Never mind, apparently, that Kim Kang-lip, the vice minister of health, has publicly stated that Shincheonji has been cooperating and providing the data requested of it. Mr. Kim has also warned that taking forceful measures against the church could scare its members into hiding and complicate efforts to contain the outbreak.

People are anxious, understandably. Some coronavirus patients are said to have died at home after being turned away from hospitals that had run out of beds for patients. But then some hospitals have also reported turning away people displaying symptoms of Covid-19 if they had not recently traveled to China — or because they were not members of Shincheonji. This, too, singles out and stigmatizes the church, breeding resentment against it.

In a survey released on March 2 by the local pollster Realmeter, more than 86 percent of respondents said they wanted Shincheonji to be searched so that the authorities could check its membership. A petition calling on Shincheonji to be dissolved — which was uploaded to the president’s official website — has received more than 1.25 million signatures.

Then again, there is also a petition calling for Mr. Moon’s impeachment, and it had garnered the support of more than 1.4 million people by March 5, when the drive ended. (The country’s total population is close to 52 million.)

Opposition parties have criticized Mr. Moon’s administration for its handling of the epidemic, arguing that it should have blocked all arrivals from China as early as late January, well before the cluster of cases linked to Shincheonji broke out in mid-February.

Of course, none of this absolves Shincheonji of potential wrongdoing. Shincheonji is secretive, and its leaders sometimes are deliberately provocative: Mr. Lee initially said that the epidemic resulted from “the evil who got jealous of Shincheonji’s rapid growth” — before calling it “a great calamity” at a news conference at one of the church’s buildings near Seoul last week.

Outside that building, a woman holding up placards denouncing the church’s “pseudo-religion” said she was searching for her daughter, a Shincheonji member, whom she had not seen for years. This mother is hardly the first person to accuse the church of indoctrinating a relative, or of forcing members to break off ties with their families.

But even if the worst of these claims is true, Shincheonji also has been, quite simply, unlucky to catch the coronavirus in its own way. And now it is paying a heavy price for public prejudice and political opportunism.

Raphael Rashid (@koryodynasty) is a journalist based in Seoul.

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