South Korea faced a crisis early in the pandemic, when a 61-year-old woman with a fever attended several Shincheonji Church of Jesus events in the city of Daegu. The area subsequently became the largest epicenter of the coronavirus outside China. South Korea successfully flattened the curve and became a world leader for its pandemic response. Shincheonji, meanwhile, became infamous as the Christian cult supposedly responsible for the country’s outbreak. But the way the group has been treated brings up tough questions of religious freedom, pandemic responsibility, and media scapegoating.
One of the reasons Shincheonji has been blamed for the spread of the virus is the testimony of former members who say that even when they were sick, they were expected to attend services where they were “packed together like sardines.” There have also been reports that say church members believe their faith protects them from illness, or that illness is a sin. This, South Koreans will tell you, is why Shincheonji members gathered in groups of more than 1,000 even as a pandemic was underway. This is why South Korea only recorded about one new case per day in its first month—then jumped from 31 cases to 6,767 over the next two and a half weeks, with 63.5 percent of those cases tied to the church.
