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That night on February 25, Daegu was bathed in deathly silence. This city in southeastern South Korea had just become the main focus of coronavirus outside of China. In the few hotels that accepted guests, there were signs on the doors that made it clear that not everyone was welcome. "Important notice: Members of the Church of Jesus Shincheonji are prohibited from entering," read one of the signs hanging on the window of a downtown hotel in the city.

All the residents of Daegu already knew what had happened: a virus had spread within a Christian temple in which all the parishioners thought they were immune, that they would live forever and that getting sick was a sin because it prevented them from completing the work of God . All this while the SARS-CoV-2 jumped taking advantage of the prayers to the divine and settling in some people who decided to hide the earthly truth. "The virus has come out of that church and hundreds of its faithful are infected," explained the owner of the hotel.

Over the next few days, the South Korean authorities began to track down those infected among the more than 200,000 Shincheonji faithful . A Christian group that for them their church is the "nation of God". Although the vast majority of South Koreans see it as a dark sect . The search was not easy because silence prevailed among the faithful and many hid.

Then all the spotlights pointed to the sect leader, an 89-year-old man named Lee Man-hee who had described the new coronavirus as an "action of the devil". Lee asked his "priests" to continue their sermons, ignoring the authorities' instructions to suspend masses. He also pushed his followers to go to the temples without a mask because that was "a lack of respect for God . " If anyone was ill or had symptoms, they should also go to the religious service. Lee claimed that they were all immune.

This weekend, Lee has been arrested for allegedly obstructing government efforts to contain the spread of the pandemic. South Korean prosecutors allege the man conspired with other sect leaders to withhold information from authorities during the peak of the outbreak in February and March. Lee is suspected of presenting false documents to Health officials regarding the number of participants in his sect meetings. He is also accused of embezzling 5.6 trillion won (3.5 million euros) of church funds and conducting mass religious events without authorization for the past five years. 5,200 infected came from Shincheonji , 36% of the total number of cases reported in South Korea since the start of the pandemic.

On March 2, all the media in the Asian country took to their covers the image of Lee Man-hee kneeling in front of dozens of cameras. "The leader of the sect asks for forgiveness," read the headlines. "As a representative of the followers of Shincheonji, I sincerely apologize to the public. It was not our intention and still many people have been infected," Lee said outside one of her temples in Gapyeong, 50 kilometers northeast of Seoul.

Lee Man-hee, 'advocate of God'

Some of his followers call him 'President Lee' . Others prefer a more divine term: "Advocate of God ." There are even those who consider him a messiah because he convinced them that he had a heavenly mission: to bring 144,000 people to heaven when the last day of judgment came . "Only a few will be saved; all others will be denied forgiveness and will be destroyed," the leader announced in his sermons.

36 years ago, Lee founded the Church of Jesus Shincheonji . Little by little, he was gathering followers, selling himself as the prophet of the Book of Revelation. Thus, a list of more than 240,000 worshipers grew . About his biography, at least the apparently real one, he said that he grew up in a peasant family and was a front-line soldier during the Korean War (1950-1953). But, as with his divine speech, his life is also fictionalized: he says that he is a descendant of Korean royalty, of the Joseon dynasty, and that Jesus Christ appeared to him as a brilliant heavenly figure as a young man to entrust him with the mission of bringing the heaven to thousands of believers.

When it became known that a "super-contagious" parishioner from her church had spread the coronavirus after attending four church services with more than 1,200 people, South Korean authorities asked Lee to suspend masses. He ignored it and it is believed that infected members of the sect traveled the country undetected and could further spread the virus.

Today, South Korea totals 14,389 infections and 301 deaths according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC). The latest count has reported 23 new cases, the lowest daily number since May 8.

The Asian country was the first nation in the world to speak openly of a "second wave of infections" . That happened in Seoul on June 22. The health authorities explained that a festive weekend in early May, with the focus on the nightclubs in the capital, marked the beginning of this new wave of infections that seems to be starting to subside.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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