Olive Tree (religious movement)

Olive Tree is the most common English name of a Christian new religious movement founded in South Korea by Park Tae Son (). The movement was originally known in Korea as Jesus Christ Congregation Revival Association of Korea () and later as The Church of Heavenly Father (). In a revised 2009 version of his 1996 doctoral dissertation on the history of Korean Pentecostalism, pastor Young Hoon Lee called the Olive Tree “the fastest growing and largest of the Korean syncretistic religions during the 1950s and 1960s,” although he noted it had become “largely insignificant” by the end of the 20th century. The Olive Tree is regarded as a cult by mainline Christian denominations in Korea, and Korean scholar Kim Chang Han has argued in his doctoral dissertation that combating the Olive Tree was a main reason for the emergence of an organized anti-cult movement in South Korea. Park Tae Son was born in Yup nam ri, Duk Chon, North Pyeongan province of present-day North Korea in 1915. He was raised as Presbyterian in a poor family that could only allow him to receive a primary school education. To improve his life, he went to Japan where he worked as a milkman and newsboy during the day and was able to complete Technical High School through evening courses. According to American anthropologist Felix Moos, Park felt discriminated against in Japan as a Korean, which explains why he maintained a strong anti-Japanese orientation in later life. In 1944, Park returned to Korea where he started attending a Presbyterian church near Namdaemun gate in Seoul and became a moderately successful businessperson by launching his own Korea Precision Machine Company. In 1954, he became an elder in the Presbyterian Church and started conducting revival services. In 1955, he was one of the main preachers at a large Presbyterian revival meeting organized at Namsan Mountain near Seoul. There, he claimed to have instantaneously healed a man who had been a cripple for thirty years.