South Korea has become a hotbed of widespread human rights violations committed against believers of minority faiths. The ‘coercive conversion’ programme, also known as ‘forced conversion’ (or in more recent times ‘deprogramming’ by leading human rights organisations) began in 2008 after Presbyterian pastor Jin-Sik Jin who headed up the Heresy Investigation Committee of the Christian Council of Korea (CCK) sent Mr. Baek-Hyang Jeong to a psychiatric ward for refusing to receive ‘conversion counselling’ (also known as 'conversion education’). Pastor Jin was later punished by law.

Coercive conversion was conceived, and has since been carried out, by pastors of the Christian Council of Korea (CCK), which is an organisation of churches founded in 1989 on the bloody Presbyterian doctrine of the 16th century French ‘theologian’ Jean Calvin who murdered men, women and children who opposed his doctrine on predestination. So-called coercive conversion “pastors” deceive families into believing that their beloved parent, wife, husband, child or sibling has joined a ‘cult’ and are susceptible to making extreme life decisions. They further instil fear and anxiety into families' minds by convincing them that the 'final opportunity’ of saving their loved one is through kidnap, confinement and violence.

In typical cases, victims are enticed by family members into a car on the pretext of taking a family trip. They are then robbed of their phones, blindfolded, drugged and driven to a remote location - a rented private resort - where they are bound in a solitary room for 4-6 weeks and coerced into giving their consent to 'conversion counselling' from a CCK pastor. Refusal to do so leads to emotional and psychological abuse. Victims who escape after several weeks - usually following a tip-off to local police - often require immediate psychiatric care and medication.
Coercive conversion is an abhorrent and inhumane practice that has resulted in the deaths of two victims. In October 2007, Sunhwa Kim was killed with a hammer blow by her ex-husband, and on January 9th 2018, 25-year-old Ji-In Gu was suffocated to death by her parents as she resisted conversion counselling during her second abduction. Immediately following news of her death, a 120,000-strong demonstration took place in Seoul that triggered a wave of smaller protests in 23 cities in 15 countries. 185 foreign media outlets, including The New York Times, publicised her death and calls were made by the United Nations for a ban on the practice of coercive conversion, punishment for CCK pastors and a shutdown of the CCK. Yet coercive conversion has continued unabated with 116 registered cases of human rights abuses in 2019 which included a 42-year-old cancer patient Jung-mi Song.
Of all democratic countries, coercive conversion, which was deemed illegal by American and European courts over twenty years ago, only exists in South Korea and the Korean constitution’s “freedom of religion” (Article 20) does little to nothing in reality to safeguard the rights of the persecuted as religion and politics share the other's interests. CCK pastors receive payment from families in return for giving 'conversion counselling' and police authorities pass cases off as a 'family matter', thereby allowing conversion pastors to evade legal punishment. The truth is that from 2008-2018 CCK pastors were convicted of roughly 12,000 crimes including forgery, embezzlement, assault and murder and, in late 2019, its chairman Gwang-hun Jeon publicly declared, "If God messes with me, He's dead." The words and actions carried out by the CCK are, at its core, demonic and its true nature is being exposed to the Korean and wider global community. The CCK is a highly corrupt, amoral criminal organisation that disguises itself behind religion.

The vast majority of victims of coercive conversion, which registers roughly 100 cases a year and operates in South Korea alone, are congregation members of Shincheonji Church of Jesus, which the CCK and the Presbyterian Church labels a ‘cult’. The reason they persecute Shincheonji Church members is because large numbers of Presbyterian churchgoers, up until the outbreak of COVID-19, have been leaving their churches to join Shincheonji Church. The Presbyterian Church also safeguards its depleting authority and power with a vested interest in politics. Shincheonji Church, on the other hand, has appeared according to the promises of the book of Revelation of the New Testament and experienced unprecedented growth of 103,764 members in 2019; the largest of its kind for any religious institution in modern history. In spite of ongoing persecution, Shincheonji Church members continue to diligently study the word of the Bible and record God’s law, which is the promise and fulfilment of Revelation, into their hearts and minds (Hebrews 8:10) in the certain hope of seeing a world without death, mourning, crying or pain fulfilled on the earth, as is promised in Revelation 21. Those with sincere and hearts seeking an understanding of God and the Bible will discover this to be true. I pray that as the time comes for the world to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic, calls for an end to coercive conversion will be realised and the CCK shut down. 

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