Sun Myung Moon

Sun Myung Moon was born Yong Myung Moon on 6 January 1920 in modern-day North P'yŏng'an Province, North Korea, at a time when Korea was under Japanese rule. He was the second son in a farming family of thirteen children, eight of whom survived. Moon's family followed Confucianist beliefs until he was around 10 years old. Then they converted to Christianity and joined the Presbyterian Church. Moon claims that he experienced a religious vision of Jesus at age 16 that laid out his life's mission.

In 1941, Moon began studying electrical engineering at Waseda University in Japan. During this time, he cooperated with Communist Party members in the Korean independence movement against the Empire of Japan. In 1943, he returned to Seoul and, in 1944, married his first wife, Sun-kil Choi (최선길; 崔先吉; Choe Seon-gil). They had a son, Sung Jin Moon (문성진; 文聖進; Mun Seong-jin). In the 1940s, Sun Myung Moon attended a church led by Kim Baek-moon, who influentially taught that he had been given by Jesus the mission to spread the message of a "new Israel" throughout the world. Around this time, Moon changed his given name to Sun Myung in an effort to quell the increased resentment of other Christians against him, as he gradually began gathering his own group of followers.

Following World War II, Korea was divided (South and North) along the 38th parallel into two trusteeships: the United States and the Soviet Union. Pyongyang (the eventual capital of North Korea) was the center of Christian activity in Korea until 1945. From the late 1940s, hundreds of Korean Christian religious figures were killed or disappeared in concentration camps, including Francis Hong Yong-ho, Catholic bishop of Pyongyang, and all monks of Tokwon Abbey. When Moon started his own movement (an early version of the Unification Church) in Pyongyang in 1946, the Soviet-controlled North Korean government imprisoned and, he claims, tortured him. Sources vary on the motivation behind his arrest: religious persecution, or a charge of espionage or polygamy. His religious practices during this time may have included unorthodox sexual rituals with multiple women, a claim the Unification Church denies and some scholars have doubted.

Arrested again in 1948, he was sentenced to five years at Hungnam labor camp, though in 1950, during the Korean War, he was liberated by United Nations troops and allegedly traveled by foot to Busan, (South) Korea. Moon emerged from his years in the labor camp as a staunch anti-communist. His teachings viewed the Cold War between capitalism and communism as the final conflict between God and Satan, with divided Korea as its primary front line.

In the 1950s, after years of being separated from his wife and child before reuniting, Moon and Choi divorced. Moon moved to Seoul once again and, continuing his ministry, was arrested two more times: once on suspicion of religious orgies and once for draft evasion; both charges were overturned.

In 1954, Moon formally founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity in Seoul and fathered an illegitimate child (who died in 1969). In the 1950s, Moon quickly drew young acolytes who helped to build the foundations of Unification-affiliated business and cultural organizations. In his new church, he preached a conservative, family-oriented value system and his interpretation of the Bible. A follower whose family joined Moon's movement in the early 1950s claims that she and Moon engaged in various religious sexual rituals, including with several other women, and that she remained Moon's mistress (through his second marriage) until 1964, bearing Moon another son, in secret, in 1965.

Business

Tongil Group is a South Korean business group (chaebol "Tongil" is Korean for "unification"; the name of the Unification Church in Korean is "Tongilgyo") founded in 1963 by Moon as a nonprofit organization to provide revenue for the church. Its core focus was manufacturing, but in the 1970s and 1980s, it expanded by founding or acquiring businesses in pharmaceuticals, tourism, and publishing. Among Tongil Group's chief holdings are: The Ilwha Company, which produces ginseng and related products; Ilshin Stone, building materials; and Tongil Heavy Industries, machine parts, including hardware for the South Korean military.

News World Communications is an international news media corporation founded by Moon in 1976. It owns United Press International, World and I, Tiempos del Mundo (Latin America), The Segye Ilbo (South Korea), The Sekai Nippo (Japan), the Zambezi Times (South Africa), and The Middle East Times (Egypt). Until 2008, it published the Washington, D.C.-based newsmagazine Insight on the News. Until 2010, it owned The Washington Times. On 2 November 2010, Sun Myung Moon and a group of former Times editors purchased the Times from News World.

In 1982, Moon sponsored the film Inchon, a historical drama about the Battle of Inchon during the Korean War. It was not successful critically or financially and was criticized for its unfair treatment of the North Korean government.

In 1989, Moon founded Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma, the second most successful soccer club in South Korea, having won a record 7 league titles, 2 FA Cups, 3 League Cups, and 2 AFC Champions League titles. Seongnam's record was beaten by Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors in 2020.

The church is the largest owner of US sushi restaurants, and in the Kodiak region of Alaska is the area's largest employer. The church founded the first currently operating automobile manufacturing plant in North Korea, Pyeonghwa Motors, and is the second largest exporter of Korean goods.

In 2011, construction of the $18 million Yeosu Expo Hotel was completed; the hotel is located at the Moon-owned Ocean Resort in Yeosu, the venue of Expo 2012. The opening ceremony was attended by the governor of the province. Another one, the Ocean Hotel, was completed in February 2012. Moon-owned Yeongpyeong Resort, Ocean Resort, and Pineridge Resort were scheduled to host Expo 2012, the 2018 Winter Olympics, and Formula 1. Moon also managed the FIFA-accredited Peace Cup. The FIFA itself has funded more than $2 million for the Peace Cup since 2003.

Marriage to Hak Ja Han

Moon married his second wife, Hak Ja Han (who was 17 at the time) on 11 April 1960, soon after Moon turned 40 years old, in a ceremony called the Holy Marriage. Han is called "Mother" or "True Mother". She and Moon together are referred to as the "True Parents" by members of the Unification Church and their family as the "True Family".

Blessing ceremonies

Although they initially lived communally, his followers gradually returned to the traditional Christian family form (monogamy). Blessing ceremonies have attracted attention in the press and in the public imagination, often being labeled "mass weddings". People who have never met, from completely different countries, were married by the Messiah of the Unification Church by "matching". They were informed that a certain person, specially chosen for him/her by the Messiah, would become their husband/wife. Some of them did not see their future partner until the day of the "marriage". Public mass blessing ceremonies followed. Some couples are already married, and those that are engaged are later legally married according to the laws of their own countries. Meant to highlight the church's emphasis on traditional morality, they brought Moon both fame and controversy.

36 couples participated in the first ceremony in 1961 for members of the early church in Seoul. The ceremonies continued to grow in scale; over 2,000 couples participated in the 1982 one at New York's Madison Square Garden, the first outside South Korea. In 1992, about 30,000 couples took part in a ceremony and a record 360,000 couples in Seoul took part three years later.

Moon said that he matched couples from differing races and nationalities because of his belief that all of humanity should be united: "International and intercultural marriages are the quickest way to bring about an ideal world of peace. People should marry across national and cultural boundaries with people from countries they consider to be their enemies so that the world of peace can come that much more quickly."

In 1964, Moon founded the Korean Culture and Freedom Foundation, which promoted the interests of South Korea and sponsored Radio Free Asia. Former US Presidents Harry S Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Richard Nixon were honorary presidents or directors at various times.

In 1972, Moon offered predictions on the decline of communism, based on the teachings of the Divine Principle: "After 7,000 biblical years—6,000 years of restoration history plus the millennium, the time of completion—communism will fall in its 70th year. Here is the meaning of the year 1978. Communism, begun in 1917, could maintain itself for approximately 60 years and reach its peak. So 1978 is the borderline and afterward, communism will decline; in the 70th year, it will be altogether ruined. This is true. Therefore, now is the time for people who are studying communism to abandon it."

In 1980, Moon asked church members to found CAUSA International as an anti-communist educational organization, based in New York. In the 1980s, it was active in 21 countries. In the United States, it sponsored educational conferences for Christian leaders as well as seminars and conferences for Senate staffers and other activists. In 1986, it produced the anti-communist documentary film Nicaragua Was Our Home. CAUSA supported the Nicaraguan Contras.

In August 1985, the Professors World Peace Academy, an organization founded by Moon, sponsored a conference in Geneva to debate the theme "The situation in the world after the fall of the communist empire." In April 1990, Moon visited the Soviet Union and met with President Mikhail Gorbachev. Moon expressed support for the political and economic transformations underway in the Soviet Union. At the same time, the Unification Church was expanding into formerly communist nations. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, some American conservatives criticized Moon for his softening of his previous anti-communist stance.

In 1991, Moon met with Kim Il Sung, then North Korean president, to discuss ways to achieve peace on the Korean Peninsula, as well as on international relations, tourism, etc. In 1994, Moon was officially invited to the funeral of Kim Il Sung in spite of the absence of diplomatic relations between North Korea and South Korea. Moon and his church are known for their efforts to promote Korean unification.

In 2003, Korean Unification Church members started a political party in South Korea. It was named "The Party for God, Peace, Unification, and Home." In its inauguration declaration, the new party said it would focus on preparing for Korean reunification by educating the public about God and peace. Moon was a member of the Honorary Committee of the Unification Ministry of the Republic of Korea. In 2012, Moon was posthumously awarded North Korea's National Reunification Prize.

In 2005, Sun Myung Moon and his wife, Hak Ja Han Moon, founded the Universal Peace Federation (UPF), an NGO in Special Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). "We support and promote the work of the United Nations and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals."

Moon's projects have been lobbied in the National Congress of Brazil by Brazilian MPs. Moon has held dialogues between members of the Israeli Knesset and the Palestinian Parliament as part of his Middle East Peace Initiatives.

Moon's claim to be the Messiah and the Second Coming of Christ has been rejected by most Jewish and Christian scholars. The Divine Principle was labeled as heretical by Protestant churches in South Korea, including Moon's own Presbyterian Church. In the United States, it was rejected by ecumenical organizations as being non-Christian. Protestant commentators have also criticized Moon's teachings as being contrary to the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone. In their influential book The Kingdom of the Cults (first published in 1965), Walter Ralston Martin and Ravi K. Zacharias disagreed with the Divine Principle on the issues of the divinity of Christ, the virgin birth of Jesus, Moon's belief that Jesus should have married, the necessity of the crucifixion of Jesus, a literal resurrection of Jesus, as well as a literal second coming of Jesus. Commentators have criticized the Divine Principle for saying that the First World War, the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Cold War served as indemnity conditions to prepare the world for the establishment of the Kingdom of God.

During the Cold War, Moon was criticized by both the mainstream media and the alternative media for his anti-communist activism, which many said could lead to World War III and a nuclear holocaust. Moon's anti-communist activities received financial support from controversial Japanese millionaire and activist Ryōichi Sasakawa. In 1977, the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the Committee on International Relations of the United States House of Representatives, while investigating the Koreagate scandal, found that the South Korean National Intelligence Service (KCIA) had worked with the Unification Church to gain political influence within the United States, with some members working as volunteers in Congressional offices. Together, they founded the Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit organization that undertook public diplomacy for the Republic of Korea. The committee also investigated possible KCIA influence on Moon's campaign in support of Richard Nixon.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, some American conservatives criticized Moon for his softening of his previous anti-communist stance.

In the 1990s, when Moon began to offer the Unification marriage blessing ceremony to members of other churches and religions, he was criticized for creating possible confusion. In 1998, journalist Peter Maass, writing for The New Yorker, reported that some Unification members were dismayed and also grumbled when Moon extended the Blessing to non-members, who had not gone through the same course that members had. In 2001, Moon came into conflict with the Roman Catholic Church when 71-year-old Catholic archbishop Emmanuel Milingo and Maria Sung, a 43-year-old Korean acupuncturist, married in a blessing ceremony, presided over by Moon and his wife. Following his marriage, the archbishop was called to the Vatican by Pope John Paul II, where he was asked not to see his wife anymore and to move to a Capuchin monastery. Sung went on a hunger strike to protest their separation. This attracted much media attention. Milingo is now an advocate of the removal of the requirement for celibacy by priests in the Catholic Church. He is the founder of the Married Priests Now! advocacy group.

In 1998, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram criticized Moon's possible relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and wrote that The Washington Times editorial policy was "rabidly anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and pro-Israel."

In 2000, Moon was criticized, including by some members of his church, for his support of controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's Million Family March. Moon was also criticized for his relationship with controversial Jewish scholar Richard L. Rubenstein, an advocate of the "death of God theology" of the 1960s. Rubenstein was a defender of the Unification Church and served on its advisory council, and on the board of directors of The Washington Times, a church-owned newspaper. In the 1990s, he served as president of the University of Bridgeport, which was then affiliated with the church.

In 2003, George D. Chryssides of the University of Wolverhampton criticized Moon for introducing doctrines that tended to divide the Christian church rather than uniting it, which was his stated purpose in founding the Unification movement (originally named the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity). In his 2009 autobiography, Moon himself wrote that he did not originally intend on founding a separate denomination.

Moon opposed homosexuality and compared gay people to "dirty dung-eating dogs". He said that "gays will be eliminated" in a "purge on God's orders".

In 2009, Moon's support for the Japan-Korea Undersea Tunnel was criticized in Japan and South Korea as a possible threat to both nations' interests and national identities.

Other criticisms include Moon's apparent neglect of his wife, Hak Ja Han, and his appointments of their children and their spouses to leadership positions in the church and related businesses, including their daughter In Jin Moon to the presidency of the Unification Church of the United States against the wishes of some church members; his support of conservatives within the government of South Korea; his assignment of movement members and resources to business projects and political activism, including The Washington Times; as well as the relationship between the Unification Church and Islam, especially following the September 11 attacks in New York City.