Grace Road Church / Kwon Shin-chan (Fiji)

Grace Road Church (은혜로교회 in Korean, Eunhyero gyohoe) was founded in 2003 in Seoul, South Korea by Shin Ok-ju (born 1962), a Korean Protestant woman who claimed divine revelation as a prophetess. The doctrine combined a distinctive eschatology in which Shin was identified as a prophet who could deliver members from end-times judgement, combined with extensive Old Testament references and an apocalyptic 'flood prophecy' that South Korea would be inundated within a generation. From the early 2010s Shin began urging members to liquidate property and prepare for relocation to a place of refuge that she identified as the Pacific island nation of Fiji.

From 2014 onward Shin led approximately 400 Korean followers — entire families including young children — to rural Fiji, where the church purchased substantial agricultural land at Navua (Viti Levu) and established 'Grace Road Group' as the umbrella for agricultural, restaurant, retail, and construction businesses. The Fijian operations grew to be significant in the local economy: Grace Road Group operated approximately a dozen restaurants and businesses in Suva and Nadi, agricultural farms employing locals alongside member-followers, and a substantial in-Fiji compound where members resided.

Documented coercive-control patterns are extensive and severe. (1) Passport confiscation: senior leaders confiscated members' passports on arrival in Fiji, preventing departure without leadership permission. (2) Forced labour: members worked unpaid 12-16-hour days in church-operated businesses; the Korean state subsequently prosecuted multiple senior leaders for forced labour offences. (3) Beatings of disobedient members: the 'threshing floor' practice — group beatings of members deemed insufficiently submissive — was documented in Korean state prosecution evidence and ex-member accounts. (4) Total information control: members had no internet access, no secular media, no contact with non-Grace-Road family. (5) Child abuse: multiple children of Grace Road members suffered documented physical and psychological abuse including being beaten and being separated from parents as discipline. (6) Family separation: families in Fiji were broken up by senior-leadership assignments, with children housed separately from parents in some cases.

The Korean state response was decisive. In July 2018 Shin Ok-ju was arrested at Incheon airport on returning from Fiji and held on multiple charges including child abuse, false imprisonment, fraud, and assault. In October 2019 the Seoul Eastern District Court convicted her on most charges and sentenced her to 6 years' imprisonment; on subsequent appeal her sentence was extended. The 2019 conviction was extensively covered in BBC World Service, Korea JoongAng Daily, and the Korea Herald. Fijian authorities have separately deported multiple senior Grace Road leaders 2018-2024 for visa violations and forced-labour-related offences; Fijian and Korean state cooperation produced multiple additional senior-leadership extraditions.

The CLCI 35 (Extreme) reflects the comprehensive BITE profile, the documented state prosecutions in both South Korea and Fiji, the passport-confiscation exit prevention, the documented forced labour, and the child-abuse documentation. Grace Road Church is one of the most clearly state-documented contemporary high-control religious organisations operating in the 2010s-2020s, and is notable for the unusual pattern of physical relocation of a Korean cult to a Pacific island nation as part of an apocalyptic survival strategy.