Seoul Mayor Sues South Korea Shincheonji Religious Group
De CidesaWiki
The mayor of Seoul has sued key leaders of the Shincheonji religious group at the center of South Korea's sudden surge in the number of confirmed cases for the new coronavirus. Mayor Park Won-soon said on Facebook he was suing the key leaders of Shincheonji "for murder, injury and violation of prevention and management of infectious diseases," according to a translation from NBC News. Park reported 12 leaders to the Seoul Central District Prosecutor's Office on Sunday. South Korea has the highest number of infections outside mainland China. On Monday morning, the total number of cases in South Korea stood at 4,212, and 22 had died from the infection. Contributing to the exponential rise in cases was the city of Daegu, and specifically, the secretive religious group called Shincheonji, according to the country's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As of Sunday morning, the group accounted for almost 60% of all cases in the country, with most of them centered in Daegu. The flu-live virus, officially named COVID-19 by the World Health Organization last month, has infected over 87,000 globally. Park said in his Facebook post on Sunday. Lee is the founder and spiritual leader of Shincheonji Church of Jesus.
The leader of a South Korea corona Korean doomsday cult who held 400 people captive in Fiji will get a taste of her own medicine after being sentenced to six years in prison. Shin Ok-ju convinced her followers to move to the "promised land" of Fiji in 2014, claiming the move would keep them safe from an imminent apocalypse.
Similar measures will be imposed other areas across the country from Sunday, although they will not be obligatory in areas with relatively few infections. South Korean’s vice health minister, Kim Gang-lip, warned that the country faced a "very serious situation", adding that authorities were trying to track and trace people who had attended the anti-government rally. While clusters have been traced to restaurants, schools and call centres, many of the new cases are connected to Sarang Jeil, whose far-right leader, Jun Kwang-hun, is an outspoken critic of the Moon administration.
Without proper safety measures, these indoor spaces, into which many people are crammed for hours at a time, are exactly the kind of environment experts recommend avoiding during the pandemic. The United States and South Korea are taking measures to keep participants safe, but the spread of COVID-19 has proved difficult to control even with strict containment measures, and the risk remains. South Korea has famously done an exceptional job in mitigating the spread of COVID-19, but it experienced a sudden resurgence of cases over the past week.
