It Happened to Me: My Dad Joined a Cult and He Got a Lot Nicer

Cults are bad. It’s common knowledge that if you join one you’ll end up dead, sexually assaulted, broke, and, according to that Netflix documentary, subsidizing a Korean dance studio. 

But when I was in high school in Los Angeles, my dad joined a Korean Christian cult and changed from a serial asshole into a pretty awesome guy. Something closer to Jesus.

Religious cults are super popular in Korea. Not as popular as K-pop or K-beauty, but then these also have their own cult followings. My dad’s was the first U.S. branch of a bigger cult started in Korea in the 1980s by an elf-like old guy with dyed black hair. 

The cult made my father, a very practical business owner, believe in unhinged “ultimate truths,” like eternal life. These people believed they literally would never die. My dad believed it too — really believed it. He canceled his life insurance policy and tore up his will. Maybe that idea of never dying is what made him change so completely: He didn’t want to be cold and scary until the end of time.

When I was a kid, my dad was always hitting my brother and me with his hand or a bamboo stick. If we cried because we were hurt and bleeding, he’d say, “Shut your mouth.” And pretty much any time we had an opinion of any kind, he would smack us to fix our “bad” behavior. “You’ll thank me later,” he said. 

I remember one evening during a family dinner with my grandmother, I said something that triggered my dad. “Don’t talk back,” he said. “I’ll teach you a lesson in table manners.” Then he slapped me hard across my head and turned to my grandmother to continue the conversation, as if nothing had happened. It hurt like hell.

Several years later, after joining the cult, he became nice. It was drastic. My dad, who had been as emotionally expressive as asphalt, would talk to me about a Bible lesson from the cult and suddenly start weeping. I’d cringe and think, “What a weirdo.” But I stuck around.

He started affectionately saying, “Oh, my daughter” and would even tuck me into bed with, “I love you.” I didn’t respond. I wasn’t a child anymore and still heard “shut your mouth” when I looked at him.