'Excuse me, can I have five minutes of your time?' The modern recruitment methods of Korean cults

Korean cults are targeting young people, particularly college students, with normal conversations — until they take a turn.

A woman holds picket protest in front of Shincheonji Peace Palace in Gapyeong, Gyeonggi, arguing that she lost contact with her daughter after she has taken into Shincheonji Church of Jesus. [NEWS1]

“Excuse me, can I have five minutes of your time? It won’t take that long,” a random woman holding an iPad said to me on the main street of Sinchon in western Seoul.

At first, I thought she was a survey checker. But after talking to her for a few minutes, I realized that she was actually a recruiter for a cult.

Chloe Pui Ying Savannah Yu

Before coming to Korea, I had heard about religious cults like Shincheonji, where hundreds of thousands of people are members. I also watched YouTube videos warning against older Korean men and women on the street who would ask you to follow them to a cafe, or tell you that you had bad energy that needed to be expelled — and to perform a ritual with them in order to remove it.

It wasn’t until I moved to Sinchon during my second year of university that I first encountered more modern methods. It was a young man and woman who had approached me, asking for my opinion on a wellness and motivation calendar app which they said they were making.

Seeing how friendly and normal they were, and with my desire to make Korean friends, I agreed to meet with them at a cafe. There, we engaged in a normal conversation until it took a turn. They started to introduce a philosophy I had never heard of, focused on personal achievement and inner being.

I immediately got uncomfortable and promptly expressed my disinterest in what they were discussing and ended our meeting. Despite their persistent messages after that, asking to meet again, I ignored them and blocked their contact.

Members of Shincheonji Church of Jesus gather together to celebrate in Daegu on Nov. 12. [NEWS1]

I had another run-in with them a couple months later, but I quickly walked past and ignored them.

I brought up the subject with one of my closest friends, who shared with me her personal experience with cult recruitment.

She doesn't know if it was Shincheonji or another religion, but her experience was more extreme.

She was approached by two young girls while sitting at a cafe.

"I really thought that they wanted to be friends because as they talked to me for a good twenty to thirty minutes and nothing seemed off," said Natalie Kamo, a 23-year-old Yonsei University student from the United States. "They just seemed excited to meet a foreigner in their age range that they could talk to.”

Because Kamo was interested in music and Korean culture and history, the girls invited her to visit their temple where they kept traditional instruments and promised her a Korean cultural experience.

Kamo didn’t think much of it at the time, but looking back now, she admits, “There was a lot of red flags now knowing that [in] Korean culture regular Korean people don’t go up to foreigners like that unless they want something from you.”

Because the girls were so friendly and sincere, and small talk is common in the United States, she accepted their invitation.

But she arrived to find that the "temple" was actually a house.

“It was like a random house in Gangnam, like a tiny room in an apartment building," Kamo said.

They showed her traditional instruments and a hanbok she could wear, which she tried on. And then they told her there was a prayer ritual that she could join as a part of her cultural experience.

They guided her to another room, with around seven other people. The room was uncomfortably hot, and she was told to bow.

"It was going on and on and I had to bow like ten times," she said. "Two minutes into it I was freaked out. What did I get myself into. I hate thinking about it. ”

When it was over, they gave her paperwork while describing their religion and how they believed that “the world was going to end and this person they believed in was going to save them and that they need to pray and pray, do seances; they do these things where they write all their names on paper and burn it," Kamo said.

The papers had very personal questions, including personal details and family information, and they told her, “the more details I put, the stronger connection there would be. And the one I would write on would be burned and be used to make this prayer. And with that prayer, my family would be safe.”

They also asked Kamo to pay them back for the snacks and tea they had given her while she was there, so Kamo said she put on a friendly act in fear that they might cause her harm. She paid them 10,000 won ($7.65) and promptly left.

They tried contacting her multiple times again, but Kamo said she never responded to them.

These experiences made me wonder why cult recruiters have changed and are now targeting younger people, like college students.

“Because college students are a part of the intellectual society, when they graduate and get a job they can support the organization well financially," Kim Nam-il, a professor at the Korean Association of University Mission Studies, wrote in a paper about campus heresy.

"In addition, because college students are more naive, they accept the teachings of heresy more easily than older generations. Students from the provinces particularly feel lonely and want to overcome it," Kim said. "They want to make new friends, and heresies use this to take advantage to form a friendship."

Now, I have no choice but isolate myself when walking down the street. When any group of people approach me asking for my time, I ignore them or pretend to not know Korean so they will leave me alone.

They could be genuine people, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Foreign students in Korea, or those who are considering moving to Korea, should be especially aware of these recruiters and their tricks. Here, excessive kindness is what you should heed caution most.

BY STUDENT REPORTER CHLOE PUI YING SAVANNAH YU [kjd.kcampus@joongang.co.kr]