The conservative pastor of a Seoul-based church that became a key source of mass infections of the novel coronavirus has alleged that the government manipulated virus-related data to blame his church for a second wave of the virus outbreak.

Jun Kwang-hoon, who leads the 4,000-member Sarang Jeil Church in Seoul and is a vocal critic of President Moon Jae-in, criticized the government for forcibly conducting diagnostic tests and enforcing isolation on them in a full-page advertisement that ran in the country’s leading conservative newspapers on Thursday.

He asserted that the government “indefinitely” expanded the range of the people subjected to testing in order to inflate the number of cases.

“Forcing testing and quarantine measures on people who didn’t present symptoms or didn’t come in close contact with those who have contracted the virus is an abuse of power and illegal confinement,” he said in the statement.

He urged health authorities to reveal the percentage of positive tests for COVID-19 out of the total tests performed.

“The government can play games with citizens by changing COVID-19 infection numbers. This could lead to a very terrifying result as it could force tests and self-isolation to anyone.”

Counter to his claim, the government has been releasing the test positivity rate.

As of Wednesday at 6 p.m., 630 people linked to the church have tested positive out of a total 3,263, with the rate standing at 19.3 percent.

The country reported an 0.84 percent overall test positivity rate through Thursday, with 16,346 cases out of 1,734,083 tests.

He also demanded health authorities clarify the definition of cases that the government categorized as “Sarang Jeil Church-related” infections, saying people without direct links to the church were included.

Jun cast doubts over several virus control and prevention measures taken by the government, blaming its designation of Aug. 17 as a temporary holiday for having resulted in the nationwide infection emergency situation.

He speculated that the liberal government did not report on the outbreak of the virus at a large concert hall that held some 8,600 people that occurred in April in a bid to minimize a possible negative impact on general elections that month.



By Park Han-na (hnpark@heraldcorp.com)