Koo In-ho: A Fraud Like All the Others

Christendom, alas, has seldom if ever been uniform. Well before Rome and Byzantium split and long after Martin Luther instigated the Protestant Reformation, there have been schisms and ruptures both big and small. Sometimes, we may fairly wonder if a heretic—burned at the stake or not—had been blessed with some kind of divine revelation. Then again, we must tread carefully. The Apostle Paul warned Timothy, his young protégé and trusted companion, and the people of Ephesus and Corinth, to beware false prophets who would twist the Gospel and deviate from its basic truths.

Korea, which was first exposed to Christianity in 1603 (when Yi Su-gwang, a Korean diplomat in Ming China, returned with several theological books), has had its share of these people. Cults, or “new religious movements” to use a kinder term, have been depressingly common here since World War II. Five cautionary tales are as follows:

• Park Soon-ja, a woman whose firm, Odaeyang Trading Company, fronted for a religious sect she led. Park swindled nearly $9 million from her adherents and orchestrated a murder-suicide pact in August 1987 that left police with 32 corpses.

• Jeong Myeong-seok, founder of the Christian Gospel Mission, also known as Jesus Morning Star. This purported reincarnation of the Prince of Peace was found guilty of fraud, embezzlement and sex crimes. Now 81 years old, he is incarcerated at Daejeon Prison.

• Lee Jae-rok, whose Manmin Central Church had a dramatic rise in membership in the 1980s and 1990s. A performer of numerous questionable healings of sick people, he claimed that God gave him prophetic visions. Like Jeong, he just could not seem to keep it in his pants, sexually assaulting several female members of his congregation; for that, he got eight years in the slammer. Despite his insistence that he was sinless and exempt from dying, Lee met the grim reaper on December 31, 2023 while still serving his sentence.

• Lee Man-hee, another self-proclaimed messiah. The church he created, known as Shincheonji, is widely regarded as a pseudo-religion. Its teachings claim that Lee is the subject of some New Testament parables and that anyone outside of the group will be sent to the fiery depths on judgment day. Most of the people who recognized Shincheonji’s falsehoods and contradictions and tried to leave met with harassment and threats.

• And finally, the big daddy of them all—Mun Seon-myeong of the Unification Church. Everybody and her cousin have heard of the Moonies. According to Divine Principle, Mun’s theological system which was allegedly revealed when Jesus appeared to him on Easter Sunday 1935 and instructed him to continue the work that the Lord had not finished while he was on earth due to the “tragedy” of his crucifixion, “With the fullness of time, God has sent one person to this earth to resolve the fundamental problems of human life and the universe. His name is Mun Seon-myeong.” Oh, give me a break! The mass weddings (one involving no fewer than 28,000 couples) over which Mun and his wife, Han Hak-ja, presided started in 1961 and were still happening as late as 2010. After his 2012 death, tens of thousands of Moonies attended his funeral.

Another individual, Koo In-ho, must be added to this dubious list. People who follow him dare not say his name, so they call him “Second Advent Jesus.”

He was born in a village near Buyeo on May 9, 1942 and was 16 years old when he first heard God’s voice. Thirteen years later, at dawn on January 17, 1971, “First Advent” Jesus descended from the clouds and anointed Koo as his successor, according to the garbled theology of Second Advent Jesus Church, which apparently is a splinter of Shincheonji. His devotees believe that heaven will be completed in Korea—and specifically through Koo. Matthew 26:64 is just one of the verses said to prove that he is the man. Koo died at Seodaemun Prison on January 30, 1976 after 20 days of hardship and interrogation. I have read that President Park Chung-hee ordered a crackdown on bogus religious sects in the mid-1970s, so Koo may have been charged with that perceived crime.

On March 29, I walked around the corner to Chunghyeon Church. It was Palm Sunday, when Christians commemorate Jesus entering Jerusalem on the back of a donkey; all the people were shouting hosannas and waving palm leaves—but less than a week later, they would clamor for his death. Before I got there, I realized something odd was happening. Three groups of Koreans wearing green baseball caps with the acronym SAJC were making noise and holding signs advocating on behalf of Koo. One smiling lady gave me a pamphlet. Greatly puzzled, I stood in one of the church driveways and observed. A man at my left was yelling angrily at them, and a Koo man with a mini-microphone was giving it right back to him. I found my friend Ha “Henry” Hae-ryong (a longtime member of Chunghyeon) and asked him what this was about. No less irked than the other man, he spoke harshly of these fools. According to Henry, they rotate among Seoul’s biggest churches. Just the week before, they had been raising similar havoc at Sarang Church, two miles away, where I have worshipped at least a dozen times.

Call me conservative if you must, but I am a mainstream, right-down-the-middle Christian believer. No deviation for me, no sir. What is the attraction to ego-tripping “prophets” (who are, needless to say, not limited to Korea; the USA has an abundance of them) like Park, Jeong, the two Lees, Mun and Koo? When Jesus comes back, we will all know.

SAJC people came to enlighten us on Palm Sunday…

“The Korean church must repent and welcome the returning Jesus!”

Poster for a February 1975 revival; under his photo, it says “I am the way, the life and the resurrection.”

Their church in Seoul’s Yangjae district; it says, Jo mak jeol or “Tabernacle of Feasts.”