Evangelical Baptist Church of Korea
| Evangelical Baptist Church | |
| Hangul | 기독교복음침례회 |
|---|---|
| Hanja | 基督教福音浸禮會 |
| Revised Romanization | Gidokgyo Bokeum Chimnyehoe |
| McCune–Reischauer | Kidokgyo Pokŭm Ch'imnyehoe |
| Former name: Korean Evangelical Layman's Church | |
| Hangul | 한국평신도복음선교회 |
| Hanja | 韓國平信徒福音宣敎會 |
| Revised Romanization | Hanguk Pyeongsindo Bokeum Son-gyohoe |
| McCune–Reischauer | Hanguk P'yŏngsindo Pokŭm Son'gyohoe |
| Colloquial name: "Salvation Sect" | |
| Hangul | 구원파 |
| Hanja | 救援派 |
| Revised Romanization | Guwonpa |
| McCune–Reischauer | Kuwŏnp'a |
Evangelical Baptist Church of Korea or simply Evangelical Baptist Church (Hangul: 기독교복음침례회; officially Korean Evangelical Baptist Church) is a South Korean new religious movement founded in 1962 by Yoo Byung-eun with his father-in-law, Pastor Kwon Shin-chan (권신찬; 1923–96). Before a name change in 1981 its name was Korean Evangelical Layman's Church. In South Korea it is commonly known as Guwonpa, meaning Salvation Sect, from the Korean term guwon (구원) meaning "salvation".
Media reports on numbers of followers vary from 10,000 to as much as 200,000 members worldwide with many sources saying the church is believed to have 20,000 followers. The church has alluded to have 100,000 followers.
Church doctrines teach that those who were once saved by God are completely detached from the sins they will ever commit in the future and guaranteed a path to heaven. Unlike other Christian organizations, the group is alleged to focus little on repentance ― a reason why it has been described as a cult. The church was held to be a cult by the conservative Christian denomination, the General Assembly of Presbyterian Churches, in 1992. Evangelical Baptist Church is unrelated to the Korea Baptist Convention.
In 1987 South Korean police were investigating accusations against a 48-year-old woman, Park Soon-ja, saying that she had swindled ₩8.9 billion (US$8.7 million) from about 220 people. Her company Odaeyang Trading Co. was a firm that fronted for a religious sect led by Park, which was a splinter group from Yoo Byung-eun's Evangelical Baptist Church. On 29 August, thirty-two members of the sect who believed in doomsday, including Park Soon-ja and her three children, were found dead, bound and gagged. The case became known as the . Police assumed the event was a murder–suicide pact, and the prosecution initially suspected that Yoo Byung-eun was linked to the case; but he was never charged, and the police closed the case as a mass suicide. When the case was re-opened in 1991, investigation into Odaeyang Trading Co. revealed a money trail to the company Semo Corp. run by Yoo, he was arrested and, in 1992, convicted of "habitual fraud under the mask of religion" for his role in colluding with one of his employees to collect donations from church members in the amount of ₩1.2 billion (US$1.15 million) and invest them in his businesses. He served a 4-year prison term. In November 2014, the Incheon District Prosecutor's Office stated in a report that they did not find a prosecutable connection between Yoo's Evangelical Baptist Church and the Odaeyang incident.
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