FIJI - Deports Leaders of Korean Sect
Fijian authorities said they were in the process of deporting six leaders of a South Korean religious sect that a decade ago moved hundreds of followers to Fiji and built a series of thriving businesses into an empire.
But authorities said they were only able to apprehend four of the principals of the Grace Road Church, and that senior director Daniel Kim and another man were on the run.
It’s unclear how the deportations will affect the estimated 400 South Korean adherents who remain in Fiji and the hundreds of local Fijians they employ. Grace Road businesses are prominent across the island country and include farms, restaurants, supermarkets, gas stations and dentists.
The sect first moved to Fiji under Daniel Kim’s mother, Shin Ok-ju, who told her followers that Fiji provided a safe haven from impending war and famine. She is currently imprisoned in South Korea after being found guilty of various crimes, including holding followers captive and assaulting them.
In 2019, a South Korean court found that, in Fiji, Shin forced her followers to work without pay. The work included farming, hairdressing, construction, and restaurant services. They lived together at a facility that separated family members as well as men and women, the court found. Most of the devotees’ passports were confiscated.
Shin held a ritualistic event almost every day to get followers to beat each other in the name of “driving away evil spirits.”
-abcnews.go.com, 7 September 2023
Commentary
It’s interesting how similar what the leaders of this sect were espousing to what the ultra-rich secular apocalypse preppers envisioned (see article on Nauru, Sept. 2023 Midnight Call, p. 25). The founder led her followers to Fiji to escape “impending war and famine.” Most egregious is the fact that workers were not paid, despite “a series of thriving businesses … an empire.” Not to mention the abuse of parishioners in the guise of “driving away evil spirits.”
This is a wakeup call to Christians to be alert and not fall prey to false doctrines. The cult’s practice of separating married couples was a clear violation of Scripture that originates from the devil himself, “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry…” (1 Timothy 4:1-3a). -By K. Farmer
Arno Froese is the executive director of Midnight Call Ministries and editor-in-chief of the acclaimed prophetic magazines Midnight Call and News From Israel. He has authored a number of well-received books, and has sponsored many prophecy conferences in the U.S., Canada, and Israel. His extensive travels have contributed to his keen insight into Bible prophecy, as he sees it from an international perspective.
