With Kiowa Tribe officials on its board, an Oklahoma City nonprofit tied to a controversial South Korean church quietly recently began working with tribal governments, two of which have disavowed association after learning more about the organization.
In recent years, Indigenous Leaders of North America — a 501(c)3 connected to the International Youth Fellowship and Good News Mission — has held several “mind education” or “mind camp” events for children in Anadarko, the Osage Nation, the Ponca Nation, and the Wichita Community Church.
The Indigenous Leaders of North America became active in the early 2020s as an effort to get Indigenous youth in the Americas involved with the International Youth Fellowship, or IYF.
In 2020, members of the group met with officials from the Cherokee Nation and Choctaw Nation, as well as Oklahoma City Public Schools. They have also met with and interviewed several heads of tribal governments in Oklahoma, including former Seminole Nation Principal Chief Greg Chilcoat, Osage Nation Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear and Muscogee Nation Principal Chief David Hill.
Both the ILNA and IYF were essentially founded by South Korean religious leader Ock Soo Park and his Good News Mission church, which promotes a practice called “mind education” and has long been accused of being a “cult” by some former members.
In 2024, Park’s daughter, Eun-sook Park, was convicted of child abuse resulting in murder after a teenage girl who had been a member of the Good News Mission’s choir died under her supervision. During her three months in the church’s care, the girl was confined, forced to climb stairs repeatedly and rewrite the Bible, according to machine-translated South Korean coverage of the case. The Supreme Court of Korea upheld a 25-year sentence for the younger Park in January, according to South Korean news.
Asked about ILNA’s ties to Park’s teachings and practices, two tribal governments headquartered in Oklahoma reviewed the organization and its efforts to partner with tribal nations.
“In light of this information, the Osage Nation is suspending any interaction with this organization,” said Abby Mashunkashey, the nation’s director of communications. “At no time was anyone within this organization unaccompanied while on the Osage Nation campus.”
Similarly, Hill’s press secretary, Jason Salsman, said the Muscogee Nation has not maintained any relationship with the ILNA since the group’s interview of Hill.
“We won’t be in the future doing anything with this group,” Salsman said.
In their interviews with ILNA representatives, both Hill and Standing Bear simply relayed messages about leadership and respect to Indigenous youth. Neither referred to or promoted the specific teachings of Park or Good News Mission.
A phone call to ILNA’s Oklahoma City office was answered by an individual who said someone might call back later, but no one did prior to the publication of this article.
Ousted Kiowa chairman ‘really proud’ of ILNA
Despite the 2024 conviction of a high-ranking church member, the ILNA expanded its efforts in 2025 by hosting “mind education” camps for Indigenous youth across Oklahoma.
As listed online, the current board of ILNAÂ includes at least three tribal members from Oklahoma: newly impeached Kiowa Chairman Lawrence SpottedBird, Kiowa Vice Chairman-turned Chairman David Sullivan and Ponca tribal employee Tara Littlecook.
Asked how he became involved with ILNA, SpottedBird said the Kiowa Tribe was approached by an ILNA board member about partnering on education programs. After learning about the organization, SpottedBird said he agreed to join its board around December 2024.
“I got involved because one of the board members, John Park, he actually reached out to the Kiowa Tribe to see if we might be interested in involving the programs that they had: the mind education, the spiritual part of that, Bible study and so forth. And that fit into my priority here of helping our young people learn, build up their relationship with God and also to build their capacity to become future leaders,” SpottedBird told NonDoc on Feb. 26. “So that’s what really drew me to that organization, what they’re planning to do and what they’re doing. I am really proud to be a part of that organizations.”
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SpottedBird, who was impeached Monday by the Kiowa Legislature amid allegations of misspending, argued that the ILNA’s mission aligns with tribal governments’ attempts to improve the quality of education in Oklahoma.
“As part of the board, I again endorse the mission of working with young people to teach them about God and prepare them for leadership and also to incorporate mind education to teach them how to use their minds to think rather than to just remember — like a lot our education is structured now. In Oklahoma and the United States, we require our kids to remember things, and we give them a test to see how much they remember, and its kind of — OK, that’s their education. Unfortunately, we don’t do that well in Oklahoma. We’ve recently been ranked 50th among the 50 states as far as education,” SpottedBird said. “I want our kids to learn more and to learn better. The success of the Asian people, we can learn from that. Us Native Americans, we are at the bottom of every scale of social success, and we’re at the top of every scale in social ills. We’ve got to address that and change the ways we analyze that. So bringing our people back to their spiritual connection to God is the No. 1 first step I believe in and then secondly to prepare them for 21st century life. So that’s why I’m involved.”
Asked about allegations of abuse against Ock Soo Park and Good News Mission, SpottedBird said he was aware of the claims before agreeing to serve on the ILNA board.
“Oh, I was informed of those things,” SpottedBird said. “The charges against Pastor Ock Soo Park of being a cult and some of the negative publicity around relatives and connections and so forth and the many things brought against this particular organization, this church — but again, I support it because of its mission to prepare young people for life and to develop their relationship with God, their personal relationship with God. I like that. More of our young people need that.”
SpottedBird stressed that ILNA is focused on healing the harms of colonialism, and he expressed concern that he was being asked primarily about criticisms of Park and Good News Mission.
“It sounds like you may be looking for negative connotations for behind the organization or something, or maybe you’re just bringing up these facts because they are there. I am aware of those issues,” SpottedBird said. “We’ve got to tackle the big issues of our young people in the 21st century with a different approach, because we haven’t been doing a very good job of it. So I am very glad the folks from Korea have engaged and embraced focus on Indigenous people, because (…) we’ve been suffering for too long — for centuries — because of the colonization and the impact of that to our people. So we need to find a way to heal ourselves. Again, this is a good strategy and a good way to do (it), and that’s why I support ILNA and their mission priorities.”
SpottedBird argued that allegations against individuals do not implicate an entire organization, and he requested that coverage of the Good News Mission church “be objective.”
“One person doesn’t represent the whole organization,” SpottedBird said. “Remember that in your writing: Be objective to them, because I know reporters can slant any facts they want to to be the flavor of the article, so be fair about it. That’s all I’m asking.”
With SpottedBird impeached by the Kiowa Legislature days after his remarks, Sullivan has become the tribe’s chairman. (The Kiowa Constitution prevents the simultaneous impeachment of the chairman and vice chairman.)
Appointed vice chairman by SpottedBird on April 17 last year, Sullivan worked for nearly 24 years at Anadarko Public Schools, according to his LinkedIn. He worked as the district’s special programs director from 2018 to 2025.
Sullivan has been a vocal supporter of the INLA, praising the program for teaching tribal youth “they shouldn’t trust their thoughts” in a video on the organization’s website.
“The part that really connected — that I connect with — was the deep thinking. The lessons (and) pieces of it that are in there within that component and making sure that we help our students learn more about navigating the heart,” Sullivan said of ILNA’s mind education programming. “Learn more about what controls them and especially understanding that they’re not always right and that they shouldn’t trust their thoughts — that they need to work with their peers, with adults, with people in their communities (and) with their leaders to help them understand and be able to navigate.”
Sullivan did not return a phone call requesting an interview about his ILNA board membership before the publication of this article.
‘Do not believe in your thoughts’: A brief history of Good News Mission
Good News Mission was founded in the early 1970s by Park and has expanded to included satellite churches across the globe — including in Oklahoma City.
For years, Park said he had been ordained by American missionary Dick York — a claim York denied in an interview before his death. In addition to disputing Park’s claims, York described his fellow missionaries’ concerns that Park was using their teachings to build his own influence:
It took me a long time before I was willing to say it was a cult. The other missionaries who pulled away from Park Ock Soo long before I did used that word. And they said that ‘Park Ock Soo’s group had become a cult.’Â I thought that cults were built around personalities and also around authoritarianism. And I could see that things were headed that way, but I wasn’t agreeing with everyone who reached the conclusion before I did. That this had actually developed to that point.
But in a cult, the idea of authoritarianism and personality, which in this case is Park Ock Soo. And his authority is passed on to the rank and file through his so-called pastors. In the training program that Park Ock Soo had, these men actually begin to refer to each other as pastor-so-and-so before they were even through their training program. So that became a very strong thing. I realized Park Ock Soo was training pastors and those men were to pass on his authority. And they began to control everything.
Despite the early biographical discrepancy, Park’s church continued to grow in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1995, he founded the IYF to “raise leaders with a global insight through youth education, activities, and provide realistic solutions to problems in the global village,” according to the organization’s mission statement.
Park’s groups promote a teaching they call “mind education,” which purports to help individuals dealing with “improper mind” or “weak heart” through a curriculum allegedly developed from the Bible.
“If you have an improper mind, then you will have an improper life. But if we can correct that improper mind, then we can change that person’s life,” Good News Mission pastor Jae Hong Kim said in a YouTube video. “Also we found this mind education from the Bible.”
According to Park’s teachings, the fundamental cause of “improper mind” and “weak heart” is sin.
“When we look into the most fundamental cause we see that the cause is from sin,” Kim said in another video from the same series. “Because of the sin that is in the heart of the people, all kinds of problems arise in the heart. And because of the sin, arises the diseases of the heart.”
The group also teaches that individuals can remove sin and become righteous by ceasing to “rely on themselves.” Instead, congregants are encouraged to only listen to the judgement of Good News Mission church leaders.
“Am I going to believe in my own thoughts or the words of the Lord? Am I going to believe in my own judgement or the judgement of the lord? Do not believe in your thoughts. Do not believe in your judgement,” Kim said. “Do not rely on your thoughts or rely on your judgements because Satan has intervened and your thoughts and your judgements are contaminated. Surely if you follow your own thoughts and judgement you will fail, and when you follow after the word’s judgements then you will live a blessed life more than anyone else.”
York described a letter he purportedly received from a man in Africa who helped convince him Good News Mission had become a cult and which illustrated the level of control the church exercises over followers.
“The authority of Good News Mission is based on control by fear.” York read from the letter. “The voice of the servant, which is Park Ock Soo, is the voice of God. While we the students are the servants of the servant. The mission school captain conveys the voice of the servant and no one dare disobey or you get punished. This control extends beyond the mission school to control over the private lives of members (and) is often done by pitching spouses — who are often match-mated by Good News Mission — against each other to cause distrust and suspicion through separate counseling, especially when one of the spouses is not fully compliant.”
Dong-sup Chung — a former professor at the Korea Baptist Theological University and then-president of the Alliance for Anti-Cult Strategies of the Korean Church — acknowledged disagreements with Park’s theology were ultimately a doctrinal matter, but stressed mainstream protestants in Korea had denounced Park’s teachings as heretical and that Park had no formal religious training.
“First of all, in terms of religion, heresy is essentially a doctrinal matter and speaks of a ‘false teaching or different gospel’ that is the same as the Apostle Paul said. Ock Soo Park interpret and teach the wrong concept of Jesus’ death on the cross. His teaching is that people’s past, present, and future sins are forgiven since people have become righteous, they do not need to repent of their sins anymore even if they commit any heinous sin. His teachings made people feel insensitive to sin and were officially defined as heresy by all major denominations of the Korean Protestants,” Chung said in a 2021 interview for a PhD thesis. “Ock-Soo Park deludes himself that he is preaching the real orthodox Gospel. The message what he preaches is completely out of Reformed Orthodox Christianity. The message is a fake gospel derived from extreme dispensational theology. This message is Christianity interpreted by an elementary school graduate who has never systematically studied theology.”
