Lots of people have questions about the nature of the cult that the president seems to be connected with. In South Korea, just like any country, there's an enti

Lots of people have questions about the nature of the cult that the president seems to be connected with. In South Korea, just like any country, there's an entire spectrum of minor splinter "cults" along the entire spectrum of available religions. Korea has a surprisingly rich and complex religious landscape ranging from ancient folk practices (often translated as "Shamanism" in Korea) to various Buddhist sects to various flavors Christianity (the current religious majority), Confucian practices and so on. All have deep historic, political and social roots and between the cracks of the formal practices, tons of cults, syncretism, and other practices flourish. For example, it wouldn't be at all unusual for somebody to go to a very formal church on Sunday, attend a Buddhist funeral on Thursday, and go out with friends on Saturday to visit a "fortune teller" before going on a blind date who would supply fortunes based on ancient folk practices. The average person might not even be aware that they are crossing various religious boundaries. For reasons I haven't quite understood, there's also a cultural acceptance that many people wish to become religious leaders of some sort. It's often manifest in members of the majority Christian churches becoming ministers at very high rates and forming their own minor churches. Korea is littered with churches of all sizes. In general this happens in the formal church structure but it's not uncommon for splinter groups to spin out rapidly as well with various modified beliefs or teachings or even forming syncretic cults of some flavor. To give you an idea of how intense religion can be in Korea, it's the only known country to have self converted to Christianity and established an internal proselytizing mechanism before missionaries showed up in the country. Cults are not really accepted in South Korea, most people still look at them as out of the norm, and cult members to be out of the norm, hence the public reaction to the President's connection to a cult. For anybody interested in the shamanistic folk traditions in Korea, I can highly recommend the movie "The Wailing" (2016) as an both a great movie, and contains several brilliantly filmed scenes of some intense shamanistic practices that I've heard described as "deeply authentic" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_South_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_South_Korea http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5215952/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5215952/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wailing_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wailing_(film)