Many churches open to celebrate Easter

A church member gets his temperature checked at the entrance of a church located in Daegu on Easter Sunday./ Yonhap

By Kim Se-jeong

Many protestant churches in Korea opened to hold Easter services, the most important holiday for Christians who celebrate the story of the resurrection of Christ, on Sunday, despite ongoing government warnings against gatherings.

Sarang Cheil Church in Seongbuk-gu in Seoul has continued to hold worship gatherings every weekend despite the warnings. Last month, the city government ordered a shutdown of the church.

City officials were outside the church, trying to stop the gathering, but the church members blocked their access. The city assessed almost 1,200 people attended the Easter service.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government said Sarang Cheil Church was one of more than 2,000 protestant churches that were open on the Easter weekend ― there are almost 6,400 registered protestant churches in the jurisdiction. No figure was available for other cities.

In March, the central government banned any type of gathering and violators can now be punished with fines of up to 10 million won or up to one year of imprisonment now.

Those churches followed social distancing and hygiene rules asking their members to keep a two-meter distance between people, checking temperatures of arriving members at the church's entrance and making sure everyone was wearing a mask.

Churches that chose to stay closed held services either online or at drive-in style locations where members stayed in their cars. Most Catholic churches stayed closed.

Religious and other mass gatherings are considered a high-potential breeding ground for new infection clusters of the coronavirus. Shincheonji Church of Jesus in Daegu was a prime example of this, allegedly leading to the massive increase of COVID-19 cases in Korea.

Last month in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, a nondenominational church became another infection cluster with almost 50 people contracting the virus.

The Gyeonggi provincial government was fast in its containment effort by ordering shutdowns of all Shincheonji churches and other churches in the jurisdiction.

Seoul also saw infection clusters occurring at a church in Guro-gu where more than a dozen cases were reported at the end of last month.

Korea has many megachurches with more than 10,000 members, and it is a point of concern for infectious disease experts and quarantine officials. According to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 80 percent of cases occur from people congregating close together particularly in enclosed spaces.

Some churches' defiant attitudes continue to draw criticism. Critics called the churches selfish and lashed out at them saying their motivations are purely financial in nature. Protestant churches rely heavily on members' offerings when it comes to their finances.

President Moon Jae-in along with Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun and Seoul City Mayor Park Won-soon thanked churches that chose to stay closed and urged others to join the government's effort to contain the virus spread by staying closed.