Church at centre of Covid-19 outbreak in South Korea

A South Korean church with a messianic leader has been identified as a hotbed of coronavirus cases as the outbreak grows in parts of the country.

The leader of the sect, Lee Manhee, said all gatherings and other outreach had been suspended after health authorities linked Lee’s followers to more than two-thirds of all confirmed coronavirus cases in South Korea.

Lee denounced the coronavirus as a “devil’s deed” to curb the growth of his church, which extols Lee as a prophet-like figure who can decode hidden meanings from the Bible before a coming apocalypse. Critics describe Lee’s network as a cult.

Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said more than two-thirds of South Korea’s 204 confirmed coronavirus cases are traced to Lee’s secretive religious movement, called Shincheonji Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony.

KCDC director Jung Eun-kyeong told reporters that Shincheonji services, which often gather followers in a crowded spaces, possibly led to mass transmissions.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in called for a full investigation into transmission clusters at a Shincheonji church in Daegu, in South Korea’s southeast.

Daegu, a city of two-and-a-half million that is the country’s fourth largest, emerged as the focus of government efforts to contain the coronavirus known as Covid-19.

Mayor Kwon Young-jin of Daegu has urged residents to stay inside, even wearing masks at home, to stem further infection.

Lee, who founded the church in 1984, said the mass infection was “a devil’s deed to curb the rapid growth of Shincheonji”, according to an internal message carried by South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency.

Shincheonji said in a public statement Friday that it has shut and disinfected all of its 74 churches nationwide.

The church is believed to have more than 200,000 adherents across the country.

Followers equate Lee with the second coming of Jesus who will deliver salvation from an impending end of days.

The multiplying caseload in South Korea showed the ease with which the illness can spread.

Initial infections were linked to China, but new cases in South Korea and Iran — where there have been four deaths — don’t show a clear connection to travel there.

In an emerging cluster of illnesses in northern Italy, the first to fall ill met with someone who had returned from China on January 21 without experiencing any symptoms of the new virus, health authorities said.