J.R.: Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of 1000 Gurus with me, your host, JR. Yono Cruz. Today's guest is Jay Kim. After leaving a Korean cult of 10 years, Jay rebuilt his life with open-mindedness, friendship, and love. From exploring, cooking and dance to new relationships, his journey is about community growth and celebrating life's meaningful connections.

So this was a very unique conversation with a good friend of mine. Jay is a very quirky dude in the way that he thinks, but he really has a spirit of growth, learning, and compassion that he exudes to all the people around him. And I really wanted to dig into his firsthand experience being in a Christian Korean cult, and has had several scandals regarding the pastor over the last few decades.

We talk about his own origin story, how he went from teaching math to becoming a software developer. His experience in the cult called Manin, how it affected him and his family, and briefly touched upon how he accidentally found his faith again because he was looking for a girlfriend and we jokingly told him to join a church to find one.

So without further ado, [00:01:00] hope you enjoy this episode with Jay Kim.

Hello and welcome back to 1000 Gurus. Please welcome my guest, Jay. Hello, Jay. Kim. Kim. Jay. Kim. Thank you. Glad to be here. Cool. Yeah, thanks for being here, Jay. I am glad you were able to make it all the way from Phoenix, Arizona. Right. Super hot. Somehow I made it. Yeah. How are you feeling? 

Jae: I'm 

J.R.: feeling 

Jae: good.

I'm really happy to be back in California for this brief Labor Day weekend. As I mentioned, the weather has been really 

J.R.: normal to you. Frustratingly normal, I guess. Yeah, because we were talking about it, it's been scorching hot recently, but Jay's like, well, I'm from Phoenix, so it's like this all the time.

So I'm like, okay. So this is normal to you then? Yeah, 

Jae: I literally walked around my friend's neighborhood and to the park was like 90 degrees like the me that the Californian to me a couple years ago would've been like, oh, it's 90 degrees. I can't walk around right now. But now it's like, it feels a little toasty.

[00:02:00] Yeah. So you 

J.R.: like the heat now 

Jae: more so than before, I guess? Or is it just more tolerable? It's more tolerable. I've grown 

J.R.: numb to the heat and so numb to, we love being numb to things. I, if I could have my way, I might have mentioned this on the podcast, but I would move somewhere where it's cold, gloomy, ideally rainy, like Seattle or something.

I do not like the sun or the heat, and that's just me. Not everyone likes cheesecake. But I just don't, I like the culture in SoCal, right? OC LA area. I like the diversity, I like the food, everything, and the people. But I just hate the weather and I don't like the beach. And so that's what people usually like about SoCal is like the weather and the beach.

And I'm like it's not for me. Anyway, so I'll go into how I know you. So we met back in 20 17, 20 18 ish. We met up through different meetup groups, social groups, and we started to go to karaoke together, and then eventually I invited you to my karaoke crew friends. Which now there's a group of what, six, seven of us?

Something like that. Yeah. Eight of us maybe. We used to work out semi-regularly. And then you moved to [00:03:00] Phoenix, Arizona in early 2023, right? Currently work as a software developer. You mentioned how the church you grew in was like a cult and eventually your family got out of it, which is what we're gonna talk about a lot in this episode.

And we have also talked a lot about relationships dating. Financial stuff. Just personal finance, fitness, career, et cetera over the years. So we've had a lot of good conversations like Enter Chipotle or something like that. That's true. So it'll be good to have you and see, pick your brain on these insights.

Are there any clarifications we should know before we go into intro topics? Anything I missed or got wrong? No, 

Speaker 3: we're good. 

J.R.: Yeah. So let's go into what you mentioned was our, how we met at a social meetup group, right? Right. And we went to this restaurant, 20 ish, maybe 20 more people, 20 plus people.

Yeah, definitely right around that. Yeah. And so. We're a group of basically strangers all there to just socialize, hang out. Guys in our mid [00:04:00] to late twenties, and by the end of it, this is how I met Jay. We had 20 people, different bills, and we're not together. And so we wanted to split the check, right?

And so we're like, okay, how do we do this? And then people were trying to go rogue and throw in, oh, well mine was only this much. Let me just throw in a 20. Mine was this month, lemme throw. And then it turns out. We were still short by like 50 to $80, right? Something like that. And so Jay walks up and he's like, Hey, I'm a math major.

I got this. I can calculate tip. I kid you not, an hour and a half later, we were still short, like 30 bucks. We had not anything calculated. And the host ended up dropping 50 extra dollars just to cover. And it was such a frustrating process. But it always stands out because now in our friend group.

Jay would always go, I'm Major. Jay would always go, I got this calculate tip and I guarantee you 90% of the time it is not correct. And I'm like, Jay, what was that six figure degree for? If you can't calculate tip? 

Jae: Yeah, I mean, it's pure math. It's not apply, at least what I studied in [00:05:00] Bachelor's.

That's the excuse that I give. So. The excuse is 

J.R.: that it's too fundamental basic for you. It's too, it's 

Jae: too like it's the Everest of math, J's too high level 

J.R.: for  lower commoner math. He's like, you kind of forget the easy stuff, calculating 10, 15, 20% tip that's too below me.

I don't know if you remember the story differently, but that's how I remember it. Yeah, it's pretty accurate. Nice. I don't really have anything more to add, but it's just funny how that's how we started. Seven years later. Tip is still a challenge for him. Hopefully I gotten a little bit better, so I found that now you kind of just like, you know what, let's just round it.

And I'm like, gee, you're literally a math major. Why are you just trying to take the easy way out? I always give 'em a hard time because that's how it's like. Okay. Anything else before we go into our main topics? No, I'm good. Cool. Origin story. First question is, where did you grow up and what were your main influences?

Just the TLDR. 

Jae: I grew up in actually two different places, primarily. So I was born in Korea at same time, not at the same time. So I was born in South Korea, Seoul, [00:06:00] South Korea, and my family immigrated to the States when. Around 2000 when the whole Y 2K thing broke out and people were worried that computers were gonna shut down or something like that.

So we came and we lived in Vegas. We moved to Vegas 'cause my aunt was the only one that we knew in America, and she invited us over. So we went there and then we lived there for about 10 years. So I went, I, from eight to 18 basically I graduated high school and then we lived in SoCal. For like 13 years.

Like Orange County? Yeah. Orange County, Irvine, Anaheim. And now I'm in Phoenix. So, but primarily Vegas and California. 

J.R.: What about main influences? what informed you as a person, people 

Jae: experiences. Oh, okay. Okay. I would say that my mom was a really big influence in my life.

She was the homemaker. My dad was primarily the provider in the family, so my mom influenced me to really, I guess she, she was that stable emotional source, that rock in our [00:07:00] family. 'cause my dad is not particularly, like a lot of Asian parents. The father is, they do the providing, but they're not really emotionally available.

That was very much the case in my family. So my mom, her kindness, her, emotional kind of bedrock in her family kind of influenced me to always kind of practice a kindness be respectful toward other people. That's another big thing that she taught us, especially in a, growing up in a Korean household.

Respect toward your elders,  it's very important. In our culture, 

My friends also, had a very big influence on me 

Jae: The friends I have right now like you and other people , who have challenged me to do better to grow, and also my other friends who've taught me all sorts of things anywhere from just kind of.

Being generous. Right? Being generous to others. I would be surprised sometimes when some of my friends, they're like, oh yeah, I got this bro. Don't worry about I'll treat you this time. And I'm like, oh no, I'll get you next time. [00:08:00] No, don't worry about it. Really. Like they would insist, and this was like a regular thing with some of my friends and I'm like, wow.

That's pretty cool how they don't really care about being exact about that kind of stuff, but they're just more kind of giving because they love to give. So I have friends who are also like that. So that have influenced me in the sense that, oh, like it's rewarding to be generous for the sake of being generous, not expecting anything in return.

Right. 

J.R.: So when you mean exact, you mean reciprocating, right. Transactional. 

Jae: you scratch my bag, I scratch your. And  those few friends that I have that aren't like that. 

What were your life aspirations growing up like as a kid and then until like your college years? 

Jae: It's funny, right, because as a kid I was always that kid that had the hardest time answering that question. I did not know what to say. I'm like, I don't know what I wanna be. I just, I don't know. It is kind of funny, right?

'cause there is a kindergarten book that, it's like a yearbook. In Korea, like it asks that exact same question who do I want to be when I grow up? [00:09:00] And I said, I want to be this like one Korean hero, this like animation anime character or something. And my teacher right next to it, she said, oh, an excellent person.

So literally I had no idea who I wanted to be as a kid. And in high school that very much was true. But in high school I actually tutored a lot in like my, for math. For like community service and stuff. So I thought, oh, maybe I could be a math teacher. That I kind of got an inkling of that in high school and in college.

That was actually what I pursued initially, I pursued a degree to teach math and I did that actually for two years and realized you never taught tip. How did no, definitely not. Oh, okay. 

J.R.: They never were like, I need tutoring on how to calculate 50% of this book. I'm, 

Jae: I'm like, you guys got this.

Right. There's apps that calculate it for you. You, you don't need 

J.R.: to. You're like teacher J, can you teach tape? He's like, no, that's too low level. That's commoner math. Hey, let's, let's 

Jae: stick to geometry. Okay. And algebra. 

J.R.: So basically you kind of just fell into math because you were tutoring it and you're like, okay, let's just go towards this.

Jae: Right, right. I enjoyed it. [00:10:00] I'm like, Hey I actually find enjoyment sharing my knowledge and teaching that knowledge. To other people. And I thought, oh, maybe teaching math will be a great enjoyment. And to my surprise, I found out that a lot of people do not like math. And I was like, oh, well that kind of sucks.

J.R.: But that's a good thing, right? Because if people don't like math, then they need help to get through it, right? Yes. 

Jae: Yes. And it's, like I've, I have interesting stories of in my first year of teaching, I taught at an inner city school. I had a particular student that he almost went to jail. He came to me after school and he's like, Hey, Mr.

Kim, I need to pass this test. It's gonna look really good for my judge. I said, okay. So I stayed with him until like 8:00 PM teaching him, going over the problems again and again. basically on his test retake I pretty much had to help him throughout. Like half of it.

He passed. Then I thought, oh, great, I thought I'd made a positive impact, things are gonna look good in the court, and turns out like [00:11:00] a week or two later, he comes back, he's like, oh, Mr. Kim, I'm actually quitting school. I'm gonna adult ed. 

But I was like, what did I do all that for? But, I, it was rewarding in and of itself the fact that, it was not common. It was very rare experience,  the students who actually gave me the hardest time I remember the best.

J.R.: What is your current career and could you walk us through the journey of how you got to where you are now? 

Jae: My current career, I'm a software developer at Wells Fargo, this year in November will actually be my three year mark at Wells. Actually after teaching, 'cause I quit teaching after two years, decided the future of America in education, eh? I'm not sure about that at least. Also, the work life balance was not really good for me, so I decided to go back into grad school. I did it for Applied math thinking, oh, maybe I could be a community college professor.

But towards the end of my graduation of my master's degree, I'm like, I don't know if I want to be a community college professor. [00:12:00] So I started applying for positions. I actually got a offer from a startup. I worked remotely and I did that for about five months.

But then I got laid off and I thought, okay, I had to do some reflecting, like, do I like this job? And I'm like, yeah I enjoyed it quite a bit. So that's why I decided to go through bootcamp. And then after the bootcamp, I got fortunate to meet someone who kind of introduced me to this opportunity and I applied for it and.

Got it. 

J.R.: Sorry. So you took a bootcamp because you were going to a grad program for something and Yeah, so 

Jae: my grad program's in applied math, so it's not in programming. So 

J.R.: then your startup job was applied math position? 

Jae: Yeah. So my startup job I thought was gonna be more just applied math, but I actually ended up being more software 

J.R.: heavy.

Okay. And then that led you to be like, okay, why might as well just do the bootcamp for software? Yes. 

Jae: Yeah, so that's why I did the bootcamp. It took about nine months or so, and then afterwards I got fortunate enough to actually find. Program 

J.R.: how was the transition from math, applied math to software [00:13:00] development bootcamp and then to now what you do now? How was that transition? 

Jae: So the transition was definitely hard and there were periods where.

I was like, oh, do I really wanna do this? Right? Like I enjoyed it, but I wasn't, there's that little bit of uncertainty, right? Am I going to really thrive in this field? Right? But I decided, okay, like the money is really good. The pay outcome, the pay potential is really good. So I, and I enjoy solving problems in general.

It doesn't just have to be with coding, but I'm like, Hey, coding is pretty cool too. So that's why I decided to go for it because of the income potential. 'cause as a teacher, teachers don't really make much at all. And I, I wanna make more money, but I also wanna do it where do it with something that maybe, I don't know for sure if I like absolutely love, but I don't hate.

Right. 

J.R.: So, yeah. So three years in, you say you still don't absolutely love it. What aspects do you feel like don't really align to a perfect [00:14:00] alignment of a career? For me, 

Jae: I think it's, I'm very much of a people person and a lot of software engineering is just you on your desk, computer on your computer, coding away your soul one line, well, that's a joke, okay.

Coding away, one line at a time. And sure you have team meetings, you collaborate with people, but. I like working with people. So I think one of the mistakes that I made when I considered transitioning to software is I didn't consider that aspect of myself or what I really wanted. Well, for one, I was very inexperienced in You weren't really sure what it was like.

Yeah, exactly. I wasn't sure. So I was like, okay, I saw the income potential. I'm like, okay. I like solving problems, in my startup I'm like, okay, quoting is kind of cool. Right? So that, that's why I decided to do bootcamp and. I'll give this a shot. 

Speaker 3: Yeah, 

J.R.: so, so then what do you think would be a more ideal career for you?

Like you, you obviously are doing okay and what you're doing now and you, the income is fine. My questions are what do you think would be a better alignment if you could imagine a [00:15:00] world obviously there's practical considerations, but that, but the next is what would your actual future career aspirations be from?

Jae:  I would love to be a business owner and. One step that I started taking towards that is I started my Instagram channel for cooking because I love cooking in general. I would love to do something food related in the future, whether that's opening my own restaurant in the future.

That's kind of a. Far off. It's not anything. Yeah, more of a bigger dream. Yeah, exactly. But I would love to work in the food industry with people, obviously with people. 'cause it's 

J.R.: a very people Yeah, exactly right. Organization and 

Jae: like I love it. And it took me a while to figure it out. 'cause in college I hated cooking, believe it or not.

I was that guy who loved to cook, reheat, trader Joe's frozen food and thought that was cooking. But then as I got older and I became a working professional, I realized, hey, I actually need to learn, how to cook. And I started doing it initially because I'm like, I think I can make the food better than [00:16:00] this restaurant and because I love eating good food.

That was kind of like the motivator as to why I started. So, I would love to work in that kind of field in the future. 

J.R.: Let's transition over to the next topic, which is your, the. Your ex Christian Korean church cult Manin, right? Yes. So could you start off with maybe, what is Manin and give the audience A-T-L-D-R.

Jae: So Manin is a Korean Christian, well IT rep, it kind of presents itself as a Korean normal church, right? But it's actually a mega church. It's a megachurch based off of soul. And actually it's grown. It's. Shrinked a lot in size over the years because of the scandal and the whole issue that broke out after the news broadcast and everything.

But prior to that, it was a pretty big church. It kind of boasted over 100,000 members and so on and so forth. [00:17:00] So it was a group, there's a senior pastor, lead pastor, but the main kind of difference between our group and let's say a standard church, is that some of the titles that we would call our senior pastor, it's not just kind of pastor, what we would call 'em, shepherd.

Right. That kind of, even that kind of slight difference of term is a bit jarring for some people. It's oh, like what do you mean shepherd? Right. But then we kind of rationalize it, oh, that's what pastors are, right? Like pastors are shepherds. Like metaphorically. Yeah. But then really in reality, it's, it was a cult of personality as all cults are.

It was overly focused on one person, and his word was like God's word, right? His word was like. If he tells you to do something, you need to do it. 

J.R.: We'll take this one step at a time. First question is, what was your journey like and experience of being a part of this church cult?

What was it like in general?

Jae: Initially I thought it was good. So my dad [00:18:00] actually found the group first. So he apparently was praying to find a right spiritual leader or something like that. And he said he prayed for 40 days and then he was suddenly re reminded of this cult, basically.

And then So he had 

J.R.: been exposed to it prior? 

Jae: Yes, he, I'd been exposed to it 'cause in 19 99, 19 98 and 1999, there was a huge scandal that broke up. That Korea, big Korean news broadcast, NBC broadcast a special on bin in our group. N BBC is like a big Korean broadcast network. And that was a whole, that was a whole shit show.

Like some of the members stormed into the recording room and they literally stopped the, they literally stopped the show 

J.R.: so he found out about it because of a scandal on the news. Media about how this church interrupted a broadcast. 

Jae: Initially he had like a bias against this group, and then he started to [00:19:00] go on church's website and listen to the messages, got hooked.

Oh wow, this is what I've been looking for. 

J.R.: Interesting. And then so it was like a first negative impression, right? On a media scale. Yeah. But then he's like, oh, there's this church that I heard about. Yeah. And then he started digging and then he got hooked onto 

Jae: it, right? So he got hooked on it.

He is like, oh wow, these are the messages that I've been looking for. And he started listening to it. And then my mom initially was like, what are you listening to? And then he's like, oh, you gotta check this out. It's not this church. This group is not what we thought we were or what the group was all about.

Then my mom cautiously started to listen and then she wasn't quite exactly as hooked as my dad, but she started appreciating the messages and then eventually our whole entire family started engaging or doing these services every week at home. We were still going to our normal Korean Christian Church that we went to locally.

But actually  the pastor of that church found out. That my dad started to listen to these messages and tried to tell him, [00:20:00] Hey you shouldn't do that. This group is a cult. And then my dad was like, no, like you don't understand. You know what I mean? Like my dad was starting to defend this group.

Right. Even though he wasn't explicitly a part of it. But he just started to get to know the group. Of course, he started listening to a lot of the messages. He signed up to be a member. An online member on his own And then he started become very fervent about the goose message.

J.R.: now looking back, were there certain parts about their message that you think really called to your dad or compelled him to be like, oh, this, I like what they're saying. Um,

Jae: I think what really compelled him is the so-called revelations.

Of let's say about heaven, right? Like the leader Jay Rockley, the leader of, he claimed that he received direct revelation from God, where what is heaven? Like in detail? Not kind of like in vague generality but in like different parts of the Christian life, like for example, revelation or like Genesis.

There's a lot of like hard to interpret things. Like he's seemingly the leader, seemingly kind of. Explained a lot, gave clarity to those. He gave clarity and he really [00:21:00] appreciated that. Oh, okay. And he's like, oh wow. And then, and also another kind of big aspect that the church or the group, the cult, really emphasizes miracles.

Right. And that, oh, well look at all these healing miracles that have happened throughout the years. Nothing was ever like fully like peer review or anything like that. It's all kind of anecdotal. And like claims testimonial. Right, right. But then my dad is like, wow. Right. Look at these miracles.

It must. Confirmed that these revelations are true. And he kind of developed a belief that, oh wow, this is the church, this is the group that I've been looking for all of these years. Yeah. 

J.R.: So then your family and eventually got into it, what age were you and then for that 10 year experience, could you give us the TLDR of what your experience was like

Jae: I didn't really become actively a part of it until about junior year in high school. The introduction I would say was around sophomore year of high school. So like a year prior? Yeah, a year prior.

And I was like, oh, okay. This is, these messages are pretty cool, and for the 10 year journey, my dad actually became a missionary for the group. He [00:22:00] decided to do an online seminary for about two years.

By the time he finished and he decided, oh, let's start like a branch church of this group in California.

Initially it was in our house. And then there was another family who spent time with us and had service at our home every week. And then I think about two or three years later, we moved to Garden Grove and we finally got our own building.

J.R.: Your dad started the. Church congregation In Irvine. Oh, in Irvine. That's where we initially lived. So then for your tenure experience, could you maybe condense down the high level what your experience was like?

Jae: Sometimes people wonder, if you were a part of the cult, how were you a part of it when you weren't in Korea? I was involved as much as I can. 

 they have a prayer meeting every single day from about nine to 11. It was about two hours. So what I did is even when I would download these prayer meetings and I would pray in my card like, do like whatever the cult did. Like in conjunction.

Another kind of big [00:23:00] highlight is every summer the cult hosted a big summer camp where people from all around the world came. To experience, miracles or experience being a part of the atmosphere. I convinced my parents sometimes to get me the flight ticket, which in Korea. Where was that? In Korea. Oh, in Korea. Summer camp. In Korea. Exactly. In Korea, people come from all over the world to try to be part of the main church, big event.

They, that they host yearly. And literally people will come from China, from Europe, like from the us and in my part, I try to be as part of the group as much as I can. I was radically devoted.

 doing these prayer meetings in my car. Two hours. I will do this every day.try to go on campus and reach out to people

J.R.: Isn't that regular? 

Jae: It is.

But then

J.R.: like that doesn't seem so outside of what I've seen in other Christian churches , 

Jae: that's what's deceptive about this group is that it looks what was different. It looks like it's our belief in who our leader was. Right. So it was the, 

J.R.: the [00:24:00] perversion of the Christianity was the focus around this human person.

Yes. The pastor, right? Yes, 

Jae:  the part that makes it a cult uniquely is because we believe that our leader on questioning him, you can't question him. His words are like God's words, in Christian theology, like we believe that God is like God the Father, God the Son God, the Holy Spirit.

And in our group, we believe that our leader was the incarnation of the Holy Spirit. So he's essentially God, 

J.R.: right? 

Jae: But that he would never call himself, that. He would say he's a son of God, but not like how normal Christians use it. but he's special. 

J.R.: Right. 

So I get that there's this difference in how you portray the leader of the church, right?, you're saying you were devout and you were very intense to your faith so far, what you're mentioning like, I have friends who , pray just as much and do all these like evangelizing.

And I think that's all normal, but my question is what were the things that were different about this, and then how did that affect you in the next 10 [00:25:00] years? 

Jae: In some ways there is not a huge difference. the real kind of difference for me is the amount of money that I will spend to try to really be a part of this group. Like these summer camps, they're not cheap. Yeah, right. Like even just to take the flight every year 

J.R.: sounds like a pyramid scheme. 

Jae: Yes, exactly. A religious one.

Like those, like those pyramid 

J.R.: schemes where it's just like the real business is them just kind of extracting their followers to make money off of them, right. For the people at the top. And 

Jae: when I would go to Korea, sometimes I would donate two, $300 at a time.

Every year that I went to Korea , which was at least almost every other year, I feel like, for five, six years or something like that. I gave probably close to four or 500.

This is on top of the plane costs, the cost to actually stay there and so it was a lot of money for me. like I'm a college student, I don't have a lot. I'm not working like a full-time job all the time. 

J.R.: What I want to figure out is how did it affect you [00:26:00] personally in terms of your relationships with other people, but you also mentioned that obviously it affected your family, your parents' marriage, et cetera. Right. Could you maybe walk us through that? 

Jae: Yeah, so one way that it's affected me is I became very judgmental of other people in general.

I was a student at UCLA and I didn't have a lot of friends actually during that time because I had this kind of judgmental mindset in the sense of that The group that I was part of is better. We have the best teaching, we have the most complete teaching, and I don't want to be associated with anyone, even among Christians that don't believe to the same degree that I do.

So like close 

J.R.: you off to a lot of 

Jae: exactly it. It closed me off to a lot of opportunities  so I kept my circle very tight and a lot of my friends were actually only from the group. That made me more isolated. It kind of made me more lonely.

I didn't really get a lot of the standard college experience that a lot of students did. 'cause I didn't really try to put myself out there and meet people through different clubs activities because I was [00:27:00] scared. That would taint, my commitment.

J.R.: How about your parents? So you mentioned that it affected their 25 year marriage. 

Jae: So there is a church in Peru where the pastor died. a branch church,in Peru.

The main church asked my dad, could you take over? he said yes without actually even consulting with us. Your family e Exactly. Without asking my mom, without telling us, he just said yes. He'll go. My mom was initially very mad that my dad didn't even 

ask her, 

J.R.: So by himself or with you guys?

Jae: By himself, 

J.R.: meaning like he was planning to go by himself. Exactly. Not even tell you guys. 

Jae: And then my mom was mad, but she eventually accepted it. Okay. It's for a greater cost. It's for the cult, it's for the glory of God. It really put a strain on their relationship.  their relationship wasn't the same because they've been together in the same spot for like over 20 years, and all of a sudden they're apart, like thousands of miles apart, And she told me, she's like, I asked your dad , do you [00:28:00] still love me? My dad said no. That actually tore her apart. So I would say that the cult ultimately played a big factor in separating my parents.

Because my dad was obviously religiously brainwashed. 

J.R.: makes sense. So he reprioritized the cult over your family. Yes. 

 just to reference it because we haven't referenced it yet, but it was featured in the Netflix documentary in the name of God, a Holy Betrayal. Is that correct? Do you remember what episodes it was? Episode seven and eight. try to give us, like the t ldr so I can get through some of these questions, but do you remember how did it compare, how it was covered to your personal experience? 

Jae: It was actually pretty accurate. So obviously there are some sensational moments that they will dramatize for the sake of marketing. But then in terms of the accuracy of the actual, like what happened, it was pretty accurate. So I encourage people to actually. Check out the episode if you want. 'cause a lot of what I'm talking about is like my own personal experience growing up as like a branch church member. but the people who grew up in the central church in Korea and in many ways they had it worse.

Closer [00:29:00] to the source. Yeah, closer to the source. one of the crazy things, and I experienced this when I would go to Korea during the summer camps, On Friday, it ends like 3:00 AM or something like that, 11 to three or two, or it ends really late.

And literally people would be standing in line in the streets waiting for the pastor's car to pass by so that they could slip in their money and hopefully get a touch from his hand and get a prayer And it was like that every single week that he was there. I've never seen that in any other group before.

So it's it's almost 

J.R.: like trying to get into a black bean concert and red. Yeah, 

Jae: yeah, yeah. 

J.R.: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Or fanatics. It's crazy. Yeah. Okay. So I have a series of three questions either we pick and choose or if we can get through all of them, but one is you mentioned the summer camps being surprisingly supportive experience.

Second thing you mentioned the dangers of religious brainwashing, if you can give examples. And third is you mentioned an identity shift post cult. So obviously it was a big part of your identity. [00:30:00] It's a shift outta that. Identity crisis is always tough. Oh, sorry. I guess the last thing is the value of open questioning and critical thinking.

You have any ones you wanna touch? 

Jae: To be honest, I kind of want to touch all them, but I don't think we'll have time. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

Jae: 

J.R.: Yeah. So surprisingly supportive experience is one. Okay. So dangers of religious brainwashing is two, and identity shift is three, and then critically thinking is four.

I think I'll start off with the critical thinking part of it. I think one of the biggest issues that I had that I didn't realize until I left the cult is just how dangerous religious brainwashing is and the importance of critical thinking and being open-minded enough to question your own beliefs, because I never did that when I was in the cult.

you don't dare to question it 

J.R.: like it's gravity. It's just there. Yeah. It's just 

Jae: there. It's just self-evident But then after I left the cult. I realized, wow. Like I was not doing any of that. You were just 

J.R.: following ly. 

Jae: Exactly. I was following what I was [00:31:00] taught. You were a sheep for the past, the shepherd. Exactly. I was a sheep for the shepherd.

You're playing the role perfectly. Yeah. Yeah. And and after I leftone of the big psychological things that happened to me is this feeling that, a foundational part of what I believe was shattered. I had a couple years after I left the cult of a limbo. Okay, what do I believe now? What am I following? What am I living by? Now compared to the cold. So how did you move 

J.R.: forward? Was that like, that was like right before I met you.

Jae: Right around the time that I met you I was in the process. Oh, you're still in the cold Technically but we were around 2018 when the whole issue broke out. Our family found out the truth pretty quickly. 'cause 2018, there's a big news broadcast about the leader of our cult. And if you watch the documentary you'll, you guys will see that.

About eight women. They're claiming that the leader has sexually harassed them essentially and raped them. And that became a whole issue in the [00:32:00] cult. Initially, I think every one of us denied, oh, there's no way that our perfect leader, our shepherd, could do that. But then we found irrefutable evidence.

in the documentary they mentioned this  So at that 

J.R.: point 

Jae: you 

J.R.: had to move. You're like, 

Jae: okay, this is obviously at that point I remember that day I was just shocked. I was like, I didn't even know, I didn't even know how to react, I was just kind of shook. I think my mind was just kind of in this blank space or like what does that mean from 

J.R.: this point 

Jae: on? Yeah. 

J.R.: So then how did you move forward from that? Your whole reality was shook identities shattered. So then how did you move forward? 

Jae:  starting to explore a lot of the things that you had closed off to, I didn't allow myself to do. So like I told you that I didn't have a lot of friends in college. I wanted to meet a diverse group of people. One of the avenues that I did that was actually through Meetup.

So I went to meet up with the intention to try to find new friends, and then I met people like you and like different people in their karaoke crew [00:33:00] and meeting those friends and respecting each other, like building that friendship, not necessarily just because we're a member of this group within an organization.

Exactly right. So that was very healthy for me to and my friends really, including yourself, really like listened and challenged me to do better. And I did exactly that. And another thing that kind of helped me is I started pursuing interests like fitness. I didn't really work out a lot before,  I booked a personal trainer. I started taking personal training for a couple months and felt decently comfortable and started to train more on my own.

I started reading a lot more books, educating myself on topics that I just did not know, 

J.R.: So moving forward in a nutshell was basically just trying these new things. Yes. And just working forward through what you were close out to before. Last question on this topic is how did, you mentioned, how did I return to my faith back? How you returned back to your faith in 2024 and how that has positively impacted your outlook and view on life.

Jae: I make a distinction between the cult [00:34:00] and the faith of my childhood. I grew up as a Christian. Not the cult. That was great. I had a community that was healthy. There was nothing wrong with being a Christian in and of itself, but because for those 10 years that we strayed and fell off into the cult, I kind of associated churches and my cult even after I left.

Four or five years after I left the cult, I was not part of any church. I didn't even read the Bible or do anything that a Christian normally would, but I allowed myself to question, I allowed myself to doubt.

last year It's kind of funny, right? Because you and like a couple of other friends were playing around with the idea, oh, Jay, why don't you just go to Korean, church and meet a nice Korean Christian girl, right?

And I got to a point where in my recovery where I was like, you know what? That's not a bad idea. Maybe I could meet a nice girl at church. . And I did exactly that. I went to church, 

I went to Korean church all my life. So like I went in hopes to find a girlfriend. [00:35:00] I didn't find a girlfriend, but that's fine. I went to go find a girlfriend and I think you laughed a lot and you're like, oh, I wish you luck.

And if you don't find Grace Lee or, 

J.R.: or Sarah Park or Sarah Park, you know, just it's fine. Right. Okay. So I guess I'll give some background. So, Jay obviously later bloomer in the dating market 'cause of what we just mentioned. So he's for the last, what, five-ish years or something like that.

He's been going out there meeting people, dating around and stuff like that. He moved to Phoenix a couple years ago and so. Every time he comes back and we hang out, we're like, okay, Jay, give us your dating updates. Who have you been dating? What do they do for career? Give us names horoscope, astronomical science, et cetera. And so we, we have this running list of all the girls that he's talked to or whatever. And so we're like, Jay, we need more stories. So just join a church. We have, we get, you have a history of churches, but go meet a girl, and go on actual dates with people. And so he, I guess he does that and nothing really works out.[00:36:00] 

And then turns out he ends up dating girls from Philippines from the Philippines, literally a 16 hour flight away. So like Jay, we said local girl in a church. And you went to it across the cut, across the ocean, and now you have a, with a Filipino girlfriend. Happy for you. Happy for her. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it was just so ironic that we're like, date someone locally and then he goes to the other side of the world.

I guess we didn't really cover the question because it was you got back into your faith as a joke or as this funny sort of aside, but now you're saying you are now in, you are, have a better relationship with your faith.

Jae: I started gonna church to find a girlfriend, but instead I started to reconnect with my faith. Yeah, the faith of my childhood.

J.R.: So lesson learned. You can try to find a girlfriend, but you might find spiritual out. Yes. You 

may try to find Grace Lee, but you find faith. Instead, faith. Faith. Faith Kim. Faith Kim. Exactly. 

I hate it. Alright, so we'll go into rapid fire questions.

First question, billboard question. If you could put up a sign for millions of people to see, what would it say? 

Jae: Always allow yourself to question [00:37:00] and think and love and believe. Just be free. Be free to do what you love. Cool. 

J.R.: If you could give your younger self advice, what would it be?

Jae: I would tell him don't just take things at face value and just believe, actually do your own research and allow yourself to doubt. Because I, as a kid, I think I very easily believed a lot of things. Even up until high school. Giving yourself the space.

It's okay to doubt it's okay to question. It doesn't mean it's a lack of faith. You're allowing yourself to be basically a person.

J.R.: In the last few years, what new behavior or habit has changed your life the most? 

Jae: I will say dancing.

Especially in the past six months or so, I've been fortunate to find a studio that I've been a part of. It feels like a community of people. We meet each other every week. And I feel that [00:38:00] dancing regularly not only is fun and it's a hard skill. Dancing is not easy by any way, shape, or form. Maybe it's smooth unless you're 

J.R.: Filipino. 

Jae: Yeah. Unless you're Filipino. We 

J.R.: come out of the womb, 

Jae: genetically 

J.R.: just dancing. He's like 

Jae: You come out of the womb. 

J.R.: Dancing. Yeah. Dancing and boxing and nursing.

How do you define success?

Jae: Success for me is living a life greater than just for yourself. With a sense of purpose and service to others. How might that 

J.R.: manifest for people? 

Jae: Do something in service to others that doesn't have to be like through your career.

That could be like literally through a nonprofit. do something more than just your own goals and your own, like making more money or whatever. 

What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you've ever made in either time, money, energy, et cetera? 

Jae: In terms of energy, I guess is making new friends. Finding a community of friends, like in Arizona as well, cultivating 

J.R.: that.

Jae: So just they add so much to my life, like so much joy, energy, like [00:39:00] on a weekly basis. And I think that just helps me as a person, like in general. 

J.R.: Favorite recent purchase in the 52 $100 range that has impacted your life the most in the last six months?

It's basically a cheap purchase that you made recently that stands out to you as this has added value to my life. Gosh, I buy so much. So you have 

Jae: a lot of answers. I would say a knife, like one of the kitchen knives that I bought. So it's not that expensive on first, I think it was like 40 bucks or something like that.

Why this specific knife? Because the way it feels when I chop stuff. 

J.R.: How did you find it? 

Jae: I found it on Amazon because I was like, oh, so you searching up? Yeah. Yeah. I was like, oh, great knives, right? Yeah, exactly right. Great. Kitchen knives under $75 or whatever. Do you 

J.R.: remember the brand or anything? Or you Doesn't really like 

Jae: Better 

J.R.: Knife than I have now.

Jae: It's like one of those brands that are probably like drop shifted one way or another. Gotcha. But but no there's no, it's not a well known brand or anything, but just like, so its just like you need 

J.R.: a new knife. 

Jae: It worked well, new knife. It worked super well. Perfect. 

J.R.: Last Rapid fire. [00:40:00] Any favorite books, movies, videos, articles or media that you share or recommend The most?

Jae: One book recommendation that I share to people a lot is actually Atomic Ho Habits by James Clear. That is like the one self-development book that I took. A lot of notes on Right. And HAC stacking and a lot of, what are some of the different things that he talks about? Sorry. 

J.R.: Yeah, I, so I'll link that, my book summary in that.

But what are some ways that you've applied it in your own life? 

Jae: One kind of simple way I've applied that in my own life is in my morning routines, right? So, before, I used to have no morning routine. Then I started kind of gradually stacking different habits and routines in my morning routine. So it may have started with a simple stretch in the morning, like a five minute stretch, and that led to, oh, maybe I should do some breath work.

So I do breath work right after my stretching, and then eventually as time passes, it's okay, like I'm already doing breath work and stretching. Why don't I go for a 10 minute [00:41:00] walk? Right after that. So like in conjunction, it didn't happen immediately, but over time, like kind of you build on top of it, build on top of it, kind of helped me to maintain a consistent morning routine that really helps me start off my day.

J.R.: I'll link it. Totally recommend that book. A lot of people reference it. Okay. We've come to the end. Jay, you've made it. Congrats on surviving. We'll go to ending questions, so we always end with gratitude. Shout out to my mom for teaching me this. Jay, what are you grateful for? 

Jae: I am grateful for my friends.

My family and my girlfriend too. I am really grateful for the quality people that I've met, both here in California and also in Arizona. My friends, inspire me to be better. Whether that's challenging me, Hey, or as often JR does, Hey, so how have your goals been recently? Are, are you, are you doing the goals?

JR is like one of my friends who keeps me accountable and calls me on my BS if I don't do it. Everyone. Everyone needs a JR. In their life. Okay. 

J.R.: That's my favorite thing to do is call him out on his bs. [00:42:00] Is like, really? You said you were doing this, but it's been two years now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've not done it, so don't tell me 

Jae: you wanna do it.

Don't do it. And one thing I'm super happy is my Instagram channel. I actually started this year, even though I've talked about creating some type of content channel for probably years now, but I finally got around to it now all I need to do is. Yeah, set a regular cadence of releasing content, which I actually have about two reels worth of material that I just haven't edited and released to the world, but just be on the lookout.

J.R.: Cool. Alright, Jay, we're final ask from the audience or any final takeaways you'd like them to have from this conversation. 

Jae: So the, if you remember anything from my, the experience that I shared with you, like in my cult is this don't turn off your brain. Always allow yourself to question, to doubt, to think, don't take things at face value, but allow yourself to really think, okay is this actually true?

Right? Why is this true? Why do I believe this thing that I [00:43:00] believe? And just, it's a healthy part of living in this swirl is what I'll say. 

J.R.: Cool. All right. Well Jay, I will link your socials in the show description so people can check out what you're up to, your foodie accounts, your personal, et cetera.

Thank you again for being here. I appreciate it. I will give a final shout out to Jay. Some of my favorite things are to bust his balls on calling him out when he does say he wants to do something but never does it. But I will say that even despite that what I appreciate about Jay is that he's always very open-minded to grow and there are not a lot of people out there who are constantly trying to become better versions of themselves.

So it's always nice to have these long conversations with Jay because he genuinely is very. Open-minded about those sort of things, and it's nice to have a friend like him. He's genuinely a good guy. He is always there for you. So I appreciate you for that. 

Jae: Thank you. I appreciate you too, man. 

J.R.: Thanks.

All right, I'll do my final sign off. Thank you guys for being here. I really appreciate it. Be sure to like, follow, subscribe, do all those fun things. Leave us five star reviews. Leave Jay love in the [00:44:00] comments and all that jazz reminder to always be kind to other people, especially yourself, and remember that you can always learn something from someone if you take the time to listen.

So thanks for being here. Thank you.