On the advertisement page of <New York Times> on 28th of November, 2018, there is a art that a wolf in sheep´s clothing burn a woman at the stake and people just stand by. It's like a scene in the Middle Ages Calvin took someone who uncomplied his doctrine to torture and burned at the stake. Unfortunately, The similar things are happening in the Republic of Korea, where peace rises through the North-South Korean summit and is well-known for K-POP. Please read this story to the end.
The advertisement said that there is coercive conversion in South Korea and it should be banned. In response, the press including <The Enquire> and <Established Africa> published articles about the conversion in South Korea. What happened?
To begin with, coercive conversion usually carried out by a group called The Christian Council of Korea(CCK), which is the christian mainstream of South Korea, is conversion-coercing act accompanying physical and mental violence although religious freedom is guaranteed by the Constitution of S.Korea.
Sadly, it forced a woman to die
Sadly, it forced a woman to die
Though a woman, Ji-in Gu, was leading a religious life for sincere faith, a pastor and missionaries of Gwangju Korea Christian Heterodox Counsellor lied to her famil that she give up her studies and leave her family if she didn’t renounce her religion by conversion program. The family, unable to withstand anxiety, were forced to listen to a pastor and missionaries. In July of 2016, the family imprison her to a monastery in Jangseong-gun, Jeollanam-do, Korea. Ms. Gu was forced to convert in confinement. After forty-four days she managed to escape and posted a petition to the South Korean government about the reality and the ban of coercive conversion on the idea that it shouldn’t happen again.
However, the government ignored the petition and one year later, on 30th of December, 2017, Ms. Gu was once again taken to a pension in Hwasun-gun, Jeollanam-do, Korea. The family tried to convert again under the pretext of family travel. Her parents had a scuffle with her to force her to be converted. On 18th of January, 2018, she died of suffocation and was never seen again.
We started to make this case known to Korea and the whole world. ‘Ms. Gu who had to die by the cruel conversion.’ ‘the government that ignored it.’ Even worse, the South Korean media didn’t report this and conversion pastors took lots of money from behind, evaded the law and said they didn’t know about it.
Who are the conversion pastors and what is CCK? the pastors are people who force people to convert because people have a different religion from them. If some people aren’t belong to their religious body, the pastors manipulate public opinion by defining the people as cult. they move through their families to evade the law without being harmed, and receive a lot of money for the conversion. They approach a victim’s family (mainly parents or husband) and say “if you not convert your family quickly from the cult, your family gives up studies or jobs, and leave from you” to induce them to coercive conversion. However, actually, it's the coercive conversion pastors who act such brutalities.
The CCK that promote coercive conversion had a plutocracy to sell and buy the position of the Chairman of CCK and even committed an act of brutality by anointing hands and appointing pastors for those who had never even been to a seminary, if they have paid money. And during the period when Korea was under the Japanese colonial rule, they worked as the informants of Japan who trampled and destroyed Korean country and people, and incited pastors from each denomination to worship and praise the Japanese god. These is the evidence that they are disqualified as believer.
Their brutality was not only to Ms. Gu. According to Human Rights Organization for Victims of Coercive Conversion Programs (HAC), The victims of coercive religious conversion program numbered about 1,000 from year 2003 to 2017, which caused two deaths. In a survey of 900 people from 2003 to March 2015, 55 percent of the victims claimed they were threatened and brainwashed during the coercive religious conversion program and 52 percent claimed they were imprisoned. In addition, 42 percent of the victims were taken to coercive religious conversion program by kidnapping. It was even reported that 2 percent which equals to 10 people were hospitalized in psychiatric hospitals for not being converted. When it came to mental injury during coercive conversion program, 77.4 percent of the victims which equals to 363 people out of 494 felt extreme fear caused by a violent environment. And it was found that the number of people who suffered from mental disorders and stress due to the conversive program process and the environment was 322 people which is 65 percent. Even in 2007, the former husband visited a woman in her 40s and beat her to death with hammer in Ulsan since she refused to take the religious conversion program. It turned out that there were conversion pastors behind her former husband.
Earlier this year, the 221 U.S. media including NBC, CBS, and ABC reported on their brutality, calling it ‘South Korea: The Olympic Games Amid Large-Scale Human Rights Protests’. And now, in #Remember_Gu, we're going to once again launch a campaign to accuse the CCK and pastors of coercive conversion.
You reading this!! help no more tears to flow through anyone's eyes. We will also accuse the CCK so that no one will die from the cruel conversion! Please blaze the news abroad that their atrocities are eliminated in South Korea where religious freedom is guaranteed! Your help will reduce more victims and help us live from the threat of life.
I'm really grateful to you for reading.
It's really sad...:(
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