In an attempt to help my Korean studies I recently joined classes at a volunteer group called Mannam. For a nominal price I get 8 lessons, once a week. I also get to meet people from countries that do not make up the English Teacher community. I also with Mannam Photography.
Just after joining them I found information on the internet saying they are a front for a Christian cult, but since they never even try to talk about religion and because the evidence the person was giving was ridiculous, I ignored it until I saw something that would be actual evidence.
Mannam’s main claim for existence it to bring people from all nationalities together in what they call The World Peace Initiative. From the very start I heard a lot about them working to this goal, but everything I saw seemed useless and misguided. Sure, I meet people from other nations, but how is this, and earning Korean, helping world peace.
On Sunday the 16th I joined Mannam at the Olympic Stadium at Jamshil was filled to overflowing with people attending and participating in the World Peace Initiative Festival. It was interesting, annoying, tasty and disappointing. It is also at this festival that I found the evidence I needed of them being a front for a cult.
We arrived at about 9:30 and registered. It was immediately apparent that huge amounts of money was poured into this. Renting a whole stadium, providing food and drinks for 100,000 people and subsidising the food that was available for purchase. About 70,000 people in some sort of uniform or costume, media coverage and hours or practice and organisation do not come cheap.
When I entered the stadium just before 10am the opposing stands were filled with blocks of people wearing the same colour, each with their own cheer leaders and the main stands were filled with foreigners from every conceivable country. I was there to take photo, so I wasted no time moving away from the moving masses and over to the colour uniformed people. The whole way there people were scarily friendly and everyone was just to eager to pose for photos doing the Mannam sign.
At about 10am the whole show started and right of the bat it was apparent that this was not about world peace, but about glorifying a dude who apparently was visited by god and is not supposed to be the only one in the word who can actually interpret the Book of Revelations. When they were finished glorifying him they launched in to explaining how the colours represent the tribes of Juda and their respective gem stones and other things about the cult and how god made this spectacle possible and …
In true Eastern Asia style they performed amazing choreographed group routines, but again, all saturated with the imagery of the cult. Basically, in the eyes of these people World Peace means, or an only be reached when everyone united under their form of Christianity. Yes, because no one in history has every tried to combine everyone under one religion. Is that not the reason Christianity exists? It started this whole concept and has spawned all the other religions that want to convert the world, leading to oh so many purely religious wars.
I forgot to mention, the dude is the honorary president of Mannam. Not only did they take us to something that amounted to a religious celebration, but the leader of the cult is an honorary president? Yes, Mannam, you are NOT a front for a cult. We all believe you.
Interestingly, people I know who directly asked them if they were part of the cult were told that no, Mannam is just kind of happens to work towards the same goal of Word Peace. When I asked our Photography “leader” she had no problem with admitting that she was a member of the “church”.
Other than that the whole festival was a spectacle to behold and worth attending, but people who go should be aware that they idea of “World Peace Initiative” will in fact be a not so subtle religious movement. Also, you will be camera fodder, fodder which I suspect will be used to promote the organisation to other Koreans and other countries. Nothing says “Credible” like foreigners agreeing with you when you are trying to maintain an image.
After attending the event I felt compelled to go look for more information in the cult. I looked at a few articles, but this one from Waegukin, and this thread on Waygook.org will be a good start and links to most of the articles that are worth reading.
Are you still going to be involved in the photo group?
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