A Pastor Father Called 108 Prostrations Idolatry. His Daughter Found Herself Beyond Him

Lee Jung-eun grew up in a household where even ordinary pleasures could provoke a rebuke. She could not eat out or have snacks, read newspapers or watch television. After returning home having failed an exam because of enteritis, she was scolded for supposedly failing to believe in God properly.

That upbringing pushed her toward an academic study of pseudo-religions and similar movements, which she describes as products of fundamentalist faith. Her path moved between extreme compliance and resistance. After entering university, she became absorbed in the doctrine of Shincheonji and believed she had found the truth, accepting the group’s conduct as serving that truth.

Lee calls her search for an independent self “taking care of the self.” Drawing on Judith Butler and Michel Foucault, the book presents subjecthood as something formed through, and eventually against, subjection and dependence. Lee no longer attends church. She practices 108 prostrations, which her father considers idolatry, while continuing to reset her relationship with him and with the self-denial that shaped his life.

The book opens with Lee visiting her sick father. His room contains almost nothing, yet it feels filled by an intensely ascetic spirit expressed through discipline and practice. Her father had become a pastor after passing through student and labor movements. In that room, Lee’s account finds a moment of reconciliation with the life she had once experienced as oppressive.