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[TheBiggerFish]

I don't think it's a bloody cult, what I do think is there literally being a shadow government is more WTF-worthy than this reaction.

[RedKing]

From what scant info I can find on 영생교 (Choi Tae-min's "Eternal Life Bridge" organization), calling it Christianity is a grave misunderstanding. Just like Western versions of Zen and Taoism often water down the essence of it, Eastern versions of Christianity often have some novel interpretations and attempts to make it "fit" with existing religious schools.

It's not uncommon in Asia that Christianity gets syncretized with indigenous belief systems and comes out....a bit off-kilter. And sometimes dangerously so. Like the Taiping Rebellion in China, led by a guy who claimed to be Jesus' half-brother.

Choi Tae-min apparently claimed to be Maitreya, a messianic bodhisattva from Buddhist tradition, which in itself shows it's some kind of syncretic belief system, not bog-standard Christianity of any stripe. Even if you understand Maitreya to be an attempt to contextualize Jesus within Buddhist tradition...if the preacher claims to *be* Jesus, we usually call that a cult and take a big step backwards (while mouthing "call the police" to anybody nearby).

The problem is that original source material is damn near impossible to find now, because the search terms are in a zillion blogs and news sites now. And there's a lot of similar cults out there to seperate it from including *another* Yeongsang-gyo cult which was founded in 1981 and has a seriously checkered past, including murder, kidnapping, and underground temples (like, literally subterranean -- including in New York and Philadelphia). I'm....not altogether clear on whether the two are related, because I have fuck-all skill in reading Korean.

Also keep in mind that you have CIA documents indicating that Choi Tae-min was telling Park, back in 1974, that he had the ability to channel her dead mother.

So no, this is not 'oh noes Koreans don't understand Christianity and are calling it a cult'. This is 'oh noes Koreans are calling a cult a cult and rightfully concerned at its proximity to their current President for the last 20+ years'.


EDIT: Hey, Skyrunner, can you confirm if the two 영생교 I'm seeing reference to are related? I don't *think* they are, and the website for the latter Yeongsang-gyo seems to deny any connection, but it's hard to tell because Google Translate utterly craps the bed when it comes to Korean->English. 

[MetalSlimeHunt]

* MetalSlimeHunt sweats loudly resisting the urge to be euphoric and enlightened by his own intelligence in the DPRK Thread.

[Max™]

Loud sweat seems like a serious condition, you should see a doctor, or an exorcist.

[Frumple]

Fair heads up RK (or whoever), google at the least lets you filter by date -- an easy trick when you're looking for older stuff on something that just blew up is to set the to date to a few months/years back and leave the from blank. It'll pull up everything before that date, which makes it was lot easier to find something currently being buried in identical news stories or blog spam or whatev'.

[Max™]

I'm sure there's a way to make ddg do that but I can't figure it out yet, I should go look for a ddg shortcuts/tricks guide.

[RedKing]

* MetalSlimeHunt sweats loudly resisting the urge to be euphoric and enlightened by his own intelligence in the DPRK Thread.

Does this mean I'm being reassigned as Director of Intelligence for the People's Republic of Greater Carolina?

[Skyrunner]

Let's see.

For starters, Yeongsaegyeo is not a generally accepted part of christianity. It's also different from the Yeongsaenggyeo which kidnapped and murdered a bunch of people half a century ago. It's basically a cult with a leadership of two, Choi's father was the first head of the religion and Choi is pointed to be the second, and the cult was founded in 1970.

(sidenote: it's incorrect to say that any old religion founded back then could be seen as radical, because Christianity came in much earlier. According to Wikipedia which cites a book <Kenneth Scott Latourette, Christianity in a Revolutionary Age: Vol. 5: The Twentieth century outside Europe (1962) pp 414-5> the "Catholic population [was] reaching 147,000, and the Protestants 168,000 in the mid-1930s." Since the two religions kept growing, any religion founded in 1970 can only be seen as a cult both in terms of radicalness, numbers and canon. Forgive me for not actually reading the citation, I'm not writing a paper for class here so... <effort>)


This is an ad for Yeongsaegyeo. It says something about "the savior the Creator has sent us will teach you the three values from the three religions: Buddhist nirvana, Protestant Holy Spirit, and the Catholic Heaven" and also says that you can cure any disease and uch at the bottom, and urges you to come to this one place. It's quite obviously not Christianity, because Christianity in general abhors other religions and by definition focuses on Jesus, not a random dude, as the savior. It also calls god "God," "Lord," "Father" more often than the Creator.


Now, mind control and whatnot are farfetched, but it's definitely true that Choi has had a large effect on Park. 100% of her speeches were edited by someone with no experience in speechwriting and no relationship to the government. And tons of governmental reports (which are confidential to civilians) were delivered to Choi, circumventing protection laws and programs. Correct me if I'm wrong, but normally how lobbying works is the president mentions "oh hey there's this policy that might hurt you" and the other guy says "yeah, it would suck" and then the president nudges the policy in a different direction that benefits the other guy. I suppose people see Choi as more blatant and unforgivable corruption. In this case it seems that Choi was delivered daily governmental reports, commented on the policies and recommended ways forward for Park, and on top of that edited all of her speeches despite not being a speechwriter or in any way connected to the government.

Addendum: crimes that Choi and/or Park and/or her underlings are possibly committing

Choi & Blue House officials: Violating confidentiality of military secrets
Choi: Exploring and acquiring military secrets
BHO: Leaking national secrets
BHO: Leaking diplomatic secrets
BHO: Leaking executive secrets
Choi & BHO: Offending the Law on Presidential Report Handling
Choi: Accepting/inciting bribery
Certain political defenders of Park: Brokering of bribery (ie, accepting a bribe from A on behalf of B, then giving it to B)
Varios benefactors of the nonprofit: Embezzlement
All benefactors: Embezzlement & Misappropriation of non-profit funds for personal gain

So half of these charges are related to national law and the other are plain old corruption.



here are my sources, unfortunately they are all in korean
Hangyeorae website line to line comparison of Dredsen Speech, which I used to verify that at least for this speech the meaning wans't radically changed.
Namu wiki page: Choi Sun Shil Gate overview of "choi sun-shil gate." It's not Wikipedia but rather Namu Wiki, which works on the same wiki base but has a much larger number of participating people. Korean wikipedia is kindof a shell compared to the English one.
Namu wiki page: Choi Sun Shil this page emphasizes that Yeongsaegyeo is NOT Yeongsaenggyeo.
Kukmin Ilbo (Citizens' News) article this news article reiterates that fact and is also the source of the advertisement. Incidentally, Citizens' News is a Christian-founded media so it may be biased, though the newspaper advertisement  seems to be legitimate.



PS: You might note that my tone is a lot more neutral than before. This isn't goalpost moving I swear ;-; I'm just changing my opinion based on more research. My new stance is that while the Choi corruption case is not a fantasy case of mind control, it still is looking likely to be manipulation (since they have 30 years of history) by Choi... and if you look just at the facts, it's a pretty serious crime to have someone leak important documents to a private source that is not secure at all, plus  have that same source also edit all your speeches, plus have Park directly funnel funds to a non-profit rather than mildly change policy to have the same effect.



PPS: I do think that it's not logical to call bloody murder for direct corruption (literally channeling money to someone else) over indirect corruption (aka lobbying, or changing policies and laws to have the same effect). But it seems more personal this way I suppose. I guess a lot of the disgust also comes from Choi being part of a self-proclaimed cult rather than a traditional religion.

Also, there is direct evidence that all these things happened which helps fuel the flames.


PPPS: I tried to make my thought process as coherent as possible but i don't think i did a good job, just look at these three post-scripts. Welp.

[TheDarkStar]

It doesn't matter especially much exactly what kind of religious beliefs are involved (as long as it doesn't involve actual crimes - murder, kidnapping, etc) or even if it was a corporate entity literally ruling the country - there's still someone working as a de facto leader which afaik is completely illegal in most countries.

[Reelya]

IDK, merely listening to someone for advice itself is not illegal. Think about it: what is a "defacto leader" and how would you enforce a law about it. Say I'm the president, and I get 100% of my policy positions from my gardener. Exactly who and what would you prosecute? The gardener or the politician? Is the gardener breaking the law by telling me his ideas, and/or am I breaking the law by listening?

You couldn't really quantify what a "defacto leader" is, not to the point to have a law against it. Wouldn't that preclude e.g. politicians getting policy positions from their spouse for example? Is it ok because they're married? What about a girlfriend/boyfriend of the politician then? And where is the line between listening to a sex-partner on policy vs listening to a friend?

The illegal part is sharing confidential information with someone who doesn't have security clearance. The President is 100% in the clear to involve anyone they want in their personal decision-making process however they want, as long as they don't do that.

The Reagans had an astrologer on hand for 8 years in the White House for example.

[Skyrunner]

oh also another separate problem is how Korea doesn't think protesting is a right. the protest was dispersed by the police pushing everyone onto a small area to squish them, threatening that they are recording the faces of everyone here and that they will arrest everyone for illegal protesting, and their previous history of applying high pressure water and tear gas to the crowd.

[Reelya]

I think that's a bigger and more ingrained problem than the president having a friend who's a mystic.

[Max™]

Except that this is a case where we had an obviously absurd and easily dismissed conspiracy theory which then winds up being at least partially confirmed, thus lending more credibility to the rest of the absurdity than it had before.

I think the /int/ anon explained it better than I am.

[Skyrunner]

I think that's a bigger and more ingrained problem than ...

Yeah, it is. And part of the reason that i think these things keep on happening is because the government is allowed to do those things and not enough people think it's wrong enough to change it.

Also i like this phrase: the reason that koreans are so mad is because park's not rationally corrupt in a profit-seeking way, she's "irrationally corrupt".

"In an ordinary case of political corruption, the politician is in it for himself. At most, the politician is doing it for his family, or other rich people who may end up helping him later. Obviously, corruption is bad. But this type of self-interested corruption at least gives some measure of predictability. We all know what self-interest looks like. Even though we would prefer that our politicians are not corrupt, at least we know how corrupt politicians behave."


edit: oddly enough some people honestly believe that this entire scandal is lies made by the commies to take over Korea. They lament how the last bastions of truth--the conservative media that also helped reveal this scandal--have finally been corrupted by the red menace, etc. Crazies be crazy.

[Reelya]

Oh right, so the President is a conservative and it's the conservative media that are trying to bring her down?

So I guess the lefties have a better shot of election next time now?