The bodies were arranged in rows. Most were women, dressed in matching white robes and nylon training suits. They lay on thin mats, their heads pointed toward the center of the room. Plastic bags were tied over their heads. Empty bottles of pesticide and sedative-laden drinks were scattered among them. There was no sign of struggle. The air in the sealed attic was thick and still. The Odaeyang company cafeteria in Yongin, south of Seoul, had become a tomb.
Odaeyang, meaning “Five Oceans,” was a religious business cult led by Park Soon-ja and her husband, Kim Ki-seon. It mixed Pentecostal Christianity with fervent anti-communism and a belief in Park as a divine prophet. The group ran a successful necktie manufacturing business, but by 1987 it was collapsing under massive debt and police investigations for fraud. Park preached an impending apocalyptic war with North Korea. She told her inner circle that true believers would be transported to heaven in a spaceship, but first they must undergo a trial of poison.
Investigators concluded the deaths were a murder-suicide orchestrated by the leadership. Park and Kim allegedly administered the poisoned drinks to the followers before taking their own lives. The event was not a mass suicide of willing participants, but a systematic elimination. The cult’s finances were a labyrinth, and the members were both assets and liabilities. Their deaths erased witnesses and fulfilled a warped eschatological narrative.
The Odaeyang incident sent a shock through South Korea, a society undergoing rapid industrialization and democratic upheaval. It exposed the vulnerability of individuals uprooted from traditional communities and seeking meaning in new, authoritarian spiritual structures. The tragedy was overshadowed by the larger political protests of that year. It remains a dark, obscure footnote, a case study in how financial desperation and fanatical belief can converge in a single, horrifying room.