State Power Must Not Override Religious Freedom

The power to prosecute must not become the power to intrude: Protecting religious autonomy from the misuse of state power

Continued from part 1 Responsibility Must Be Proven in Appeal Court

Religious freedom and the danger of state intrusion

The most significant broader issue raised by religious affairs reporter Jeong Seong-su (정성수) in his column in the South Korean daily Segye Ilbo on 31^st August concerns religious freedom and the relationship between religious organizations and state power.

See also State’s Faith War: Prosecution to Dissolution

See also Special Prosecutor Appeal for Harsher Sentence

See also Mother Han Appeal Tests Prosecutorial Authority

See also Pompeo: Mother Han (83) Targeted for Her Beliefs

See also Preserve the FFWPU Bridge to North Korea

He acknowledges an important principle: religious leaders are not above the law. If a religious leader commits a crime, that person should be held accountable.

But the opposite principle is equally important. The constitutional protection of freedom of religion and separation of religion and state does not merely mean that religious organizations must stay away from political power. It also means that the state must respect the autonomous sphere of religious life and must not intrude into it arbitrarily.

This distinction is particularly relevant in a case involving the leader of a minority religious organization.

Jeong warns that if someone’s position as the supreme leader of a religious organization is treated as sufficient evidence of criminal participation, then religious hierarchy could begin to substitute for proof of individual criminal intent.

That would establish a dangerous precedent. A leader could potentially be held criminally responsible for actions carried out by subordinates simply because of the leader’s institutional position or because the organization as a whole had engaged in controversial political or social activities.

For Jeong, this is not merely a Family Federation issue. It potentially concerns all religious communities.

If concrete evidence of conspiracy, knowledge and intent is replaced by assumptions based on religious authority, organizational hierarchy or political controversy, no religious group can be confident that its constitutional autonomy is secure.

Ordinary believers should not become collateral damage

Jeong also makes an important distinction between the leadership of the Family Federation and its ordinary members.

The people who have suffered most from the controversy, he argues, are often ordinary believers who have no connection whatsoever with political power. They are people who contributed money to their religious community and maintained their faith over many years.

They should not automatically be stigmatized by descriptions of the religious organization as a “money-driven group” or as an example of “religion–politics collusion”.

His blunt conclusion is:

“The believers are not criminals.”

This point reinforces his broader argument that scrutiny of alleged wrongdoing by religious leaders must not become a justification for treating an entire religious community as inherently suspect.

The appeal must be independent of politics

Ultimately, Jeong argues that the appeals court should resist the temptation to treat the first-instance judgment as a politically convenient compromise.

The two-year sentence might appear to occupy a middle ground: the special prosecutor obtained convictions, while the court rejected some charges and restricted the scope of the investigation. Hak Ja Han‘s side, meanwhile, can point to the dramatic reduction from 13 years to two as a reason to pursue an appeal.

But criminal justice is not supposed to be a negotiated settlement between competing political interests.

The appellate court should therefore neither protect the special prosecutor’s reputation nor preserve the government’s investigative achievements. Nor should it attempt to satisfy the expectations of the Family Federation.

Its task is narrower and more demanding: to determine whether the evidence establishes beyond reasonable doubt that Mother Han personally knew about and approved the specific unlawful acts attributed to her.

That is why Jeong‘s final image of the “scales” of the appellate court is so significant. What belongs on those scales, he says, is not public approval or hostility toward a minority religion, nor the political significance attached to the case.

It is simply the weight of the evidence and the weight of individual responsibility.

And behind that legal question lies an even larger constitutional one: how can a democratic state punish genuine criminal conduct within a religious organization without allowing the investigation and prosecution of that conduct to become an intrusion into religious freedom itself?

For Jeong, ensuring that this boundary is respected may be one of the most important tasks facing the appellate court.

Continued from part 1 Responsibility Must Be Proven in Appeal Court

See also State’s Faith War: Prosecution to Dissolution

See also Special Prosecutor Appeal for Harsher Sentence

See also Pompeo: Mother Han (83) Targeted for Her Beliefs

See also Mother Han Appeal Tests Prosecutorial Authority

See also Preserve the FFWPU Bridge to North Korea

See also No Charges Over Family Federation Probe Delay

Text: Knut Holdhus, editor

Featured image above: Scales of freedom and constitutional boundary. Illustration: ChatGPT, 4^th September 2026

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