Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, 'Provost Marshal': Another apologist claim debunked - 2019-06-21

Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, 'Provost Marshal': Another apologist claim debunked June 21, 2019, Chris Owen, Underground Bunker

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South Korean K-pop star Psy's 2012 megahit Gangnam Style satirises posers and wannabes who put on airs and claim to be something that they are not. "People who are actually from Gangnam never proclaim that they are," he observes.

He might almost have been thinking of Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard, who was claimed by Scientology publications to have been the "Provost Marshal of Korea" in 1945. The apologist journal CESNUR has recently questioned whether the claim came from Hubbard himself. I've reviewed the "Provost Marshal" claim in my recent book Ron the War Hero, but I have since come across further information linking it definitively to Hubbard, despite CESNUR's protestations to the contrary.

This claim is said to have first been made in a biography written for a Who's Who-type publication in the early 1950s, but its earliest appearance that I have been able to confirm is in a letter attributed to L. Ron Hubbard dated June 29, 1960. After a local Australian newspaper reported that the New South Wales police were investigating Scientology, Hubbard sent an indignant letter to the state police. "My personal feeling is that you have a subversive infiltration in your area," he wrote. "As one trained as the Provost Marshal of Korea, I have a good grip on Asian subversion and do not intend it to ruin Scientology in any area."

Wikipedia cite:

{{cite news | first = Chris | last = Owen | title = Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, 'Provost Marshal': Another apologist claim debunked | url = https://tonyortega.org/2019/06/21/scientology-founder-l-ron-hubbard-provost-marshal-another-apologist-claim-debunked/ | work = Underground Bunker | date = June 21, 2019 | accessdate = June 21, 2019 }}