Pastor Cho sued for fraudulent land sale in US

By Yi Whan-woo

Rev. Cho Yong-gi, the founder of the country’s largest church, faces a legal battle after a pastor, surnamed Park, filed a lawsuit against him for selling a property he owned in the United States without his permission.

Park filed the suit with the Seoul Central District Court, Sunday, demanding 3 billion won in compensation for Cho ordering his nephew to sell the real estate.

“I’m sure Cho is behind the fraudulent scheme, and it’s not acceptable that he abused his status to harm other Christians such as me,” Park said.

Park was one of Cho’s congregation back in Korea before he departed for New York in 1984, after which he ran his own church as a pastor.

He said Cho asked him in 2010 to serve at Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul again, with a suggestion that Cho’s nephew manage his church in the U.S.

Park found out that the nephew, surnamed Mok, sold the church _ when he planned to go back to the United States early this year _ and built a U.S branch of the Yoido Full Gospel Church in New Jersey with the money.

“I did not pay much attention to my church as I trusted Cho and thought his nephew would take good care of it,” he said.

Officials at Yoido Full Gospel Church said they “never heard of” such allegations and will follow the case closely.

Cho and his family members have been the subject of a number of allegations over the years, including misusing church funds and committing other irregularities after dominating church decision-making bodies.

One of the latest allegations includes Cho Min-je, Cho’s son who is chairman at the Kukmin Ilbo, a Christian daily newspaper. He is suspected of embezzling money from an affiliate company and is facing allegations that he misused government subsidies to the newspaper. The union at the newspaper has walked out in protest and not returned to work.

The suspicions raised protests by both civic and religious groups calling for reform of the Korean Christian community.