Christian Gospel Mission: Edit history

Overview

The Christian Gospel Mission is a religious organization founded by Jung Myung-seok, who was born in 1945 in Jinsan-myeon, Geumsan County, South Chungcheong Province. The organization explains its abbreviation, JMS, as standing for "Jesus Morning Star." Among the general public, however, the initials are better known as those of the founder's name (Jung Myung-seok). The group reportedly began in 1980 as Aecheon Church, and it is said to have joined the Korean Methodist Church of Jesus for a time in the 1980s. It maintains a retreat center in Wolmyeong-dong, Jinsan-myeon, Geumsan County. Several Korean denominations have declared it a heresy.

Principal Claims and Doctrines

The following summary is drawn from denominational investigative reports and court rulings.

• Biblical interpretation: The group criticizes established churches for interpreting the Bible only literally, without regard to historical context or science. Instead, it interprets Scripture allegorically. For example, it holds that the bread in the feeding of the multitude with five loaves and two fish was not actual bread but "the word of life."
• Trinity: The group claims that Christianity has failed for two thousand years to resolve the doctrine of the Trinity. The Presbyterian Church of Korea (Tonghap) regarded this as a denial of orthodox Trinitarian faith.
• Status of the founder: Courts found that Jung Myung-seok called himself the Messiah (savior) and exercised absolute religious authority over his followers.
• The Presbyterian Church of Korea (Tonghap) assessed the group's doctrines as broadly similar to those of the Unification Church. Jung Myung-seok is reported to have been associated with the Unification Church in the past.

Rulings by Major Korean Denominations

• Presbyterian Church in Korea (Kosin): Declared the group heretical at its 41st General Assembly in 1991, the earliest decision among the major denominations.
• Presbyterian Church of Korea (Tonghap): Declared it an "anti-Christian heresy" at its 87th General Assembly in 2002, citing its teachings on biblical interpretation, the church, the Trinity, the resurrection, and the Second Coming.
• General Assembly of Presbyterian Church in Korea (Hapdong): Declared it heretical at its 93rd General Assembly in 2008, judging it anti-Christian in every area, including its views of Scripture, the resurrection and Second Coming, and salvation. In March 2023, the denomination's Committee for Investigation and Research on Countermeasures against Heresy (Cult) Damage issued a "Statement on Countermeasures against Heresy," urging church members to take care not to be drawn into the group.
• Korean Methodist Church: Declared it heretical in 2014.
• The Presbyterian Church in Korea (Hapshin), the Korea Evangelical Holiness Church, and the Korea Assemblies of God (Yoido branch) are also recorded as having stated that they regard the group as heretical. Whether these positions were adopted by resolution of a regular general assembly, and in what years, has not been confirmed.

The Organization's Position and Rebuttals

• The organization presents itself as a Christian mission. It has argued that, on the contrary, it is the established churches, by reading the Bible literally, that misunderstand Scripture.
• In the 2022 criminal trial, Jung Myung-seok denied the charges. The organization claimed that the audio recordings serving as key evidence had been fabricated and that the complaints had been orchestrated by former members and others. The appellate court excluded the recordings from evidence because the original mobile phone was unavailable. It did not, however, find that the recordings had been fabricated, and it found him guilty on the basis of other evidence.
• Jung Myung-seok filed countercharges, alleging that the foreign victims had made false accusations. These countercharges, however, led to his indictment for false accusation (the crime of making a false report in order to cause another person to be punished), and his conviction on that charge became final.

Public Controversy

• In 1999, an SBS current-affairs program reported extensively on allegations of sexual misconduct by Jung Myung-seok.
• In 2009, the Supreme Court upheld a ten-year prison sentence for Jung Myung-seok on charges including quasi-rape (sexual assault exploiting a victim's inability to resist). He was released in 2018 after completing his sentence.
• In October 2022, he was arrested and indicted on charges of raping or sexually assaulting female members of Hong Kong, Australian, and Korean nationality on 23 occasions between February 2018 and September 2021, after his release, at locations including the Geumsan retreat center. The trial court sentenced him to 23 years in prison, and the appellate court to 17 years. On January 9, 2025, the Supreme Court upheld the 17-year sentence, along with 15 years of electronic location monitoring and a 10-year ban on employment at institutions serving children and adolescents. The Supreme Court accepted the lower court's finding that religious indoctrination had left the victims psychologically unable to resist.
• Kim Ji-seon (known in the group as Jeong Jo-eun), a senior leader of the organization indicted for aiding the crimes, received a final sentence of seven years in prison.
• Public attention intensified again with the March 2023 release of the Netflix documentary series In the Name of God: A Holy Betrayal.
• As of 2025, Jung Myung-seok had been further indicted on additional sex-crime charges. He has also been indicted and is standing trial for selling spring water from the retreat center under the name "Wolmyeong Water" (in violation of the Drinking Water Management Act).