Dark Files: Cults — When Faith Becomes a Weapon

Dark Korea — Korean True Crime & Mysteries · Sep 21, 2026 · 55m

Every one of these stories starts the same way. Someone offers an answer. A way to be saved. A place to belong. And the people who accept that offer are not foolish. They are hopeful. That is exactly what makes them vulnerable. This is Dark Files, and tonight we are looking at three religious groups in Korea whose leaders turned faith into something else entirely. We begin under Japanese colonial rule, with Baekbaekgyo — the "White White Religion." Korean accounts put its peak membership at more than eighty thousand. In 1937, after one young man confronted its leader, colonial police began…