[단독] 손현보 “정치탄압 포장? 나치도 법으로 유대인 학살”

Last year, Pastor Son Hyun-bo of the World Church in Busan faced a conviction for illegal election campaigning, even though he claimed the charges were political persecution. During his return on July 14th, he claimed that he met former US President Donald Trump at the White House on July 7th. In a video posted on his church's YouTube channel, Pastor Son expressed his discomfort at being labeled as making false statements in "radical left media" for criticizing the government during prayer time.

He had previously been imprisoned for five months for criticizing the government during prayer time, despite claims that he was only expressing his religious beliefs. Critics in politics accused him of violating campaign finance and local government election laws. Politicians also criticized him, calling him a "wasteful foreign policy blunder" and a "violation of South Korea's judicial system."

Pastor Son argued that the current election law, similar to Japan's Public Security Preservation Law and Nazi Germany's anti-Semitic law, was being used to persecute and silence political opponents. He compared the current laws to the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped German Jews of their citizenship and banned marriages between non-Jews and Jews.

While Pastor Son is the only one facing persecution among many pastors, similar cases have been reported in other churches. For example, the Seoul Election Management Board prosecuted Pastor Kim Nam-hyun of Love Chapel, and the Gwangju Election Management Board prosecuted Pastor Kim Jin-hong of the Dure Church. In contrast to Pastor Son's case, the Constitutional Court ruled in 2024 that similar cases of violating election laws were constitutional.

Pastor Son, who led the anti-previous President's rally after the 12·3 coup, had been fined 80,000 won for criticizing a Democratic Party candidate during a church service in April 2021, claiming that he was merely stating his religious beliefs.