Holy orders: Jae Kap Song, the founder and pastor of Jesus First

Holy orders: Jae Kap Song, the founder and pastor of Jesus First, encouraged his flock
to wear church uniforms and live together in six shared apartments
The cult of
pastor song
The sex scandal consuming Toronto’s Korean community began when six
international students said they were repeatedly gang-raped by members of
their small church. The accused allege that their eccentric pastor brainwashed
the women to deflect attention from his own transgressions.
a surreal tale of zealotry,
blind faith and revenge
By May Jeong
Photography by Eamon Mac Mahon
O
n e J u ly d ay in 2007, an
18-year-old woman checked
into her Toronto-bound
f light at South Korea’s
Incheon Airport. She was
travelling light—she had
with her one suitcase containing clothes for a range
of seasons, some books and
a favourite brand of face
cream. She had been living
with her grandparents in
South Korea and was joining her mother, who had
split with her father and
moved to Toronto to study
acupuncture three years
earlier.
A court-ordered publication ban prevents me
f r om ide nt i f y i ng t he
woman, but I’ll call her
Yeri. Her plan was to learn
English at one of Toronto’s
hagwons, Korean-run cram schools that cater to the thousands of
young men and women who come to Canada on student visas each
year. With command of the language, she would get into a better
college in South Korea and ultimately, her family hoped, receive
coveted job offers at multinationals.
From the airport, Yeri headed to a Bloor and Islington apartment
building where her mother lived in one of six units leased by members of Jesus First, a Korean Presbyterian church run by a pastor
named Jae Kap Song. Her mother belonged to the church and expected
her to join, too. They’d share one of the apartment’s bedrooms.
A second bedroom was shared by two male members of Jesus First.
Yeri’s days were busy with studies: she attended several hagwons,
then took courses in theology. She decided she wanted to become
a nurse, and with her improved English she began to take college
courses. The institutional affiliations allowed her to renew her
student visa and extend her stay.
By 2009, Yeri and her mother were also sharing their bedroom
with Yeri’s 16-year-old cousin. It was cramped, but the apartment
had begun to feel like home and she was enjoying her life in Toronto.
Then, one night, while her mother was on a trip to South Korea,
everything changed. Yeri and her cousin had gone to bed, and soon
after she was woken up by one of her male housemates. She claims
he and another man grabbed her and her cousin and dragged them
out to the living room, where several other members of Jesus First
were waiting.
What happened next she says she remembers only in fragments.
She claims someone injected her left arm with something and a
feeling of weightlessness spread across her body. She was forced
to bark like a dog. Then she was raped.
She woke up the next morning with a migraine and an aching
body. At first she was paralyzed with fear. She considered the
dishonour she would bring to her family name. She imagined what
her mother would say, and decided to keep the incident a secret.
Besides, her cousin, whom she’d seen being assaulted, seemed just
fine. She began to wonder if the rape had even occurred. Was she
100 per cent certain—or was it a dream?
58 toronto life July 2012
Over the next year, she would occasionally wake up in the morning feeling sore. Some days, she couldn’t remember the hours leading up to falling asleep. At times, she had terrifying visions of herself
engaged in violent sexual acts. Still, she never spoke of any of it.
On Saturdays, Yeri, like many other church members, would
drive to Orangeville, where their pastor maintained a small property: a convenience store with a second-floor apartment and an
adjacent garage that functioned as the Jesus First office. There,
they would sew church uniforms, banners and tents. Pastor Song
and his flock would work late into the night and sleep on futons in
the apartment. Then they’d all drive back to Toronto together the
next day for church service.
On a Sunday morning in February 2010, one of the church
members, a 29-year-old woman I’ll call Sandra, was discovered by
one of the convenience store’s employees running laps around the
aisles. She wore nothing but a pair of boots.
Sandra confessed to Song that one of the deacons of the church
had forced her to jog around the store. On other occasions, she said,
he drugged and raped her. The revelation prompted Song and the
church’s director, a woman named Min Sun Cho, to survey other
female members of the church to see if they’d ever been assaulted.
Five more women in their 20s eventually came forward with
similar stories of rape, including Yeri and her cousin. Song and
Cho encouraged the six to go to the police.
The crimes allegedly took place between February 2009 and
February 2010. As part of their investigation, detectives collected
hair samples from the complainants, and hair from two of the women
was found to contain traces of Rohypnol, the date rape drug.
Nine members of the church—seven men and two women, all
in their 20s and 30s—were arrested and charged with 485 counts
of gang sexual assault, forcible confinement, the production of
child pornography (some of the incidents were supposedly filmed),
administering drugs for sex, and assault. The accused include the
deacon, who can’t be named because of a second publication ban;
two sisters named Young-Mi Ham and Young-Min Ham, as well
as Young-Min’s husband, Jung-Soo Kim; and five other men, SangCheol Lee, Hyung-Jun Ha, Yoon-Hyun Cho, Jin-Hyun Kim and the
pastor’s nephew Jung Jay Lee. Before they could be charged, the
latter three men left for South Korea.
The six who remained in Canada hired lawyers and insisted
they never assaulted the women. The entire story, they say, is a
conspiracy masterminded by Song—he forced the women to
memorize a script before sending them to the police. They claim
he did this to cover up his own criminal activity.
It’s gut-wrenching to imagine the terror and humiliation the six
women say they endured, but also sickening to imagine that they
might have made it all up—and that their pastor coerced them into
doing so. What power could Song have over these women that they’d
accuse people they knew of terrible crimes? I first set out to investigate the story of an alleged gang rape, assuming there could be
nothing uglier or more disturbing. But I encountered something I
didn’t expect, something maybe just as dark: an isolated congregation with a cult-like devotion to their pastor.
Jae kap Song pays meticulous attention to his hair. It’s fine and combed
forward to cover where it’s thinning, and coloured a shade of black
that seems to absorb all light. I met Song and his family at their neat
two-storey brick house on a quiet Etobicoke cul-de-sac a 20-minute
drive from the apartment Yeri shares with her mother and the others.
Song is 57 years old and heavy-set, with a puckish smile and a deep,
Keeping the faith: members of Song’s church gathered at Christie Pits Park in 2009, the year the gang rapes allegedly began
baritone voice. His wife, In Suk, is a weary-looking 55; she works
part-time as a courtroom interpreter. They have two grown children:
a daughter, recently married, and a son who studies architecture
and still lives at home. Song offered me a cup of coffee. Smiling, he
said that I might want to think twice about drinking it. (After a
moment, I realized with horror that he was cracking a joke about
how the six women were allegedly doped with Rohypnol.)
Song grew up in South Korea’s Gangwon province, a rural,
mountainous region known for fishing villages and potato farms.
His parents ran a small inn. He was the second youngest of nine
children, a strong-willed boy who often took solitary walks in the
forest to commune with nature.
He came to Toronto 31 years ago to visit his older brother, a convenience store manager, and was persuaded to stay after a pastor at
North York’s Saehan Presbyterian Church introduced him to In
Suk. Song, who is prone to dramatic gestures, told me it was love at
first sight, and re-enacted the encounter by miming his heart plunging out from his chest and spilling on the floor. Jae Kap and In Suk
were married in 1982 in a small ceremony conducted by the same
pastor who had served as matchmaker.
Song first worked as an auto mechanic, but soon followed other
Korean immigrants into the convenience store business; he bought
his own store in Orangeville. He became more involved in the church
and earned an ordination certificate after completing correspondence
studies at Chongshin College, a theology seminary in Flushing, New
York. Over time, a small Presbyterian Bible study group he led grew
big enough that he decided to found his own church. It was officially
incorporated in 2007. He recruited Min Sun Cho, then a theology
student, to serve as church director.
Song named his ministry Jesus First. The congregation had no
permanent home, but rented space during off-hours in another
church at Steeles and Islington. Jesus First grew to 60 members,
including a number of Song’s relatives, among them his nieces—the
sisters Young-Mi and Young-Min—and their husbands. Song often
preached that his were a chosen people, and that church came
before everything—even family. His congregation believed that
they would be allowed to cut the line to the gates of heaven on the
day of the Rapture.
Since the rape charges became public, the congregation has
shrunk to 20 members, including eight Korean students. I attended
a service at the borrowed church at Steeles and Islington last February. Song’s sermons are mostly conducted in Korean. In between
readings, he held a microphone and jauntily led the room in hymns.
After the service, the members reconvened at the Songs’ house
and the women disappeared into the basement, where they began
preparing the post-service feast. They skinned mounds of Asian
pears, tossed and turned vats of rice and stacked acorn jellies, seasoned sesame leaves and stir-fried garlic buds on plates. In Suk Song
explained to me that every aspect of the meal is prepared in the name
of the Lord. Every banchan—Korea’s tapas—is sacred.
The Korea Times Daily, the Toronto Korean community’s largest
newspaper, was the first to break the story of the rapes after a tip
from a church insider. The paper ran a front-page story on March 17,
July 2012 toronto life 59
One student remembers an
injection and a feeling of
weightlessness. She says they
forced her to bark like a dog,
and then she was raped
2010, which was picked up by Korean bloggers and prompted SBS,
South Korea’s state broadcaster, to send a team of investigative
reporters to Toronto.
The scandal became the shared obsession of Korean Torontonians. The crime touched a nerve: many Koreans had hosted
visiting students or knew of families back in South Korea who
had sent their daughters to Toronto. Reporters asked how so many
young women could be exploited for so many months within
the church.
A dozen stories followed in the Daily. The paper interviewed
Jacqueline An, a lawyer who briefly represented one of the accused
rapists, and, although the case had yet to be tried, sided with her
version of events—effectively dismissing the complaints of the allegedly raped women and depicting the scandal as evidence of a cult.
Song was furious at the Daily and wary of other media but seemed
to enjoy that the world was finally paying attention to him. He claimed
the nine accused were a deviant
breakaway group of the church.
was not yet clean, so he could
When we spoke, he insisted
not go ahead with the immithat if I met the victims in pergration application or return
son I’d be persuaded their story
any of the money because it
was true. He arranged for me
would do her harm. Sandra
to meet Yeri and four of the
said that when she tried to
other women, along with the
assert herself, he laughed at
church director, Cho, at one of
her, and reminded her that he
the Etobicoke apartments. Cho
was her pastor and she merely
sat the group around a dining
a visitor in Canada. He gave
table. A peculiar tension filled
her the impression that he had
the room. All five women
the authority to deport her.
bowed their heads so their long,
She kept quiet.
The lawyer Jacqueline An
dark hair covered their faces
says Sandra came to her and
like mantillas. They appeared
both sad and nervous.
recanted her rape allegation
The women took turns
in front of a video camera. In
describing their ordeal for me.
the video, which An supplied
They each told me their memto the Crown, Sandra claims
ories were a blur. Their voices
that Song verbally and physjumped an octave or two when
ically abused her. It was Song,
they recounted the nights of
not the deacon, who forced her
the rapes, and each wept in
to run naked around the conturn. I wanted to believe their
venience store on that day back
tears but couldn’t shake the
in 2010. And it was Song, she
suspicion that they’d been
alleged, who convinced her
Christian charity: Song’s services are held in a borrowed church
trained to be model victims.
and the five other women that
at Steeles and Islington
Their accounts, including
they were raped by the nine
Yeri’s, were pitch perfect, neat
accused, and that if they didn’t
and polished.
remember the crime it was because they’d been drugged. At some
Conspicuously absent at the table was Sandra, the woman who point, she started to believe that what Song said was true.
had run naked around the convenience store and initiated the
Sandra claims she tried to escape Song’s group three times.
charges. She no longer lives in the apartment or is in contact with Once, she attempted to throw herself out of a moving car, but Song,
the church. I reached her through a Korean-Canadian named who was behind the wheel, grabbed her arm. She told me she was
Raphael Kim, a private investigator who was hired by Sandra’s later beaten by Song for this act of defiance. She attempted to slip
mother, after the rape charges were laid, to help her recoup $450,000 out of her shared apartment twice, but an alarm installed on the
she claims Song had stolen from her. Sandra nervously explained door gave her away. She finally escaped in September 2010. She
to me how she moved to Canada in 2005. She said that Song prom- had only $20 on her, and with it, she purchased a TTC token and
ised to help her entire family move to Canada, and her mother, who a phone card. In the months after her escape, she briefly lived in
still lives in Korea, wired the money to be used for investments the home of a Korea Times editor. This April she flew back to her
that would help facilitate immigration.
family in South Korea.
She now claims she knew something was wrong from the moment
Song denies all charges of fraud and assault, but admits that he
she arrived in Toronto. Song supposedly told her that her spirit and Sandra’s mother settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
60 toronto life July 2012
D
uring my interviews with Song, one of the many things Canada, where she could lead what he called a “life of prayer.” In
that surprised me was how untroubled he seemed 2004, she flew to Toronto and joined her uncle. Ham soon learned
that three of his own close relatives were among the that this life of prayer had peculiar ground rules. Song encouraged
nine accused. Young-Min Ham, his niece, agreed to his congregants to live in one of the six church apartments. Curfew
meet me and explain how she and her husband, Jung- was 10 p.m., so that the members could prepare themselves for a
Soo K im, had
group prayer session at midjoi ned S ong ’s
night. Song also allegedly
church and came
acted as a doctor to his flock,
supplying them with Korean
to be arrested. The couple lives
at Yonge and Sheppard in a
medications from a smuggledone-bedroom apartment. She
in stash. At times, Song would
cares for their 12-year-old boy
phone Ham and ask her to
while Kim works for the
cover for him, to say that he
Ontario Korean Businesswas with her when his wife
men’s Association.
came calling. He never said
When Ham was in middle
why, but according to Ham it
school, living just outside of
was an open secret that he was
Seoul, Song came to stay with
cheating on In Suk. ‘I will supher family while he was takport him,’ Ham thought. ‘He
ing courses in Dahn Yoga.
is the true servant of the Lord.’
O ne day, Ha m sno op e d
(Song denies he was having
around his room and found
an affair.)
his diary. One entry read,
On February 20, 2010, a
“Today, I felt my body lift. Air
week after the incident in the
entered through my right
convenience store, Ham’s
underarm before exiting my
phone rang close to midnight.
body by my abdomen.” She
It was Min Sun Cho, and she
urged Ham and her husband
knew that her uncle was a
spiritual man, but the diary
to come to an emergency meetconvinced her that he had a
ing at the church office in
Orangeville. Ham and her
profound connection to God.
On another visit from Song,
Answered prayers: a plaque in Song’s home
husband arrived to find themwhen Ham was in her mid-20s,
commemorates his exoneration
selves joined by 17 other senior
he invited her to move to
church members. Song entered
the room and held up a manila folder. In it, he said, was testimony
by female members of the church stating that they had been raped
by church elders. The parents of one of the Korean students were
threatening to go to the police.
Ham thought her ears had betrayed her. At first, it did not occur
to her that she and her husband would be among the elders Song
was accusing of gang rape. She remembers that Song looked disheveled: his hair was a mess, he wore no socks and the zipper of his
pants was partially open. Ham assumed that Song was testing
their faith. By the time she realized that he was serious and these
women were accusing her and her husband of terrible crimes, it
was early in the morning and they had been dismissed without
getting a chance to speak.
Over the next few months, Ham, her husband, her sister and
three other elders were arrested. Arrest warrants were also issued
for the three who had fled to South Korea. Ham was held for three
days before being released on bail.
A preliminary hearing against the elders began last July. The
assistant Crown prosecutor, Paul Zambonini, presented the evidence from the women, who testified that during some of the gang
rapes the elders’ wives cheered them on. The rapes allegedly
occurred at the apartments of the accused, at the apartments the
international students shared, at a motel and in a soccer field. Song
also testified at the hearing, explaining how he encouraged his
students to go to the police. At one point, the court heard a recording Song had made of the middle-of-the-night meeting when he
the pastor allegedly told one
woman he had to examine her
body because she was being
attacked by her “motherin-law’s evil horny spirit”
Another woman claims she
tried to escape by throwing
herself out of song’s
moving car, and that She was
beaten for her defiance
warned his elders they would be charged. Much of the testimony—
including Song’s and the rape victims’—was given in Korean and
translated for the court.
Five weeks later, there was a surprise announcement: the Crown
wouldn’t proceed with a trial. All 485 charges were dropped. After
reviewing the testimony from Song and the women, the recanting of
charges by the one international student and evidence from the defence
that included an alibi for one of the accused, the Crown decided that
there wasn’t a reasonable prospect of conviction.
The case against the nine elders was a tangled mess, to be sure.
And it didn’t help that the rape victims and their pastor had to
deliver their often harrowing testimony through the stilted words
of a translator. The young women were difficult to keep straight—
they had similar names and were of similar stature. Their memories
of the alleged crimes were fragmented. And it was never explained
why they had been singled out by the elders, or what motivated this
group of elders to join together to repeatedly drug and rape them.
Upon hearing the Crown’s announcement, Ham and her husband
were ecstatic. But before they left the building they had to sign $500
peace bonds—a promise they would not attempt to contact their
accusers.
As the courtroom emptied, the five international students
huddled around Pastor Song and wept.
The biggest obstacle to the conviction of the nine accused rapists
was the role of their pastor. Last year, an hour after the church’s
deacon was arrested for gang rape, his wife went to the police
alleging that Song had assaulted her. The woman had joined the
church in 2003. She and her husband had lived in one of the shared
church apartments, and she ran a convenience store.
In her statements to the police, she claimed that Song approached
her in the early hours of Valentine’s Day in 2010, the same day as
the scene in the Orangeville convenience store, and told her that
her “mother-in-law’s evil horny spirit” was attacking her and that
this would result in her upper body swelling to resemble a hunchback. She said he then directed her into his bedroom and proceeded
to undress her. When she resisted, he told her that he had to examine her skin to see if it was turning green. “Come on, come on, let
me see your body,” he supposedly said. He also told her that her
husband was cheating on her and she should get her revenge by
having sex with him. After that, she said, he fondled her breasts
and touched her vagina.
Song was charged with sexual assault, but he adamantly denied
any wrongdoing. “I was a father figure to her,” he told me. “Is this
64 toronto life July 2012
how she repays her debt?” He hired a defence lawyer named
Christophe Preobrazenski, who planned to argue that the woman
had invented the assault and only went to police after her husband
was arrested as one of the nine gang rapists. This was her way of
getting back at Song.
The case against Song was heard this past January in Orange­
ville’s courthouse. He arrived at the trial followed by his wife and
the five allegedly raped women. Song, who has poor English despite
having lived here for 31 years, required an interpreter. When he
answered a question, his entire body would lurch forward. He
sipped frequently from a vitamin shake. The session was not easy
to follow, in English or Korean. He replied rhetorically to questions
from the Crown and from Preobrazenski. “Why would I interfere
with their lives?” he said, when asked if the woman and her husband
required his permission before making social arrangements. When
Preobrazenski asked him if he had told her she was possessed by
an evil spirit, Song barked back, “I never have, and I don’t want to
hear any more of it.”
The presiding judge, Katherine van Rensburg, appeared more
and more perplexed as the hours of testimony passed. She couldn’t
overlook the fact that the woman didn’t protest at the time of the
assault, didn’t change her behaviour around Song in the days and
weeks that followed and came forward only after her husband was
charged. “The expression ‘Where there is smoke, there is fire’ has
no place in law in a criminal court,” van Rensburg said. “Although
in this case it could be said there is plenty of smoke.” She ruled that
the Crown failed to prove the assault had occurred.
Song and his female followers left the courthouse in a jubilant
mood and returned to Song’s house for a celebratory lunch of Korean
sushi.
T
he more time I spent with Song and all the others involved
in this web of grievances and allegations, the more I
began to doubt everyone’s version of events. Each
person seemed to be playing a character in a Korean
soap opera—a melodrama that happened to be set in
an extremely insular group that may or may not be a
religious cult.
Song may have been acquitted, but his troubles are
far from over: lawsuits and countersuits are flying in all directions.
Since the gang rape charges were dropped and the Orangeville trial
ended, the accused have been preparing a civil lawsuit against the
police, Song and their accusers. Meanwhile, in South Korea, two
sets of parents of alleged rape victims launched a civil suit against
the three accused who fled, but the courts dismissed the suit in
April. The three who fled are preparing their own suits against the
six women. And the South Korean authorities have filed a criminal
suit against the six for false accusations. Some of the alleged rape
victims, for their part, have launched a civil suit in Canada against
the accused and the woman who recanted. They’ve also launched
a $45-million defamation suit against the Korea Times Daily.
Back at her apartment, Yeri told me that Song’s acquittal was
the only good news she’d had in a long time. “How can I fabricate
my own sexual assault?” she asked. “In Korean society, the victims
are seen as shameful. What about my future? What kind of man
would like me?”
After her own case was thrown out of court, she had cried for
days. Two of the other women attempted suicide, taking an overdose
of sleeping pills, and had to be hospitalized. They’re all now back
in their church apartments, under Song’s watchful eye. b