Escort convoy and court perks: Shincheonji founder faces new criticism
Lee Man-hee, the 93-year-old founder and leader of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, is facing criticism after a local TV station revealed that he used personal security staff to control traffic and allegedly received preferential treatment during court-ordered education sessions.
According to an exclusive report by JTBC on Thursday, Lee organized a private convoy unit known as the 'Volunteer Traffic Department,' enlisting male Shincheonji members with strong driving skills to escort his vehicle using motorcycles. The exact period during which this operation took place was not disclosed.
The convoy members, despite having no legal authority, blocked civilian vehicles from passing. On one occasion, they stopped an oncoming car to allow Lee's car to make a U-turn. The motorcycles were equipped with red and blue sirens, causing ordinary citizens to believe high-ranking government officials were passing by, a Shincheonji insider told JTBC.
Under Article 39 of the country's Road Traffic Act, only emergency vehicles, including police cars and ambulances, are permitted to use sirens. Violators may face a fine of up to 3 million won ($2,211).
The report said Lee, after experiencing police escort services during a visit to the Philippines in 2016, decided to form his own private convoy team here.
His attempts to receive special treatment continued even during mandatory education sessions imposed by the court for convicted offenders, JTBC reported.
In August 2022, the controversial head of the messianic religious sect was handed a three-year prison term, suspended for five years, after being convicted of embezzlement and obstruction of business.
He was found to have misappropriated over 5 billion won in church funds while building Shincheonji's training center, known as "Palace of Peace," in 2014, and to have held religious events in public venues without approval from local governments between 2015 and 2019.
The court found him not guilty of conspiring with church officials to downplay the number of members and worship locations reported to health authorities during February 2020, when COVID-19 spread rapidly among the church's followers.
At the time, the court ordered him to complete 80 hours of "legal compliance education," which typically requires offenders to gather in a classroom at the Legal Compliance Support Center, operated by the Crime Prevention Policy Bureau under the Ministry of Justice. There, offenders attend lectures by legal experts, take online courses or engage in group discussions, officials said.
However, Lee allegedly received all 16 sessions of the education one-on-one in a separate room, with each session conducted not by a professional instructor but by a staff member at the Legal Compliance Support Center. He even had a foldable bed set up in the room, the insider said.
Regarding allegations of special treatment for Lee during the sessions, the Justice Ministry told JTBC that he had health issues and that there were concerns someone with a personal connection to him might attempt to harm him during the program.
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A further search of Lee's house discovered potassium cyanide, the poison found in Kim's body, along with a notebook containing the names of about 20 women. This is what the police concluded: Lee lured Kim to the mountain under the pretense of a photo shoot. The December chill provided the perfect cover for his dark plan to poison her. He offered Kim what he told her was "cold medicine," claiming he was worried she might catch a cold during the shoot. But the medicine was laced with potassium cyanide. As the poison coursed through Kim's veins, Lee used his camera to meticulously document her final moments. After she died, he removed her clothes while continuing to take pictures. When the truth was revealed, Lee shouted excitedly at investigators that the sight of a dying human is art. He called the photos artistic, saying they were what he'd always yearned for. That was the last statement by Lee that we have. He was sentenced to death, and a few years later, on May 27, 1986, he was executed by hanging. Epilogue Was Kim the killer's first victim? Are we to believe that all the pictures taken by Lee, a man obsessed with photographing death, were staged? All staged, except for Kim's? Police thought it to be unlikely. They wanted to investigate the names in Lee's notebook along with the other gruesome photos in his collection. But the investigation stopped there. It's widely believed that with major international events coming up, the Korean government was mindful of the country's image and was concerned that uncovering more murders could attract negative attention. The case had already been reported internationally, and Japanese media had shown particular interest. Today, the case is a popular subject for local criminologists. While some experts link the case to necrophilia — an obsession with, and often erotic attraction to, dead bodies — a more widely accepted analysis is that he acted on his ever-growing ego and lust. During the 1983 investigation, authorities had uncovered that he had previously lured a young woman under false pretenses and raped her. They also discovered his persistent demand that his wife re-create sexual images he had seen in Japanese magazines and pornography. Perhaps we'll never know exactly what he did or why he did it. What's more revealing in this case is the way his crime was reported in the media at the time, and how it continues to be today, highlighting society's fascination with gruesome imagery, and how the misfortune and violence that befell an innocent victim served to reinforce our own sense of safety. In one article covering Lee's case in 1983, the photos of Kim dying were printed without any obfuscation of the macabre details, accompanied by the caption, 'This is the picture he wanted to take.' That article and a multitude of others are the source of the images of Kim's dying moments still circulating online. Kotaro Iizawa, a Japanese photographer and photo critic, explores the public's morbid fascination with images of death in "Photography and Fetishism," citing Lee's case as a notable example. In the book, he explains, 'Death has long been a popular theme in photography, and when combined with sexual elements, it creates an even more intense impact on viewers.' He argues that Lee's crime was so widely covered by the media because of our innate desire for shocking content. Today, publishing graphic images of a victim is unthinkable in many countries, including South Korea, because of measures taken to protect the privacy of the victims of crime. But our innate curiosity of those victims hasn't disappeared. It's simply moved into cyberspace. And so, with a heavy heart, we, again, express our deepest condolences for Kim Kyung-hee. She may not have had a perfect family life, but she did nothing to deserve her fate ― she only trusted a man she should not have. This article is a written adaptation of The Korea Herald's new podcast True Crime. You can listen to the full episode on Spotify and Podbbang. ― Ed.
