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South Korea’s leading cult expert is Tark Ji-il, a professor of religion at Busan Presbyterian University. When I reached out to him, he said that as a person of Korean descent, this would be a “very meaningful study” for me. It has been for him as well, though for a different, darker reason: Tark’s father, who studied Korean cults for almost 30 years, was murdered by a cult member in 1994.
According to Tark, it’s nearly impossible to determine exactly how many Korean cults exist today, but he estimates the number is likely over 100. A solid statistic is difficult to wrangle, because many cults in South Korea consider themselves Christian entities. According to the 2015 census, 27.6% of South Koreans identify as Christian and 15.5% as Buddhist, while 56.9% of the population align themselves with no religious affiliation, with unregistered groups, or with Sindo (an indigenous folk religion also known as Korean shamanism). A 2012 Pew Research Center study offers similar statistics. Where cults may fit into those numbers, if at all, is unknowable.

But their presence is palpable in South Korea; I came across so many rumors and whispers about celebrities and politicians that I began to think you could link almost anyone or anything, within six degrees of separation, to cultish activity. Even one of the country’s most devastating tragedies in decades, the sinking of the MV Sewol ferry in 2014, could be traced back to a cult. Over 300 passengers drowned, sparking (among other indictments) a nationwide manhunt for Yoo Byung-eun, the chairman of the shipping company that operated the vessel. Yoo had also founded the Evangelical Baptist Church of Korea, known alternatively as the Salvation Sect, deemed a cult by the General Assembly of Presbyterian Churches in South Korea.

I’d come across the phrase “new religious movement” — rather than “cult” — a number of times in my research, so I asked Tark for clarification. He said a variety of terms are used to describe groups that exist on the fringes of mainstream religion, whose intentions range from meditative and innocuous, like Falun Gong, to manipulative and destructive, like David Koresh’s Branch Davidians — more than 80 of whom died in an inferno during the 1993 compound siege in Waco, Texas. I’d also read that sociologists popularized the term “new religious movement” to veer away from the derogatory associations with the word “cult,” like the tactics of mind control and brainwashing.

Tark prefers using “cult” or the biblical term “heresy” when referring to any group in Korea that has diverged from mainline churches. Those groups, he told me, typically ascribe to four principles:

1. God, or the Second Coming of Christ, or the Holy Spirit, is Korean.

2. The new revelation or doctrine is written in Korean.

3. The chosen people who will be saved are mostly Korean.

4. The new kingdom will be established in Korea.

Most of these heresies originated during South Korea’s three main periods of political unrest and cultural oppression: Japanese imperialist rule (1910–1945), the Korean War (1950–1953), and postwar dictatorship during massive industrialization (1960–1986). Tark believes this is no coincidence. “Military dictatorship [in Korea] needed blind supporters because they didn’t have any democratic basis, and cults needed an umbrella under which they could hide from mainline churches or surrounding society’s criticism,” he said. New Korea-centric religions, which blend facets of Buddhism, Christianity, and shamanism, appealed to Koreans who were desperate for salvation in times of national despair.

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A.S. goes one step further than Tark, positing that Korea’s sizable cult presence is a product of a century-long “spiritual inferiority crisis.” Imported faiths dominated Korean history for over 1,500 years. “We never had our own Buddha, our own Confucius,” A.S. told me. “Then somebody comes out and says, I am the savior, I am the Messiah … to have our own deity, of course people would get excited.”

The most enterprising cult leaders in Korea, though, anoint themselves as messiahs by proffering shamanlike, divine clarity. Korean shamanism, which is also known as muism, is a prehistoric belief system native to Korea. Mudangs or baksus, Korean shamans, are mystics and healers, gifted intermediaries between the spirit world and the human plane. Their traditional gut rituals are still performed today, for events like business openings or groundbreaking ceremonies, to help clients establish peace and balance with surrounding energies. In a 1997 article I’d read recounting my uncle’s exorcism case, experts claimed that shamanism “continues to strongly influence Korean thinking … a shaman, like a priest, is believed to possess special powers.”

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Meanwhile, beyond the realm of our home in Southern California, accounts of other religious, fanatical Koreans began to emerge.

Tell-all memoirs, international investigations, and even a 60 Minutes feature exposed the inner workings of the Unification Church, a South Korean “new religion” originally founded by leader and “true father” Moon Sun Myung in 1954. Moon’s group had successfully evangelized in the US and as far abroad as Russia and Czechoslovakia, boasting a membership of up to 3 million followers worldwide. Their nickname, the “Moonies,” had become synonymous with bright-eyed and brainwashed worshippers, who agreed to arranged marriages and mass weddings, squandering their life savings, toiling 21 hours a day..

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https://www.buzzfeed.com/jenhchoi/the-strange-true-story-of-my-uncle-the-exorcist?utm_term=.jvOdjBjw1#.vfa2jojDa

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650Special
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1 yr. ago

As you may have read online, one of the keys to passing level 4 is professing that the founder(s) of the meditation are 'the universe itself' and have 100% 'pure universe mind' -- as opposed to having any 'human mind' whatsoever. You can easily imagine what kind of implications this has when it comes to questioning their decisions or commands. It is often simply said among members that the founders are 'god'.

(This eventually extends to include Woo Myung's (second) wife, as well as their son. Go figure).

Another key to passing level of is professing to have "died completely" which is only supposed to be possible after a lot of the 'action meditation' -- as opposed to sitting meditation -- which begins in level 4.

Many people experience anxiety when it comes to passing the levels. I did for sure. You are supposed to be distressing, and enlightening, by discarding burdens, but a definite hierarchy emerges among the practitioners of the various levels. On top of that, there is the issue of the meditation being 'guided' but not everyone experiencing the same scheduled 'enlightenments' at the end/climax of each level. So people will ask themselves, "Did I really pass the level? Did I really enlighten?"

Also interesting: One of the primary duties of the helpers -- something they would never openly tell you about -- is known in English as "bragging." This means they are supposed to repeatedly tell the students about the wonders of being 'complete' , about how great their life is now that they are complete.

While it is true that you can experience prolonged periods of clarity that can feel like some final stage of 'enlightenment', these people's lives are by no means perfect, their minds by no means always at peace. But they are expected to constantly act as if they don't have a care in the world. So yes, you can experience altered states of mind, and even gain clarity in your life --that's possible with this practice -- but the extent to which this occurs is distorted by the bragging that all of the helpers do.

--

I ended up leaving purely by chance, you could say. I just found that I hadn't gone in a few weeks, and before I knew it, a few weeks turned into few months, and so on. There was no triggering moment that caused me to leave, it was just that the longer I spent away, the less I wanted to go back. It was very weird and unexpected given how devoted I had been to the organization and the teachings, and how long I had been a member.

What followed was a prolonged period of confusion that I sometimes refer to as my "thawing out." I had been deeply immersed, and the teachings had been deeply ingrained, transforming my entire understanding of myself and the world. And now, away from that organization, I felt very deeply confused about life.

All told, it took my a few years to gain some clear perspective on my experience. For those few years, I was very uncertain about what I believed, what I had experienced, and what to tell others.

It is remarkable how radically a person's entire understanding of life can be transformed.

When you go daily, or often, for years, the same messages are repeated over and over. There is even a jargon that is used there that nobody else uses. When you stay away for a while, the impression of all that starts to fade away.


I hope that helps.

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BellatrixLeRegular
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7 yr. ago
· edited 7 yr. ago

Ok, thanks your for pointing that on reddit, actually I've been following (following = internet watching / RSS / etc) Maum Meditation for a while. What warries me is that it is really spreading to really many people and there's almost no media coverage for that (wich makes me thinking if governements are really aware of this cult, just thinking that current Intelligence agencies warries to much about tax evasion and miss important things like Maum Meditation ^ ). I think this IS DIFFERENT FROM MANY CULTS, I GUESS ACTUALLY IT IS THE MOST WORLD-WIDE SPREADED, still the only people that know about the cult are familiars/friends of people that is actually a cultist, or people that is actually inside the cult.

Says, you have statistics for people being followers of Buddishm or Muslims, but THERE IS NO STATISTIC FOR MAUM.

Most websites speaking bad of Maum are now disappeared, I was collecting links to gain information, but seems those site were lawsuited / DDOS-ed and are no longer available / articles were removed, the only chance to still get some info comes thanks to sites that are harder to put down (like reddit, in this "REALLY THANKS REDDIT COMMUNITY / DEVELOPERS"). only few sites still mentions Maum (culteducation.com in example. you can even find forum posts where cultits defend Maum meditation).

My situation is almost comical, in the sense I've been trying to get Media gain some focus on this "mediation club", the result was NONE. I've been trying to contact anonymous priests associations and warn about this cult, I've been trying to write to editorials staff, being completely ignored or suggested to go to mindhealth institute :/ (well, probably I can't do much to change the situation)

FACTS:

Maum meditation is changing name, there are almost over 30 websites that still mentions Woo Myung and shows the same 7 levels on home page. Now you will find "MeditationUSA" "MeditationLife" etc.

There are wikipedia pages for Maum (not in english)

There are groups on Meetup, there are literally HUNDREDS of Meetup groups, I've been watching some of them from a fake account, the basically send daily invitations to "come and meditate", subscribers to those groups are dozen of thousands.

IT IS TOLD Woo Myung WON "Mahatma Gandhi peace price" from united nations ONG, however, seems internet have No information on that price (apart the sites that are obviously related to meditation) there are online sources claiming that is a fake claim.

Woo Muyng is called "World peace ambassador".

There are hidden fees for sure (I know someone who sold all its consoles/videogames to afford a travel to Argentina)

They have a Self Balancing Food, still I don't know what it exactly contains (they claim dried vegetables), there's no institute that actually performed analysis on that food to say if it is safe or contains stuff like drugs etc, It smells like boillon cube and taste similiar if dissolved in water (I've tasted it indeed, so regardless of what it contains, it has nothing poisonous, or I won't be here to write XD)

Meditation is becoming cheaper (in Europe it is under 100 euros/month).

Meditation pracitse has to be secret, we indeed know something (like you have to figuring yourself leaking into a blackhole as meditation practise), but we don't know all excercises up to level 7, so we at least know that people went after level 1 or 2 no longer comes back.

The teacher(ehmm er... the "helper") became Angry when I asked him if "someone ever came back after entering level 7?", he almost lose its control but tried to immediatly become as quiet as possible (still guessin what that means)

There have been attemps to create Q&A sites against Cults with no success, apart some solitaire blog, the reddit posts, and sites like culteducation there are no successfull attemps to really put down maum meditation.

I'm looking for REAL INFO form people that has been inside the cult, I just stopped practicing after 5 days because I felt something was really wrong (even before started doing my internet searches).

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[www.quora.com]

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Austin C
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How do you start Maum meditation?

I was brainwashed by maum meditation (woo myung cult). I felt sorry that I left my family & true friends to follow woo myung cult for years. I was very selfish because I only want to save myself using maum meditation. My family was suffering but I didn’t care because I meditated everyday. I lost my job and my saving.

After last level of maum meditation, the senior members started to ask me to work full time for the meditation center.

The worst part was the helper s tried to ‘control’ my live… including how I use my OWN money.

Maum cult has a special team to chase people who speak up about maum cult. Instead of doing self reflection, this group was searching who tell about abusive practices in maum cults.

It also started changing its name to local meditation centers such as: Austin Meditation, Flushing Meditation, Broward Meditation, etc. to deceive innocent people.

I met the maum meditation founder, woo myung personally. I felt sorry that he had too much anger, stress, depression and always upset to senior helpers. Woo myung should abandon and discard maum meditation so that he can get rid of his stress and anger.