“Big 4” Founder Admits Connection To Notorious Cult

JYP Entertainment founder and CCO J.Y. Park has finally addressed renewed accusations of ties to a controversial “cult”.

J.Y. Park surprised K-Pop fans several years ago when he began uploading Bible lectures to YouTube under the name of Firstfruits. In a newly uploaded video on the church’s Korean channel, the founder addressed the church’s origins directly from the pulpit.

Park, who is a born-again Christian, explained that he’s often asked whether Firstfruits has secret connections to other groups. But while he pushed back against critics, insisting that Firstfruits has its own “lineage [and] spiritual genealogy,” he did go on to reveal the denominations of Christians who belong to it.

Our church has people from Catholic backgrounds, Presbyterian backgrounds, Baptist backgrounds, and Shincheonji backgrounds

— J.Y. Park

Shincheonji is one of South Korea’s most controversial new religious movements, long labeled a cult by mainstream churches and even blamed for helping spread a major COVID-19 outbreak.

Park went on to argue that the Firstfruits church should not be defined by its members’ pasts, but many Korean media outlets have lasered in on his words about Shincheonji. In the past, netizens have speculated that J.Y. Park may have connections to the group, particularly as the structure and content of his early sermons overlapped with content from Shincheonji.

Back in 2018, a media outlet also reported that J.Y. Park belonged to the so-called “Salvation Sect,” another controversial new-age religious movement also referred to as a cult. At the time, he denied the allegations.