Former Shincheonji Members & Families - Book of Life Data
Did you know SCJ collects this information about you and your family? Former members and families, please read.
Over the past year I've spent considerable time researching how Shincheonji operates, and one area I keep coming back to is data. Not as an abstract legal concern, but as something that directly affects real people, including family members who never joined and never consented to anything.
A former member recently shared the actual registration form that SCJ asks new members to complete. It's called the Book of Life registration. I want to walk through what it asks for, because I don't think everyone, including many people who filled it in, has fully registered what they were handing over.
What the form collects
This is not a summary. These are the actual fields from the form:
Full name, nationality, date of birth, gender, hometown, current address, personal mobile, work number, home number, email address, height, blood type, marital status.
How you were recruited: family, friends, street contact, social media, online, events, Bible seminar, or another church.
Your previous religion, denomination, church name, role in that church, and how long you had been a Christian.
Your hobbies and specialities.
And then this section, which I want to highlight separately:
Family information!!!!!
Number of brothers and sisters. Each sibling's name, gender, date of birth, and religion including their denomination and church.
Parents' names, dates of birth, and religion.
Your position in the family birth order.
Then full education history and full employment history including employer names, job titles, and dates.
Let that sink in
The person filling this in is a new member, often someone who joined believing they were attending a genuine Bible study. They are now being asked to record the names, dates of birth, and religious affiliations of every member of their immediate family.
Those family members did not join SCJ. They did not sign anything. They were not told their information was being collected. They gave no consent.
Under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, processing personal data about individuals requires a lawful basis. Religious belief is explicitly a "special category" of data, meaning it carries even stronger legal protections. Recording someone's denomination and church attendance without their knowledge or consent is not a minor administrative issue. It is potentially a serious data protection violation.
Even if the member signing the form agreed to SCJ's own terms, that consent does not extend to third parties. You cannot consent on someone else's behalf.
Where does this data go?
Former members have described this information flowing upward through SCJ's cell and reporting structure, and there is credible evidence that member data collected internationally is transmitted to SCJ's headquarters in South Korea. If personal data about UK residents is being sent outside the UK, that triggers additional requirements under UK GDPR around international data transfers. Whether SCJ has ever complied with those requirements is a legitimate question.
Why this matters beyond the legal language
Inside SCJ, members are also regularly asked to report on their "leaves" (people they are recruiting) and their "obstacles" (usually family members who are concerned about their involvement). Those reports include personal details about people who have no idea they are being discussed, profiled, and logged in an organisation's internal systems.
If you expressed concern to a loved one inside SCJ, there is a reasonable chance that your name, your views, and your relationship to that person were written into a report and passed up the chain.
What you can do
If you are a former member, you have the right to submit a Subject Access Request to SCJ asking what personal data they hold about you. You also have the right to request erasure in certain circumstances. If you believe your data, or data about your family, has been mishandled, you can make a complaint to the ICO, the UK's data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk.
If you are a family member who has never been inside SCJ but believes you may have been discussed in member reports, you may also have rights worth exploring.
If you have your own copy of the Book of Life form, or experience of how member data is collected and transmitted, I would genuinely like to hear from you. Particularly if you held an operational role and have direct knowledge of how reporting worked.
Please feel free to send me a DM here on Reddit. Everything shared with me is treated in confidence.