and knew all our names and how we looked from photos in his cell. It was very surreal,” she said.

Later on she was advised to recruit members by inviting women to join fake fashion classes. She was only able to escape after she was hospitalized with an eating disorder due to her 18-month ordeal.

Another former member who was recruited inside the University of Melbourne campus in 2014, said she was initially shocked by the group’s teachings, particularly about how Adolf Hitler was portrayed as God’s vessel who carried out his punishments.

Like Elizabeth, she too was brainwashed into following only the group’s doctrines.
“They said the holocaust was his mark of atonement because Jewish people killed Jesus. They told us Hitler was a vessel from god,” she said.

“I started recruiting for more members. I was told to look for virgins, and encouraged new members to wear white as much as possible to show Jung their purity.”

Upon noticing her behavioral changes, her parents managed to do an intervention and with the help of a cult expert, she was deprogrammed from her recently adopted belief.

Meanwhile in Sydney, a father made a shocking discovery when he learned that his daughter was recruited in her school and brainwashed to move to Western Australia.

“I only learned she had moved there when I saw her on one of their sites. It took a long time to pieces together the reality she had been told to move by the group.”

He was unable to seek police assistance to retrieve his daughter as she is now of legal age.

“I’m powerless to find her. I get a generic email from her every couple of months but aside from that we have no contact,” he said.

Both University of Melbourne and Sydney University have expressed through their representatives that the schools were not aware of the cult and its practices.

Australian lecturer Peter Daley, who has spent years investigating the group and its operations, has devoted his time exposing their devious practices on his website.

“JMS is dangerous beyond assaults from the leader. The sleep deprivation and the stress caused when members cut ties with their family is incredibly damaging to member’s health,” said Daley.

“And Jung is due out next year with no signs of rehabilitation. The numbers of girls that have visited him in jail suggest he is not going to change his ways any time soon.”

He believes that the cult is still actively recruiting in universities and other public places in some Australian cities and has called on university administrators to do more in raising public awareness and educating its students about the dangers of joining the cult.

“I think they have a duty of care to educate students about the dangers of the group. Many former members were recruited on their university campus.”

South Korean Pastor Lee Jaerock arrives at the Seoul Central District Court to attend his trial in Seoul on November 22, 2018.

A South Korean cult leader was convicted Thursday, November 22, of the multiple rape of 8 female followers – some of whom believed he was God – and jailed for 15 years.

Pastor Lee Jaerock’s victims were “unable to resist as they were subject to the accused’s absolute religious authority,” judge Chung Moon-sung told the Seoul Central District Court.

Religious devotion is widespread in technologically advanced South Korea, with 44 percent of people identifying themselves as believers.

Most belong to mainstream churches, which can accumulate wealth and influence with tens of thousands of followers donating as much as 10 percent of their income.

But fringe groups are also widespread – experts say around 60 people in the country claim to be divine – and some have been implicated in fraud, brainwashing, coercion, and other behavior associated with cults worldwide.

Lee set up the Manmin Central Church in Guro, once a poor area of Seoul, with just 12 followers in 1982. It has now grown to 130,000 members, with a spotlight-filled auditorium, sprawling headquarters, and a website replete with claims of miracle cures.

But 3 of Lee’s followers went public earlier this year, as South Korea was swept with a wave of #MeToo accusations, describing how he had summoned each of them to an apartment and raped them.

“I was unable to turn him down,” one of them told South Korean television.

“He was more than a king. He was God,” added the woman, who had been a church member since childhood.

Lee told another that she was now in Heaven, and to strip as Adam and Eve went naked in the Garden of Eden. “I cried as I hated to do it,” she told JTBC television.

Eight women laid criminal complaints, and the court found Lee raped and molested them “tens of times” over a long period of time.

South Korea ex-president Lee Myung-bak jailed for 15 years over corruption.
Lee Myung-bak is found guilty on charges including bribery and embezzlement and ordered to pay a fine of 13 billion won by the Seoul Central District Court.

Pablo Virgilio David: The shepherd of Caloocan
We need Church leaders who will describe rightly what we are facing: a death of conscience by those who justify the killings

“Through his sermons the accused has indirectly or directly suggested he is the holy spirit, deifying himself,” the judge said.

The victims believed him to be “a divine being who wields divine power”, he added.

Quiet sighs

Lee stood with his eyes closed as the judgement was read, showing no emotion.

The 75-year-old had denied the charges, his lawyers accusing the women of lying to seek vengeance after being excommunicated for breaching church rules.

Around 100 followers filled the courtroom to overflowing, some of them sighing quietly.

But former congregants denounced Lee outside.

“The Manmin Central Church is all about worshipping the pastor Lee Jaerock,” said Kim Yu-sun, who was a member for 20 years.

“Now that I go to a different church, I worship Jesus and pray to god,” she added. “I’m happy and I like it.”

Second Coming

South Korea has proven fertile ground for religious groups with strong, unambiguous ideologies that offered comfort and salvation, which appealed strongly during times of deep uncertainty.

More recent versions have claimed a unique knowledge of the path to material and spiritual prosperity – a message that resonates in a highly competitive and status-focused society.

According to a 2015 government survey, 28 percent of South Koreans say they belong to Christian churches, with another 16 percent describing themselves as Buddhist.

But according to Park Hyung-tak, head of the Korea Christian Heresy Research Institute, around two million people are followers of cults.

“There are some 60 Christian-based cult leaders in this country who claim to be the second coming of Jesus Christ, or God Himself,” he told AFP.

“Many cults point to megachurches mired in corruption and other scandals in order to highlight their own presumed purity and attract believers,” he added.

On his own website, Lee says that God has “anointed me with His power” but the Manmin Central Church has been condemned as heretical by mainstream Christian organizations, partly because of its claims to miracle healing.

In one example on the church website, Barbara Vollath, a 49-year-old German, said she was born deaf but her bone cancer was cured and she gained hearing in both ears after Lee’s daughter and heiress apparent Lee Soojin prayed for her with a handkerchief he had blessed.

South Korean cults can have deadly consequences: in 1987, 32 members of an apocalyptic group called Odaeyang were found dead at their headquarters after an apparent murder-suicide pact, including its leader, who was under police investigation for embezzlement.

And they can influence the highest reaches of power.

Choi Soon-Sil, the woman at the center of the corruption scandal that brought down her close friend president Park Geun-Hye, is the daughter of late religious leader Choi Tae-min.

The elder Choi became Park’s spiritual mentor after establishing his own church, Yeongsegyo.