The joint prosecution-police investigation headquarters probing suspected collusion between a religious group and politicians summoned on the 21st a former executive who served as a bodyguard to Shincheonji leader Lee Man-hee.
According to legal sources, beginning at 10 a.m. the same day, the joint headquarters called in former Shincheonji executive Lee for questioning as a reference witness and is under investigation. Lee was a member of the "Seven Lions," the security unit for the Shincheonji leader, and was known as a close aide who assisted Lee at close range.
Arriving at the Seoul High Prosecutors' Office that day, Lee, when asked by reporters about allegations of party membership recruitment, said, "I mainly took orders from the head of the John Tribe and the youth leader," adding, "There is a list of enrollees, and I will submit it today."
The joint headquarters is investigating allegations that Shincheonji interfered in politics by, among other methods, having many believers join a political party as members to help elect specific candidates.
During the investigation, testimony emerged that Shincheonji's leadership encouraged believers to enroll as dues-paying members of the People Power Party, and as a result, from late 2021 through last year, some 50,000 people joined the People Power Party as dues-paying members. Internally, the project was dubbed "Pilates."
In the course of recently questioning former Shincheonji executives in succession, the joint headquarters is said to have secured statements that attempts to wield influence through People Power Party membership continued through the 2022 presidential election, the local elections that same year, and the 2024 general election, and that they operated in an organized manner by setting regional quotas and conducting checks.
It is also said to have obtained statements that during the COVID-19 period, after Gyeonggi Province's compulsory epidemiological investigation and the police probe, the progressive camp and Shincheonji became antagonistic, and that Shincheonji then sought to exert political influence through the conservative camp. A recording reportedly was also submitted to the joint headquarters containing Lee Man-hee's voice disparaging then-Gyeonggi Gov. Lee Jae-myung.
There were also claims that Shincheonji's leadership encouraged party enrollment, saying they "must repay the favor to Yoon Suk-yeol." Earlier, in March 2020, when Yoon was prosecutor general, police applied for a search and seizure warrant for the Shincheonji Daegu Church, identified as the epicenter of the COVID-19 spread, but prosecutors rejected it twice. The joint headquarters plans to question Lee about the specific content of the instructions to recruit party members, how they were conveyed, and how they were actually carried out.