A joint police-prosecution investigation unit probing alleged church-state collusion has indicted a local campaign figure and a senior Shincheonji official on charges of signing up more than 30 members of the church as Democratic Party members to support the party's Goyang mayoral primary ahead of the June 3 local elections this year.
The Joint Investigation Unit on Church-State Collusion, headed by Kim Tae-hoon, said on the 25th that it had indicted without detention a supporter of a prospective candidate in the Democratic Party's Goyang mayoral primary, identified as A, and a Shincheonji Simon Tribe theology director, identified as B, on charges of violating the Public Official Election Act.
According to the unit, A is accused of asking B around last August to recruit party members to support the prospective candidate in the primary. Investigators found that A proposed to B, in effect, that "if you support this candidate, I will help resolve grievances such as the church building issue in Goyang."
B is accused of accepting the request and signing up more than 30 followers of the Simon Tribe as Democratic Party members. The Simon Tribe is a Shincheonji organization covering the northwestern part of Seoul and the northern part of Gyeonggi Province, centered on Goyang, Gyeonggi Province. A theology director is a senior figure within a tribe responsible for teaching Shincheonji doctrine.
The case is the Democratic Party-related part of the unit's broader investigation into alleged organized party sign-ups by Shincheonji. The unit has been investigating suspicions that, ahead of this year's local elections, Simon Tribe followers joined the party last year at the request of a Democratic Party local campaign to support an internal primary.
The unit summoned B as a suspect on the 20th and focused its questioning on how the followers came to join the Democratic Party and whether a local campaign had made such a request. Shincheonji issued an apology that day over the party sign-up controversy, saying it "bows its head and deeply apologizes for causing social controversy and great worry and concern to the public through its members' sign-ups to the People Power Party."
Lee Man-hee, the head of Shincheonji, was indicted and detained in June on charges of forcing at least 56,472 followers to join the People Power Party between 2021 and 2024 with the aim of influencing the party's presidential and general election primaries. The second pretrial hearing for Lee is scheduled for the 28th of next month.
