Those of you that regularly visit Asia Pundits will likely know by now about the Mannam/Shinchonji cult. Earlier this year, we ran an interview with Peter Daley, an English teacher in South Korea that has seemingly made it his life’s work to track down, examine and expose cults that operate here in Korea. One of the cults that Peter has been hot on the trail of as of late is Mannam/Shinchonji.
Essentially, Mannam operates under the guise of volunteer organization in an attempt to attract foreigners in South Korea and other parts of the world to their group. Mannam puts on sports events, language lessons, peace rallies and “volunteer” activities that foreigners in Korea are actively encouraged to participate in free of charge. Those that join and participate in events and activities sponsored by Mannam are then unwittingly used as public relations pawns to legitimize Shinchonji to its followers, as well as attract new members to the cult. The basic premise behind Mannam is “If foreigners support what we’re doing, we can’t be all that bad, right?” Right.
Here is some footage recorded by Peter from a “peace rally” held by Mannam this summer at Olympic Park in Seoul. Notice how “peaceful” Mannam members act towards Peter while he attempts to film their event:
As if this organization wasn’t bizarre enough, here is yet another twist to the seemingly never ending Mannam/Sinchonji saga. Before founder Lee Man-hee started Sinchonji, he was involved in another cult called “The Tent Temple—or the Temple of the Tabernacle“. This group was founded by a man named Yoo Jae-yeol, a Gentleman, that just so happens to be Korean pop megastar Psy’s father-in-law.
According to the Korean Wikipedia entry on Mr. Yoo, his organization, at its peak in the early 1970s, had around 5,000 members, of which most were uneducated middle-aged women. Things were going pretty good for Mr. Yoo during this time and membership in his sect steadily increased until he sealed his fate one day by predicting that the world would end in 1969. When 1969 came and passed without any noticeable end to anything besides the hippie movement, Mr. Yoo’s followers literally wanted their money back and sought vengeance against their leader that had deceived them.
In 1971, aspiring cult leader Lee Man-hee, apparently fed up with Mr. Yoo’s shenanigans and his church, sued him for fraud. In 1975, Yoo Jae-yeol was convicted of defrauding members of his church and sentenced to 5 years in prison. This sentence was later reduced by half. Mr. Yoo consequently served 2 1/2 years in prison and was placed on probation for another four years. After his period of probation was over, he moved to the United States where he started another “church” called the “Church of Issac“, a sub-sect of the Presbyterian faith, and where he slipped into relative obscurity and still actively preaches to this day.
Not to be outdone by Lee Man-hee in his battle for king of the cultists, Yoo Jae-yeol sued the future Shinchonji leader for defamation of character before leaving for the US, a lawsuit which eventually saw Lee Man-hee convicted and forced to spend 4 months in jail before being released and sentenced to a probationary period which lasted until 1984. It was around this time that Lee Man-hee started the cult which today is infamously known as Shinchonji.
So, what’s PSY’s connection to all of this? Well, for one, he is married to a prominent cult leader’s daughter, a man that has served hard time for deceiving his followers about an apocalypse which never occurred. This may or may not be significant depending on how close of a relationship Yoo Hye-yeon and PSY have with Yoo Jae-yeol. For all we know, Yoo Hye-yeon’s father could be dead to them both considering some of the outlandish beliefs he has propagated in the past.
Not much is publicly known about her ties to her father and his religious teachings. Furthermore, not much is known about the details of Yoo Hye-yeon’s relationship with PSY. They were and have remained a very private couple despite PSY’s meteoric rise to fame. Psy hasn’t commented one way or another on his father-in-law and seems to steer clear of the topic of religion when it is brought up in interviews. This may be due to the fact that he wants to keep his religion or lack thereof private and separate from the music he creates, and he likely prefers to keep his family life a private matter. This story, and PSY’s tenuous connection to it, is an interesting revelation. If nothing else, the story shines light on a period of Lee Man-hee’s life that is absent on biographies published on Mannam and Shinchonji websites and leads us to further question what exactly is going on in the house of PSY.
Besides the fact that this article is hugely speculative, it takes advantage of a tenuous link to PSY to drive up interest in a completely different cult that he has no link to, tenuous or otherwise, whatsoever. Beyond that, PSY's failure to comment on his religion in any interviews is not "notable" at all. The majority of K-Pop stars don't talk about religion, and given that approximately 50% of Koreans profess no religious beliefs, it is completely reasonable that the topic of religion might not come up in an interview ever. I understand the motivation to increase readership by capitalizing on a Korean celebrity's appeal in the West, but this just feels lazy and it cheapens what would otherwise be an interesting discussion.
If my father-in-law was a total douchebag cultist that had ruined thousands of lives, I would hope I would have the integrity to publicly comment on that and express a bit of remorse for the thousands of people he had harmed, perhaps as a way to move beyond that embarrassing situation, and if nothing else, as a way to show some respect to my wife and daughter, rather than brush the situation under the rug as PSY has done and say nothing at all. If there are questions that remain about this topic its because PSY hasn't answered them, not because we haven't looked to find those answers.
I trust that you looked to find those answers, but is it really that PSY is being evasive, or simply that nobody has cared to ask him? To say this "leads us to further question what exactly is going on in the house of PSY," implies that you feel like there is in fact something suspicious going on. You're making the story about PSY, when the story is actually about Lee and Yoo, which is wacky enough by itself to be interesting. Yes, it's worth noting that PSY is married to an ex-cult leader's daughter. That deserves a sentence or two, sure. But why make the story about him? Has he done anything to make you think he's involved, or that he even cares? If not, then making him central to your story is just distracting.
Alex, a lot of our questions regarding Mannam started in speculation and as interest grew and more information became available, people were able to confirm what they guessed and pool their information. If you have a problem with asking questions in order to improve your understanding of an issue, then you should probably disconnect your computer. People, especially high-profile media personalities with ties to questionable organizations often don't want these connections to see the light of day. Maybe Psy's connection to the cult business model in Korea is simply coincidence, but maybe not. Churches are a great way to launder money that would otherwise be taxed, and the more money people have…the more they hate being taxed. Psy was so desperate for attention…but he doesn't get to choose what sort of attention that is…and neither do you.
I couldn't care less what questions are asked of PSY. If you want to interview him and ask him about his connection, go for it. I said specifically that I thought his connection was a point worth mentioning. And I'm all for investigative journalism. If you want to ask questions to find answers, then you should. My point was that by focusing on PSY rather than including him as a sidenote, the article went down the road of speculation and stopped being investigative. Go out and ask the questions and then report back on the answers – that's useful. But posing questions to the ether without trying to answer them doesn't further the investigation. It simply plants ideas in people's heads that he is somehow implicated, when in fact the answer to that remains unknown. If PSY is seriously, or even casually, involved in a cult, that is something the world should be allowed to know. I just hope that someone is actually doing some legwork to maybe try and get the question asked of PSY so that there's a comment on record. That's good journalism. But speculation being reported as news is not going to usefully further the conversation.
How come there are no photos of Man Hee Lee ‘s young ages on the Internet ?