Saturday night on the news there was a short piece highlighting the growth of the LDS church in Korea, with plenty of video showing groups of happy, smiling members. (http://ksltv.com/391467/lds-church-in-south-korea-continues-to-grow/)

According to the piece, there are 87,000 members, 4 missions, 1 temple and 120 congregations, and those numbers are growing.

However, like many, many church claims, the claim of growth is definitely false.

According to Cumorah.com, the Church had the most congregations ever functioning in Korea with 175 back in 1999 (105 wards and 70 branches). Since then the number of congregations has steadily fallen to 164 in 2001, 150 in 2004, 143 in 2007, and 139 in 2009, and only 120 today (74 wards and 46 branches).

Even when using the LDS claimed figures it would mean that each congregation has 725 members, which is clearly false, and even more ridiculous if the numbers are adjusted to allow for branches.

Cumorah.com reports that most wards have between 50 and 100 active members whereas branches usually have fewer than 50 active members (the KSL piece boasts that "the Ganguang branch is 25 members strong").

Using simple math to estimate the number of active members is easy: 74 wards x 75 average members = 5,550 members in wards, 46 branches x 25 average members = 1,150 members in branches, the total of active members in South Korea is therefore only 6,700 members.

The fact that the membership count continues to increase each year while the number of units declines should be direct evidence that the church routinely lies about its membership numbers.

Back when monson died, there were a lot of posts on fb about how many members the church had and my ex and I and one of our friends were having a good laugh.

Ever since I gained a strong testimony of cheerios in Nursery I have been peculiarly blessed in my life thanks to the glorious Correlation program to think a certain way about everything. As long as I have tons of posterity and raise them to likewise be assimilated through this program then the world will have an increasing number of people who think this same wondrous way.

One of the things that helps people figure out that the Church is true is when they see how hard the Brethren/everyone in the Church is trying to be super honest/transparent about Church statistics :) If we weren't super honest/transparent then we couldn't be called the true Church. Instead we'd be called a fraud.

Well thanks to this all-consuming Correlation program I don't think I'm going to be able to deep dive into your numbers. That's because they could cause a Doubt to form in my mind. And thanks to the conditioning I've received that's not something I could possibly allow to happen. Where my focus is supposed to be is on obeying the Brethren unquestionably. Isn't that marvelous?

You have to keep in mind that KSL is owned by Bonneville Communications, which in turn is owned by Deseret Management (LDS, Inc). They also own The Deseret News and a bunch of radio stations. They air what the church tells them to air. It's part of a concerted propaganda machine to influence outsiders and reinforce their crap to the existing flock.

They'll never say the membership is declining. Ask my grandma and she'll tell you that the church has about 15 million members. And those who are inactive will come back...they always come back.

Well *some do* which reinforces that idea.

But I suspect South Korea has the same problems as anywhere else.

I wish people would stop using Korea as shorthand for South Korea. Whatever one thinks of the North - not much in my case - that is still as much Korea as the south is.

How is church growth in North Korea anyway? ;)