分类： politics

In a major development tied to sweeping political investigations launched by South Korea’s new liberal government, 95-year-old Lee Man-hee, the controversial founder of the secretive Shincheonji Church of Jesus, has been taken into custody on allegations that he orchestrated a mass illegal recruitment of thousands of followers to tilt election outcomes in favor of the former conservative ruling People Power Party (PPP).

The arrest warrant was issued late Wednesday by Seoul Central District Court, which ruled that Lee posed a significant risk of destroying key evidence related to the investigation. Lee, who relies on a cane and required assistance from a church aide to enter the court for a pre-arrest hearing Wednesday afternoon, offered no response to questions from waiting reporters. Shincheonji, which has previously raised public concerns about Lee’s advanced age and fragile health, had not issued an official statement on the arrest as of Thursday morning. The church has repeatedly denied all allegations of wrongdoing against Lee and the organization.

Founded by Lee in 1984, Shincheonji — whose name translates to “new heaven and new earth” — claims a global membership of roughly 200,000 adherents. Lee, who frames himself as a divinely appointed messenger of Jesus tasked with fulfilling end-time prophecies from the Book of Revelation, has long been labeled a false prophet and cult leader by mainstream South Korean Christian denominations. Shincheonji describes him as the “Promised Pastor” called to deliver the final truth of Christian scripture.

Prosecutors allege that between 2021 and 2024, Lee leveraged Shincheonji’s nationwide network of regional branches to coerce more than 50,000 church followers to illegally join the PPP. The scheme, investigators say, was designed to manipulate the outcomes of the conservative party’s presidential and legislative primary elections, including boosting the 2022 presidential bid of former conservative head of state Yoon Suk Yeol. In exchange for the electoral support, Lee reportedly sought favorable regulatory treatment for the church, including accelerated approvals to expand its religious facilities across the country.

Lee’s arrest is the latest milestone in a broad probe launched in January by a joint special investigation team of South Korean prosecutors and police, which is probing improper ties between major conservative religious organizations — including Shincheonji and the Unification Church, officially known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification — and senior conservative politicians. The investigation is one of multiple inquiries ordered by the current liberal administration of President Lee Jae Myung, who won an early presidential election in 2024 after Yoon was removed from office.

Yoon’s ousting followed a turbulent political crisis that began in December 2024, when he imposed a brief, unexpected martial law against the opposition liberal-controlled legislature, accusing lawmakers of being pro-North Korean subversives. The move triggered an immediate impeachment process, and Yoon was ultimately removed from office in April 2025 after the Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment vote. Convicted of rebellion over the martial law declaration, Yoon received a life sentence, and was separately sentenced to 30 additional years in prison on charges of ordering unauthorized drone flights over Pyongyang to stoke inter-Korean tensions and create a pretext for imposing martial law domestically. He remains in custody as he appeals both convictions.

The investigation into religious-political ties has already ensnared other high-profile figures. Months before Lee Man-hee’s arrest, Hak Ja Han, the 77-year-old top leader of the Unification Church and widow of church founder Sun Myung Moon, was arrested and indicted on charges that she ordered church officials to bribe Yoon’s wife, Kim Keon Hee, and a senior PPP lawmaker close to Yoon to secure lucrative business benefits for the church. Han has denied all accusations against her. In April, an appeals court sentenced Kim Keon Hee to four years in prison after convicting her on multiple corruption charges, including accepting millions of dollars worth of luxury gifts from a senior Unification Church official.

Founded by Sun Myung Moon in 1954, the Unification Church grew into a global movement with millions of followers and vast cross-sector business interests. Moon, who also claimed to be a messiah sent to complete Jesus’ unfinished work, built the church’s international reputation around its signature mass wedding events, where thousands of couples from different countries are matched and married collectively in large ceremonies. Since Moon’s death in 2012, Han has led the organization.

In an uncommon show of unified diplomatic concern, Great Britain, France, and Germany released a joint public statement on Wednesday sounding the alarm over recent Chinese maritime operations east of Taiwan, the self-governed island that has long been a flashpoint for cross-strait and global geopolitical tension.

The joint statement was released through the three European powers’ de facto diplomatic missions based in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital. While the statement did not outline specific details of what it labeled “novel Chinese activity”, it emphasized that the unorthodox deployments posed a clear threat to long-standing stability across the Indo-Pacific region.

China, which claims the democratically governed Taiwan as an inalienable part of its territory that it has pledged to reunify, even by force if necessary, framed its early-month coast guard deployments as routine “maritime traffic enforcement and hydrographic survey operations”. According to Chinese state media reports, the deployments also carried an explicit messaging purpose: they were crafted to send a sharp warning to Japan and the Philippines, after the two nations announced plans to hold negotiations over their shared maritime boundaries in waters Beijing claims as its sovereign territory.

The joint statement from the three European nations noted: “These actions threaten regional stability and the freedom of navigation and safety of international shipping. We reiterate our opposition to any unilateral change to the status quo, particularly by threat or use of force or coercion.” The missions also called for universal upholding of navigational rights and freedoms, and unwavering respect for the personal safety of all seafarers operating in the region. As of Wednesday evening, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had not issued any immediate response to media requests for comment on the joint statement.

Tensions in the region have spiked sharply in recent days, following a sequence of consecutive military moves by both Beijing and Taipei. On Tuesday, just hours after Taiwan launched a five-day nationwide military exercise designed to test its defensive readiness against potential Chinese incursion, China sailed its newest and most technologically advanced aircraft carrier through the Taiwan Strait, the narrow body of water that separates mainland China from the island.

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense clarified that the ongoing drills are intended to strengthen the island’s ability to respond to a full-scale Chinese attack, with a specific focus on testing rapid deployment capabilities for military units. This preparation is targeted specifically at countering potential sudden escalations of Chinese grey-zone tactics — a broad category of coercive aggressive actions that range from routine naval patrols to unannounced drone flights, all of which stop short of open, full-scale combat. Earlier this month, Taipei also confirmed that Chinese coast guard vessels had been harassing commercial shipping near the island, ordering transiting civilian ships to disclose their intended routes before passing through the area.

Cross-strait pressure has grown steadily in recent years, with Beijing ramping up its coercive campaign against Taiwan: Chinese military aircraft and naval vessels now conduct near-daily patrols around the island, with large-scale live-fire drills held periodically to demonstrate Beijing’s military capabilities. Regional tensions have also grown between China and Japan over the Taiwan issue, after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested last year that the Japanese Self-Defense Forces could intervene militarily if Beijing launched an attack on Taiwan.

In an annual national security threat briefing on Wednesday, the top official of Australia’s primary domestic intelligence agency has publicly laid out detailed allegations that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) orchestrated two separate arson attacks against Jewish community sites in Australia’s largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, using agents with past ties to the country.

Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), confirmed that Iran has long regarded Australia as a valid target for covert, state-sponsored violent operations. The two attacks, which took place two months apart in early 2024, targeted a kosher restaurant, Lewis’ Continental Kitchen, in Sydney, and Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue, leaving both properties damaged by fire. Last year, Australian authorities formally held Iran responsible for the incidents, triggering a major diplomatic rupture that saw Tehran’s ambassador to Australia expelled. Iranian officials have repeatedly denied all involvement in the attacks.

Burgess outlined the structure of the IRGC’s plot in the briefing: the firebombing of the Sydney kosher eatery was directed by an Australian citizen who is currently based in Iran and holds a senior position as an IRGC agent, overseeing the force’s global covert networks. The second attack, on the Melbourne synagogue, was directed by a former Australian resident who now lives in Iraq, recruited to the IRGC’s cause via Iraqi militia groups. Burgess noted the IRGC specifically sought out this operative for his established local criminal connections, and even provided backing for his other ongoing illegal activities before the attacks were exposed.

To protect the integrity of ongoing investigations and upcoming criminal prosecutions, Burgess declined to release the names of any of the suspects involved. He did, however, share new details about shifts in the case after ASIO publicly named Iran as the party responsible for the arsons. Once the operation was exposed, the operative’s Iranian backers withdrew their support, and following coordinated pressure from Australian law enforcement and local security officials in the region where the operative was based, the IRGC itself detained and imprisoned the former Australian resident.

Burgess characterized the sprawling investigation into the two coordinated attacks as one of the most complex and extensive probes conducted by ASIO in recent decades. He also reiterated earlier warnings that the IRGC is suspected of involvement in multiple other antisemitic attacks targeting Australian Jewish communities, a trend that emerged after the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023.

To date, multiple individuals have already been charged with criminal offenses linked to the arson plots, though authorities have not yet confirmed whether these low-level actors knew they were acting on behalf of Iranian state actors when they carried out the attacks.

DALIAN, China — Addressing global business and policy leaders at the opening of the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions, widely known as the “Summer Davos,” Chinese Premier Li Qiang pushed back against rising Western criticism of China’s rapid high-tech expansion on Wednesday, reframing the nation’s technological progress as a shared global benefit rather than a disruptive threat.

In recent months, policymakers across the United States and Europe have grown increasingly vocal about what they frame as unfair competitive advantages held by Chinese high-tech sectors, from artificial intelligence and semiconductors to electric vehicles and renewable energy equipment. Many Western officials have pinned this advantage on large-scale Chinese state subsidies, arguing that the government financial support distorts global markets and undercuts foreign competitors. Even the 38-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development echoed this concern in a June report, noting that expansive state subsidies, including those provided by China, risk skewing global industry dynamics.

Li directly refuted these claims during his plenary address. “There are some people who say that Chinese products are competitive mainly because the Chinese government’s subsidies. That’s not true. The Chinese government is not that wealthy,” he stated. Instead, the premier attributed China’s tech success to two core domestic strengths: the nation’s vast 1.4 billion-person consumer market, which allows companies to rapidly roll out and scale new technologies at mass volume, and the heavy, sustained private investment poured into research and development by Chinese enterprises.

To illustrate his point, Li highlighted two major Chinese tech firms that have faced increasing Western restrictions: telecom giant Huawei and robotics manufacturer Unitree Robotics. Both companies have seen rapid growth in global market share despite facing punitive barriers from Western governments, including their placement on the U.S. Pentagon’s list of alleged military-linked Chinese companies that are barred from securing American defense contracts. Beijing has already issued formal opposition to the latest expansion of this blacklist, which added Unitree and other tech firms earlier this month.

Beyond the subsidy debate, Li addressed growing global anxiety over what some analysts have dubbed “China Shock 2.0” — a narrative that frames China’s booming high-tech exports as a major threat to established advanced economies in North America and Europe. In a direct rebranding, Li argued the current era should instead be recognized as “China Opportunity 2.0.”

“From the global development perspective, ‘China Opportunity 2.0’ means there’ll be broader access to advanced technologies and more widely shared benefits,” Li told the audience. He emphasized that China’s emerging technologies and competitively priced products, from EVs and solar panels to AI systems and industrial robots, do not deliver disruptive shocks to the global economy, but rather expand access and drive growth for partners worldwide. “China’s emerging technologies and products are bringing to the world not shocks, but opportunities,” he added. “Not threats, but empowerment.”

The debate over China’s high-tech expansion comes as multiple Western governments have moved to implement protectionist trade measures targeting Chinese tech and clean energy exports, citing concerns over oversupply and unfair competition. The Summer Davos gathering in Dalian, which draws global business leaders and policymakers each year, provided a high-profile platform for China’s top economic official to lay out the country’s position amid rising geopolitical and trade tensions.

Associated Press video producer Wayne Zhang in Beijing contributed reporting to this article.