Editing Olive Tree (religious movement) (section)

==Success and controversies==
Although the exact number of followers he gathered is a matter of controversy, Park’s became one of the largest new religious movements in Korea, with perhaps two million members in the mid-1960s.<ref name="Moos 1967" /> It built three "Christian towns," model villages where followers lived communally.<ref name="Lee" />

At the same time, mainline Christian denominations and several Korean media regarded Park’s movement as a cult and organized the first of the future large Korean anti-cult movement. Lee answered that there was indeed in South Korea a problem with cults, but these were the [[Jehovah’s Witnesses]] and the [[Unification Movement]] founded by [[Sun Myung Moon]] rather than his own organization.<ref name="Calgary" /> He was also accused of practicing ''[[P'ikareum]]'', a ritual where female devotees have sex with the male messianic figure in order to achieve purity.<ref name="Kim" />

Park was arrested for fraud four times, although he initially managed to obtain lenient sentences due to his good relations with president [[Syngman Rhee]], to whom the Olive Tree offered the votes of its followers.<ref name="Moos 1967" /> With the decline of Rhee’s power and his eventual exile from Korea however, Park spent longer periods in jail, both for deceiving his followers with false healing claims and defrauding them of their money (which was then not declared to the tax office) and for illegal electoral practices supporting pro-Rhee candidates.<ref name="Moos 1964" /> Park was in jail from 27 December 1958 to 26 March 1960 and from 27 January 1961 to 10 January 1962.<ref name="Calgary" />

In December 1960, some 2,000 Olive Tree followers attacked the offices of the Korean newspaper ''[[The Dong-a Ilbo]]'', which had called Park a fraud, overcoming some 400 police officers who tried to protect the premises. The incident led to further media criticism of the movement, which was placed under police surveillance.<ref name="Moos 1964" /> The controversies did not initially affect the success of the Olive Tree, which continued to grow and open new churches and other facilities through the 1960s and the 1970s.<ref name="Lee" /><ref name="Moos 1967" />