SeoulSouth Korea

Seoul has one of the most intense Christian scenes in Asia, anchored by some of the largest single megachurches on earth: Yoido Full Gospel, Onnuri, Sarang, and a long tail of large evangelical and Pentecostal congregations. Korean Christian exits look more like the American evangelical exit than like other Asian exits — dawn prayer meetings, intense pastoral authority, prosperity-adjacent theology in some streams, and tight social networks that punish defection.

Seoul is also the headquarters of several Korean new religious movements (Shincheonji, Unification Church, Jesus Morning Star and adjacent groups), and the exits from these resemble high-control group exits elsewhere. Korean Catholics generally have a softer exit, more like Italian Catholic exits.

The pillar page on evangelicalism, the page on Pentecostalism, and (for new-religious-movement exits) the page on Jehovah’s Witnesses will all be relevant depending on what you came out of. Korean cultural pressure around family obedience makes the family rupture piece sharper here than in many other places.

Elder X has been through the religious exit himself — the family rupture, the guilt that would not stop, the psych wards, the isolation of being the person nobody in your family understands anymore. If you are in Seoul and that description lands, reach out. Not therapy. Personal advice from someone who made it to the other side.