Son to a Murdered Father: Dr Tark Ji-il & Dr. Tark Myeon-whan

[Peter Daley]

Oct. 29, 1992: No Doomsday Rapture for S. Korea Sect (The LA Times/Internet Archive)

Cult expert Tahk Myeong Whan said scores of parents are still desperately searching for children who had been spirited away by the more radical sects preaching the Rapture theory in mountain hide-outs and other secret locations.

Rev. Tark is quoted quite often in the following:

1993: The Korean War & Messianic Groups: Two Cases in Contrast (Choe Joong-hyun, Ph. D - Syracuse University)

March 17, 1994: Death of Pseudoreligion Critic Focuses Attention (UCA News)

The death of a Protestant theologian who attained prominence as a severe critic of pseudo-religious sects has focused attention on the state of the Korean religious community. Reverend Tahk Myeong-hwan, 56, was beaten and stabbed to death near his apartment house in northern Seoul the night of Feb. 18 in a possible retaliatory attack by a fanatic from a certain quasi-religious sect.

An estimated 300-400 sects or cults are currently thriving outside established religious structures in Korea, according to scholars of religions. Some scholars refer to these groups as "new religions." ...

Many social and religious leaders mourned his death. Among them were Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou Hwan of Seoul; Reverend Han Kyung-jik of the Yongnak Presbyterian Church; Reverend Song Wolju, a Buddhist leader; and Kim To-hyun, vice minister for culture and sports. Since establishing the International Religious Research Institute in the 1960s to battle pseudo-religions, Reverend Tahk had been threatened, attacked or injured more than 70 times because of his intensive and caustic exposes.

Since the turn of the century, a large number of sects or new religions have taken root in this country, leading one sociologist to label generally homogeneous South Korea "the supermarket of world religions."

About 1.5 million people adhere to these new religions, according to Lee Kwang-ho, professor emeritus at Chonbuk University in the southern provincial capital of Chonju. Some put the figure at 2 million.

In his 1992 book "General Guide to New Religions in Korea," Lee identifies 390 pseudo-religious sects. He says 78 are associated with Buddhism, 76 with Christianity and 36 are cults for Tangun, the founding father of Korea. Of the latter, 10 are of foreign origin, according to the book.

June 2010: Prof Ji-il Tark on Ahn Sahng-hong's World Mission Society Church of God Cult (ICSA Conference)

Aug 13, 2014: The Sewol Tragedy: Searching for Answers (SBS Dateline) Dr Tark speaks from 11:17

July 31, 2017: Religious Use of Politics or Political Use of Religion?: A Case Study of the Relationship between
Politics & Christian New Religious Movements in Korea since the Korean War (Dr. Tark Ji-il/Korea Presbyterian Journal Of Theology)

The recent political scandal in Korea has shown again the inappropriateness of the coexistence between religion and politics. The close relationship between the Choi family and the impeached president has caused serious tensions and crisis in Korean society. Politics still uses newly emerged religious groups for political purpose while those groups want to be used for their own desires. Such relationships seem to cause codestruction, not coexistence

Nov. 3, 2016: Part 1/2: Memoir Gives Insight into Choi Tae-min (Korea JoongAng Daily)

In a two-part series, the Korea JoongAng Daily will run excerpts of Choi Tae-min's memoir, written in 1988 by Tahk Myeong-hwan (1937-94), a Korean expert on cults. Choi Tae-min is the late father of Choi Soon-sil, who allegedly had access to top-secret national security documents, influenced administration personnel appointments, strong-armed conglomerates into donating lavish sums to foundations and was involved in major decisions, all primarily through her personal relationship with President Park Geun-hye. -Ed.

According to various records, President Park Geun-hye's relationship with Choi Soon-sil stems from Choi Tae-min, who first met Park after her mother, the former first lady Yuk Young-soo, was assassinated in 1974. ...

Nov. 8, 2016: Part 2/2: Wherever There Was Money, There Was Choi (Korea JoongAng Daily)

After first lady Yuk Young-soo, mother of President Park Geun-hye, was assassinated on Aug. 15, 1974, the Blue House fell into despair. According to Tahk Myeong-hwan's memoir on Choi Tae-min, it was then that the cult leader decided to write a long letter to Park, saying he could help her meet her mom in her dreams.

[Peter Daley]

2018: The Unification Church: A Kaleidoscopic Introduction (Eileen Barker)

Several members and former members have talked about smuggling money across national borders (Hong 1998: 173); I have been told by a former Unificationist that she was instructed to sew money into her petticoat; another said he had carried a suitcase packed with notes through customs. I have heard directly and indirectly of Unificationists entering into marriages that they had no intention of honouring in order to acquire visas for other Unificationists. In August 2006 it was widely reported that around 700 Unificationists had broken into the office of a newspaper company, destroyed the computers and other objects as well as violently attacking a photographer and a reporter. It has been alleged by several former Unificationists, and by his son, that the movement was responsible for the death of Professor Tahk (Tark) Myeong Hwan, a Korean scholar who was reportedly attacked on a number of occasions for refusing to stop publishing material exposing Moon and his Church.

Note 1: Professor Tark Senior has three sons all involved in some way with cult awareness/education, but I do not think Ji-il is the son mentioned above who believes the UC is responsible for his father's death.

Note 2: The reference "Hong 1998:173" is a reference to Nan-sook Hong's book In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Family. I have more details here as well as a link to the text of the whole book, which is now sadly out of print. The reference to sending large amounts of cash illicitly into America was actually something I had been looking for. It was a detail that had stuck in my mind from reading the book perhaps around 20 years ago! I skimmed through my copy of the book recently - but failed to find it. Thank you, Eileen:

Circa 1986:

One benefit of her enormous entourage was that Mrs Moon had plenty of traveling companions with whom to enter the country. I was given $20,000 in two packs of crisp new bills. I hid them beneath the tray of my makeup case... I knew that smuggling was wrong, but I believed the followers of Sun Myung-moon answered to higher laws. ... In the distorted lense through which I viewed the world, God actually had thwarted the customs agents. God did not want them to find the money because the money was for God.

Note 3: I was happily surprised to find mention of the above violence in a piece by Eileen, who is considered something of an apologist having written positive pieces after accepting money from the UC. More about that here. But in her defence, she attended my talk at the ICSA 2014 conference. Certainly, she is not nearly as bias as other "co-opted academics" as Dr Margaret Singer refers to them in her book Cults in Our Midst.

Feb. 27: How Novel Coronavirus Spread Through the Shincheonji Religious Group in South Korea  (CNN)

Note: Interviews with Kim Do-hyun, the leader's former translator, and Dr. Tark Ji-il. I talked to Do-hyun at some events while he was a member, and he was always warm and friendly and happy to discuss any SCJ-related issues. It was such a nice surpise to see he was out.

July 25, 2025: Troubling Korean Religious Cults (ABC Radio)

South Korea is one of the great success stories of the past 30 years, moving from military dictatorship to a strong democracy and economy. Last year, it weathered a serious test when the former president tried to declare martial law. He's since been removed.

But South Korea's also the home of a thriving number of troubling religious cults – some of them exported to Australia. Professor Tark Ji-il of Busan Presbyterian University understands this threat better than most. Not only is he a world-renowned expert, his family's been affected in a tragic way. He was in Australia recently, sharing his story.

Nov. 3, 2025: Korean Cults In Germany (Online Lecture - University of Heidelberg)

The troubled socio-political environment caused by both the Pacific and the Korean wars provided a good soil for the growth of Korean Protestant churches as well as the rise of Christian new religious movements/cults in Korea. Notably, during the Korean War, the cults spread throughout the Korean Peninsula, and subsequently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, they spread worldwide. Their new trends are categorized as, firstly, 'Hybrid Cults' which are active in both offline and online environments, secondly, 'K-Cults' which effectively use so-called K-Trends, such as pop, dance, food, beauty, etc., and lastly, 'Good Samaritan Cults' which play a positive social role, such as voluntary work, blood donation, environmental movements, etc. in surrounding societies. The Salvation Sect, Shincheonji, and World Mission Society Church of God, which are regarded as destructive heresies/cults in Korea, are active in Germany. Cult related problems are not only a religious matter but also a social matter, causing serious damage to family and society. The reason for doing my research is that my late father, who dedicated his life to preventing heresies/cults, was killed by a cult member