A religious sect with a leader who claims to be the second coming of Jesus Christ is at the center of a recent spike in South Korean coronavirus infections.
According to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two-thirds of the country’s 204 confirmed cases of the virus have been tied to the Shincheonji Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony. Shincheonji is a religious movement with more than 200,000 followers that follows the teachings of its messianic founder Lee Man-hee.
Adherents of the sect believe that Lee, whom detractors label a cult leader, possesses the ability to find hidden meanings inside the Bible and that there is a coming apocalypse. Followers of Lee attend crowded mass gatherings for Shincheonji services, which KCDC director Jung Eun-kyeong said is likely how the disease has spread so rapidly.
Lee called the illness, officially known as COVID-19, as “a devil’s deed to curb the rapid growth of Shincheonji.”
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said there would be an investigation into a Shincheonji church in the city of Daegu and into a recent Shincheonji funeral. There are 74 Shincheonji churches across the country which have been shuttered because of the outbreak.
There have been almost 77,000 cases of coronavirus globally and more than 2,200 deaths, most of which have been in mainland China.
[Related: China’s Xi Jinping warns about coronavirus: ‘The peak of the outbreak has not yet been reached’]
