Religion Mun kor
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Sun Myung Moon
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Sun Myung Moon, auch San Myung Mun, (* 25. Februar 1920 bzw. 6. Januar nach dem
Mondkalender in Sangsa-ri[1], Provinz P'yŏngan-pukto, heutiges Nordkorea) ist Gründer und
Oberhaupt der sogenannten Vereinigungskirche.
Leben
Sun Myung Moon wurde in der heute zu Nordkorea gehörenden Provinz P'yŏngan-pukto geboren. Mit
16 Jahren, hatte der aus einer presbyterianisch geprägten Familie stammende, spätere
Vereinigungskirchen-Gründer, angeblich am Ostersonntag eine Christus-Vision, durch die er sich zum
Messias berufen fühlte. Nach wechselnden kirchlichen Aktivitäten machte er am 1. April 1954 in
Südkorea seine eigene Kirche auf, die auch in Amerika, Japan und Westeuropa zahlreiche Anhänger
gewann, vornehmlich unter jungen Leuten.
Familie
Sun Myung Moon heiratete 1943 Choi Sun-gil. Am 1. März 1946 wurde sein erster Sohn Sung-jin
geboren. Im gleichen Jahr ging er ohne seine Familie nach Nordkorea. Von 1948 bis 1950 war er dort
Gefangener in einem Konzentrationslager in Hŭngnam. 1951 kehrte er zu seiner Familie zurück und
1955 wurde sein zweiter Sohn Hee-jin geboren. Hee-jin starb später bei einem Zugunglück. 1959 ließ
sich Choi Sun-gil von Sun Myung Moon scheiden und der erste Sohn Sung-jin wuchs bei der Mutter
auf. Am 1. April 1960 heiratete Sun Myung Moon seine heutige Frau Hak Ja Han. Er und seine Frau
haben 14 Kinder:[2]
…
Vereinigungsbewegung
Seit 1964 gibt es die Vereinigungsbewegung in Deutschland und brachte es hier nach eigenen
Angaben auf etwa 1000 Anhänger; weltweit gibt es angeblich über zwei Millionen Mitglieder. In der
Öffentlichkeit wird sie manchmal als Moon-Sekte bezeichnet. Neuerdings setzt sich die Bezeichnung
Vereinigungsbewegung durch, denn Vereinigungskirche bezeichnet eigentlich nur den ausdrücklich
religiösen Arm der viel umfassenderen Bewegung.
Moon versteht es, seiner Organisation ein riesiges Immobilien-, Firmen- und Barvermögen zu
verschaffen. Er lässt seine gläubigen Kirchenmitglieder, die oftmals zur völligen Selbstaufopferung
bereit sind, durch unbezahlte Arbeitseinsätze, Verkaufs- und Sammelaktionen die Kirchenkassen
füllen.
Lehre
Die Lehre ergibt sich aus den laufenden Offenbarungsreden Moons, den Reden des Meisters.
Grundelemente sind die taoistische Kosmologie, schamanistische Volksreligion aus Korea, sowie das
Prinzip der christlichen Missionstheologie. Das Zeichen der Vereinigungskirche ist ein östliches
Emblem, das Elemente des Taoismus enthält und das "Göttliche Prinzip" abbilden soll. Ziel des
göttlichen Prinzips ist es, dass ein vollkommener Mann sich eine Frau zur vollkommenen Eva erziehe
(und umgekehrt), mit ihr sündlose Kinder zeuge und so eine vollkommene Familie als Objekt Gottes
gründe. Jesus von Nazareth konnte somit seine Mission nicht vollenden, weil er durch seine
Kreuzigung keine Familie mehr gründen konnte. Eine seiner Offenbarungen: das männliche und
weibliche Geschlechtsteil sind von göttlicher Natur.
In der geistigen Welt wurde Sun Myung Moon als Sieger des Universums und Herr der Schöpfung
anerkannt, heißt es in einem Lebenslauf Moons, den dessen Anhänger verbreiteten.
Dieses Machtstreben beschränkt sich keineswegs auf die geistige Welt. Im Kreis seiner Jünger
erklärte er angeblich: Wenn wir sieben Nationen manipulieren können, die USA, England, Frankreich,
Deutschland, die Sowjetunion und vielleicht Korea und Japan, dann können wir die ganze Welt haben.
Wirtschaftliche Beteiligungen
Der Moon-Konzern hat Beteiligungen an der nordkoreanischen Pyonghwa Motors und am weltweiten
Ginseng-Handel.
Außerhalb der Heimatbasis ist die Vereinigungsbewegung vor allem in den USA wirtschaftlich stark.
Sie kontrolliert dort Dutzende von Firmen, darunter die stark rechts orientierte Hauptstadt-Zeitung
Washington Times und besitzt den Pressedienst UPI. Der allzu geschäftstüchtige Sekten-Chef selbst
allerdings geriet in den Vereinigten Staaten in Schwierigkeiten. Er wurde dort 1982 wegen
Steuerhinterziehung zu einer Haftstrafe von 18 Monaten verurteilt. Insgesamt war Moon etwa ein
halbes Dutzend mal im Gefängnis, unter anderem auch in Nordkorea während des Koreakrieges. In
Lateinamerika baute die Vereinigungskirche ihren stärksten Stützpunkt in Uruguay auf. Sie besitzt dort
die vielgelesene Zeitung „Ultimas Noticias“, eine hochmoderne Druckerei, die drittgrößte Bank des
Landes und das beste Hotel der Hauptstadt Uruguays, das "Victoria Plaza“ im Zentrum Montevideos.
Die Moon-Organisation hat 70% Anteile an der nordkoreanischen Pyonghwa Motors, dem AutoMonopolisten in Nordkorea.
Gemäß einem Artikel der Chicago Tribune vom 11. April 2006 kontrolliert Moons Firma True World
Group den Fang und Handel mit Fisch für Sushi in den USA.
Peace Cup
Sun Myung Moon gab im Jahre 2002 die Einführung eines von ihm veranstalteten weltweiten
Fußballturnieres bekannt. Der sog. Peace Cup soll zur Völkerverständigung und der Überwindung von
Ideologien beitragen. Der Wettbewerb steht unter Moons Schirmherrschaft. Als Besitzer von zwei
Fußballvereinen konnte er die FIFA und den weltweit bekannten Fußballer Pelé für sein Projekt
gewinnen. Die gesamten Gewinne, die mit der Vermarktung des Wettbewerbes erzielt werden, werden
an hungerleidende Kinder in Asien und Afrika gespendet. [3]
Einreiseverbot
Von 1995 bis 2006 bestand ein Einreiseverbot des deutschen Bundesinnenministeriums für Sun
Myung Moon und seine Ehefrau, das damit begründet war, dass die Vereinigungsbewegung zu den
Jugendsekten und Psychogruppen gehöre, deren Aktivitäten junge Menschen gefährden könnten. Im
November 2006 wurde diese Verfügung vom Bundesverfassungsgericht aus Gründen der
Religionsfreiheit aufgehoben und an das Oberverwaltungsgericht (OVG) Rheinland-Pfalz
zurückverwiesen. Das OVG hob das Einreiseverbot im Mai 2007 auf, weil nur erhebliche Gefahren für
die öffentliche Sicherheit und Ordnung oder für die nationale Sicherheit solche Einreiseverbote
begründen könnten [4].
In Japan gilt immer noch ein Einreiseverbot.
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Vereinigungskirche
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Die Vereinigungskirche, ursprünglich The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World
Christianity, auch als Moon-Bewegung bekannt, ist eine synkretistische neue religiöse Bewegung, die
1954 von dem Koreaner Sun Myung Moon gegründet wurde. Die wichtigsten Lehren sind in dem Buch
Das Göttliche Prinzip, das unter der Anweisung Moons geschrieben wurde, zu finden. Die
Organisation hat im deutschsprachigem Raum etwa 1200 Mitglieder.[1] In den USA, Japan und Korea
ist ihr politischer und wirtschaftlicher Einfluss durch höhere Mitgliederzahlen größer.
Geschichtliche Entwicklung
International
Der Koreaner Sun Myung Moon hatte nach eigenen Angaben am Ostersonntag 1935, dem 17. April,
eine Vision von Jesus Christus. Jesus habe ihn gebeten, seine Mission zu vollenden und die Welt zu
erlösen.[2] Moon war daraufhin Mitglied in verschiedenen Kirchen und versuchte mehrere Jahre mit
etablierten christlichen Erweckungsbewegungen in Korea zusammen zu arbeiten (wie z.B. der Inside
Belly Church, Leuchtendes Meer).[3][4] Als diese Bemühungen scheiterten, gründete Moon 1954 die
Heilig Geist Gesellschaft zur Vereinigung des Weltchristentums (Segye Kidokkyo Tongil Sillyon), die
später als Vereinigungskirche (Tongil Kyo-hae) bekannt wurde.[5] Bis 1957 bildeten sich in 30 Städten
in Korea Kirchengemeinden.[6][7] Die grundlegende Lehre der Vereinigungskirche wurde 1950-52 von
Hyo-Won Eu, dem ersten Vorsitzenden der Heilig Geist Gesellschaft, niedergeschrieben und unter
dem Titel Wôl Li Hae Sôl (Erklärungen zum Göttlichen Prinzip) im Jahre 1957 das erste Mal gedruckt.
[8][9][10] Ende der 1950er Jahre wurden die ersten Missionare nach Japan und die Vereinigten
Staaten entsendet (Sang-ik Choi, Young-oon Kim, Bo-hi Pak, David Kim). [11][5][7][12]
1960er Jahre
Am 16. März 1960 heiratete Moon Hak Ja Han. Das Ereignis gilt innerhalb der Vereinigungskirche als
die die Hochzeit des Lammes (Offb 19,7 EU).[5] [11] [13] Moon führt seitdem Ehesegnungen durch,
die wegen der wachsenden Anzahl an teilnehmenden Paaren große öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit
erregten.[14]
Im Rahmen seiner ersten Welttour im Jahre 1965 hielt Moon in 40 Nationen Reden und errichtete an
mehren Orten sogenannte Holy Grounds (u.a. auch in Berlin, Frankfurt am Main und Essen). [11] [15]
[16] Auf seiner Reise in die Vereinigten Staaten trifft Moon auf den ehemeligen US-Präsident Dwight
D. Eisenhower. [17] 1966 wird die zweite Ausgabe der Lehre der Vereinigungskirche Wôl Li Kang Ron
(Erläuterung des Göttlichen Prinzips) in koreanisch herausgegeben, welches das grundlegende
Textbuch der Lehre von Sun Myung Moon ist. [18]
1969 reist Moon nach Japan, Europa und in die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika. In Deutschland
erhielten zum ersten mal internationale Paare die heilige Ehesegnung. [19]
1970er Jahre
Mit dem Umzug von Sun Myung Moon in die USA 1971, verlegte sich der Schwerpunkt der Arbeit der
internationalen Vereinigungskirche von Korea in die USA. Einige Monate später veranstaltete die
Vereinigungskirche die Day of Hope- Ansprachentour, in der Moon in 50 amerikanischen
Bundesstaaten spricht, darunter in sieben Großstädte, beginnend am 3. Februar 1972 im Lincoln
Center in New York City. Zwei weitere Ansprachentouren durch amerikanische Großstädte folgten
(Christianity in Crisis: New Hope). 1972 hatte die Vereinigungskirche Gemeindezentren in zehn
verschiedenen Bundesstaaten der USA.
1973 entstand die erste Übersetzung des Wôl Li Kang Ron ins Englische unter dem Titel The Divine
Principle, fast zeitgleich mit der deutschen Übersetzung. [20]
Nach der Watergate-Affäre von US-Präsident Richard Nixon rief die Vereinigungskirche in einer
Kampagne Forgive, Love and Unite die amerikanische Bevölkerung dazu auf, dem Präsidenten eine
zweite Chance zu geben.[21] Zu diesem Anlass findet 1974 ein Treffen zwischen Nixon und Moon
statt. Daraufhin begann die vierte amerikanische Ansprachentour von Moon durch mehrere
amerikanische Großstädte. Sie begann mit einer Großveranstaltung im Madison Square Garden in
New York City am 18. September 1974, zu der 25.000 Zuhörer kamen.[22] [23] Daraufhin kehrte
Moon nach Südkorea zurück, um dort und später auch in Japan weitere Ansprachen zu halten. [24]
[25]
Nach Aufbau der Vereinigungskirche in Korea, Japan, den USA und Westeuropa wurden im Mai 1975
Missionare in 120 Nationen in Asien, Afrika, Ozeanien, Südamerika und den Nahen Osten entsendet.
[24] [26] Nachdem Südvietnam am 30. April 1975 von den kommunistischen Truppen eingenommen
wurde, veranstaltete die koreanische Vereinigungskirche die World Ralley for Korean Freedom am 7.
Juni 1975 in Seoul bei der Moon die Hauptansprache gab, um das Bewusstsein für die Gefahr des
Kommunismus (v.a. Nordkoreas) zu schaffen, an der über eine Million Menschen teilnahmen. [27] [28]
Anlässlich der Zweihundertjahrfeier der Gründung der USA 1976 hielt Sun Myung Moon zwei
Ansprachen. Am 1. Juni im Yankee Stadium in New York City und eine andere am 18. September auf
dem Bicentennial God Bless America Festival am Washington Monument. [29] [30] [31]
1978 startete die Vereinigungskirche auf Initiative Moons das Home Church-Projekt. Dabei sollte die
Kirche bekannt gemacht werden, indem man bedürftigen Familien in der unmittelbaren Nachbarschaft
Hilfeleistungen anbot.[32]
Im selben Jahr beschuldigte das Subcommittee on International Organizations, ein Unterausschuss
des Repräsentantenhaus der Vereinigten Staaten, die Vereinigungskirche u.a. mit dem koreanischen
Geheimdienst KCIA zusammen zu arbeiten, was als Koreagate-Affäre bekannt wurde.[33] Dabei
berief sich der Ausschuss u.a. auf drei ungeprüfte CIA-Berichte aus den 1960er Jahren, in denen
behauptet wurde, die Vereinigungskirche sei vom KCIA im Jahre 1961 gegründet worden.[34] Der
Vorsitzende des Komitees Donald M. Fraser verlangte von Colonel Bo Hi Pak, einem engen
Vertrauten Moons, der in den Koreagate-Skandal involviert sein sollte, eine Klarstellung.[35] Letzterer
sagte drei Mal vor dem Ausschuss von Fraser aus und bestritt dabei jegliche Verbindungen zwischen
der Vereinigungskirche und dem KCIA. [36][37] Fraser konnte seine Anschuldigungen letztendlich
nicht ausreichend beweisen und Bo Hi Pak und die Vereinigungskirche wurden freigesprochen.[38]
Der Bericht wurde von zahlreichen Massenmedien aufgegriffen und trug zu einem negativen Bild der
Vereinigungskirche in der Öffentlichkeit bei. [39] Die Vereinigungskirche verfasste eine Stellungnahme
zu den Anklagen Frasers mit dem Titel Our Response.[40]
Moon wurde 1984 zu einer Gefängnisstrafe wegen Steuerhinterziehung verurteilt.
Bürgerrechtsbewegungen, liberale und konservative christliche Bewegungen und Pfarrer wie z.B.
Jerry Falwell oder Joseph Lowery hielten die Anklage für nicht gerechtfertigt und für einen Verstoß
gegen die Religionsfreiheit[41][42].
Deutschland
Der erste Missionar in Deutschland war Peter Koch, der die Lehre Moons in Amerika kennengelernt
hatte. Ein Jahr nach seiner Ankunft in Deutschland, wurde am 11. Dezember 1964 die Gesellschaft
zur Vereinigung des Weltchristentums (GVW) in Frankfurt am Main gegründet. [43] Im Zuge einer
Welttour besuchte Moon 1965 das erste Mal Deutschland und gründete drei Heilige Gründe in Berlin,
Frankfurt am Main und Essen. Er beauftragte die Mitglieder Missionare ins Ausland zu entsenden.
Daraufhin gehen vereinzelt Missionare ins Ausland, z.B. nach Spanien und Frankreich. [44]
Mit dem Besuch Moons 1969 kam es zu einem ersten Leiterwechsel, Peter Koch wurde Landesleiter
in Österreich, Paul Werner war für die deutsche Vereinigungskirche verantwortlich.[45] Werner legte
einen neuen Schwerpunkt auf das Verteilen von Einladungen und anderen Straßenaktionen, sowie
der Eröffnung neuer Gemeindezentren. [46] 1971 gab es in Deutschland 21 Gemeindezentren und
100 Mitglieder.
Im September 1971 reisten zwei Missionsteams mit je 12 Mitgliedern durch verschiedene Städte
Deutschlands, um dort neue Kirchenmitglieder zu finden. [47] 1972 hielt Moon im Rahmen der „Day of
Hope“-Ansprachentour erstmals drei öffentliche Reden in Deutschland (Essen). Kurze Zeit später
wurden als Teil der One World Crusade neue Missionsteams in München gebildet. Die erste
Übersetzung aus dem Englischen von Das Göttliche Prinzip, wurde 1972 von Paul Werner
veröffentlicht. 1974 begann die deutsche CARP an der Frankfurter Universität ihre Aktivität.[48]
Die Lehre
Die Lehre der Vereinigungskirche stammt von dem Gründer Sun Myung Moon. Moons Offenbarung
wird als der Schlüssel für das Verständnis der christlichen Bibel und als Anleitung zur
Wiederherstellung der Welt verstanden. Die Hauptwerke über die Lehre der Vereinigungskirche sind
Das Göttliche Prinzip und Cheon Seong Gyeong (Heilige Schrift des Himmels).
Gottesbild
Es gibt einen einzigen Gott, der absolut, unveränderlich, allmächtig und ewig ist. Er ist unsichtbar und
übersteigt Raum und Zeit. Als Schöpfer des Universums, ist die Welt der physische Ausdruck seines
Wesens. Die Eigenschaften, die in Gott vereint sind, werden somit in der Schöpfung reflektiert, zu
denen polare Wesenszüge (Yin und Yang) zählen, wie zum Beispiel Maskulinität und Femininität.
Gott ist die Quelle der Wahrheit, Schönheit, des Guten und der Liebe. Gott steht nicht in der Position
eines Richters, sondern in der Position von Eltern der Menschheit. Als Eltern hat er sowohl den
väterlichen Aspekt der Rechtschaffenheit, als auch den mütterlichen Aspekt der Vergebung und
Fürsorge in sich.
Ursprüngliches Schöpfungsideal
Gott schuf das Universum, um in Beziehungen zu Objektpartnern Liebe und Freude erfahren zu
können. Menschen sind die wichtigsten Wesen der Schöpfung, da sie Gottes Kinder sind, die die
Fähigkeit besitzen selbst Schöpfer zu sein. Des Weiteren können die Menschen, auf der Grundlage
ihrer von Gott gegebenen Freiheit, ihre Charakterentwicklung selbst bestimmen, welche im
Zusammenhang damit steht, in welchem Maße sie Gottes Liebe empfangen und erwidern können.
Gott, als Eltern der Menschen, gab dem Menschen den Lebenszweck Freude zu erfahren, was sich in
den Drei Großen Segen (Gen 1,28 EU Seid fruchtbar und vermehrt euch, bevölkert die Erde, (…) und
herrscht über die Fische und Meere, über die Vögel des Himmels und über alle Tiere, die sich auf dem
Land regen.) ausdrückt. „Seid fruchtbar“ steht für die Erlangung geistiger und körperlicher Reife, also
für Harmonie zwischen Geist und Körper ausgerichtet auf Gott.
Der zweite Segen, „vermehrt euch“, deutet auf die Errichtung einer idealen Familie mit Gott im
Mittelpunkt hin.
Die Herrschaft über alle Lebewesen auf der Erde, ist eine Forderung an den Menschen, eine
verantwortungsbewusste Führung über das gesamte Universum zu übernehmen und, als Mittler
zwischen Gott und der physischen Welt, alle Dinge im Einklang mit Gottes Ideal zu gebrauchen, damit
sie wiederum ihren Schöpfungszweck erfüllen können.
Gottes Schöpfungsideal ist dann erfüllt, wenn Gott und die Menschheit in einer Beziehung der Liebe
stehen und der Mensch die Drei Segen erfüllt hat.
Geistige Welt
Der Mensch wird als Mittler der geistigen und physischen Welt gesehen, da er sowohl ein physisches
als auch ein geistiges Selbst besitzt. Das geistige Selbst lebt nach dem Tod des physischen Selbst
ewig in der geistigen Welt weiter. Verstorbene Menschen und Engel können mit dem geistigen Selbst
von Lebenden interagieren oder es beeinflussen. Engel wurden geschaffen, um den Menschen bei
der Erfüllung der Drei Großen Segen zu helfen. Der vollkommene Mensch steht über den dienenden
Engeln.
Der Sündenfall
Der Sündenfall der ersten menschlichen Vorfahren Adam und Eva aus der Bibel ist, den Göttlichen
Prinzipien zufolge, ein tatsächliches historisches Ereignis. Jedoch werden Elemente der Geschichte,
wie zum Beispiel der Baum des Lebens, der Baum der Erkenntnis von Gut und Böse, die verbotene
Frucht und die Schlange, als symbolische Metaphern (für einen idealen Mann, eine ideale Frau,
sexuelle Liebe und den Erzengel Luzifer) interpretiert.
Der Sündenfall setzt sich aus dem geistigen Fall und dem physischen Fall zusammen. Unter dem
geistigen Fall versteht man die verbotene sexuelle Beziehung zwischen dem Erzengel Luzifer und der
noch unreifen Eva. Diese Beziehung war entgegen des ursprünglich vorgesehen Verhältnisses
zwischen Mensch und Engel.
Mit dem physischen Fall wird die darauffolgende sexuelle Vereinigung von Eva mit Adam beschrieben,
welche zu diesem Zeitpunkt noch nicht von Gott gesegnet war. Dabei übertrug Eva Elemente aus der
Beziehung mit Luzifer an Adam und über ihre Kinder wurden sie an die gesamte Menschheit
weitervererbt. Aus diesem Grund steht nicht Gott im Mittelpunkt der menschlichen Gesellschaft,
sondern Luzifer, was dem Ideal Gottes entgegen steht.
Wiederherstellung des ursprünglichen Ideals
Die Lehre der Vereinigungskirche besagt, dass die gesamte menschliche Geschichte seit dem
Sündenfall ein andauernder Kampf zwischen den Kräften von Gott und Satan ist, um die ursprüngliche
Sünde zu bereinigen und die ursprüngliche Liebe wiederherzustellen. Dieser Prozess ist die treibende
Kraft der menschlichen Geschichte, die eine Geschichte der Wiederherstellung und
Wiedergutmachung ist. Die Wiederherstellung der satanischen Erblinie in die göttliche Erblinie ist die
zentrale Aufgabe des Messias. Der Wechsel der Erblinie wird durch die Teilnahme an der heiligen
Ehesegnung erreicht.
Die Geschichte der Religionen ist die Geschichte göttlicher und menschlicher Anstrengung, um das
Ideal, das sich in der Verwirklichung der Drei Großen Segen ausdrückt, zu verwirklichen. Im Laufe der
Geschichte sind verschiedene bedeutende Persönlichkeiten erschienen, die auf der Seite Gottes oder
Satans standen und dem Prozess der Wiederherstellung entweder dienten oder ihm entgegen
wirkten.
Der Messias kann die Menschen lediglich von der ursprünglichen Sünde befreien und sie durch seine
Lehre führen. Die Verantwortung persönliche und ererbte Sünden zu bereinigen, trägt jeder Mensch
selbst.
Die Rolle Sun Myung Moons
Nach der Lehre der Vereinigungskirche ist der Messias ein Mensch, der ohne ursprüngliche Sünde
geboren wurde. Seine hauptsächliche Mission ist es, Menschen durch die heilige Ehesegnung mit
Gottes Erblinie zu verbinden und so die Grundlage für das Reich Gottes auf Erden und im Himmel zu
legen.
Jesus wurde gekreuzigt, bevor er seine Aufgabe vollenden konnte, und konnte der Menschheit nur
eine geistige Erlösung bringen. Er verließ diese Welt mit dem Versprechen, dass er wiederkommen
würde. Sun Myung Moon wurde als dieser zweite Messias (Herr der Wiederkunft) geboren und
zusammen mit seiner Frau Hak Ja Han nehmen sie die Rolle von Wahren Eltern der Menschheit ein.
Durch sie wurde zum ersten Mal in der Geschichte der Menschheit Gottes Ideal eines vollkommenen
Elternpaars erfüllt, was ursprünglich die Verantwortung von Adam und Eva war. Dementsprechend
bezeichnen Mitglieder der Vereinigungskirche Sun Myung Moon als Wahren Vater, Hak Ja Han als
Wahre Mutter und ihre gesamte Familie als Wahre Familie.
Der Messias soll allen Menschen den Weg zeigen, selbst Wahre Eltern zu werden und Wahre
Familien zu etablieren. Als wichtige Grundlage dafür werden Menschen durch die heilige Ehesegnung
mit der Erblinie Gottes verknüpft.
Sun Myung Moon ist jedoch für die Mitglieder der Vereinigungskirche nicht Gott und es wird auch nicht
zu ihm gebetet.
Symbol
Das Symbol der VereinigungskircheIn der Mitte des Symbols ist ein Kreis, welcher für Gott, Wahrheit,
Leben und Licht steht. Von diesem Kreis gehen für jeweils eins dieser Elemente vier große
dreiecksförmige Strahlen aus, sowie weitere acht kleinere. Insgesamt ergibt dies 12 Strahlen, die an
die Sonne und Sonnenstrahlen erinnern sollen. Diese sollen die Zahl 12 als biblisch wichtige Zahl
aufgreifen: Die 12 Strahlen korrespondieren zu den in der Apokalypse genannten 12 Perlentoren, die
alle in die heilige Stadt Jerusalem führen oder sich auch z.B. auf die 12 Jünger Jesu beziehen. Die
vier, bzw. zwölf „Sonnenstrahlen“ stehen darüber hinaus für die Himmelsrichtungen und dafür, dass
die Wahrheit auf 12 Wegen verbreitet werden kann. Sie können auch die 12 Typen des menschlichen
Charakters darstellen.
Das Quadrat in der Mitte symbolisiert mit seinen vier Ecken die Vier-Positionen-Grundstruktur, also die
Einheit von Ursprung, dessen Teilung und deren Einheit (Beispiel: Gott als Ursprung, Mann und Frau
als Ausdruck seines Wesens auf zwei Objekte aufgeteilt, Kind als Einheit von Mann und Frau). Der
äußere Kreis repräsentiert das Prinzip des Gebens und Empfangens, das Grundlage aller Existenz
und somit des Kosmos ist. Der Gründer Sun Myung Moon lehrt, dass die Struktur des Himmelreiches
nach dem Muster dieses Symbols errichtet werden wird, d.h. durch 12 Stämme und 12
Charaktertypen, durch die Errichtung der Vier-Positionen-Grundstruktur ausgerichtet auf Gott in
harmonischem Geben und Empfangen.
Politische Einflussnahme
In Verfolgung ihrer antikommunistischen Ziele bemühte sich die Vereinigungskirche seit den 70er
Jahren verstärkt um Einflussnahme auf die Politik.
Zur Einflussnahme auf die Öffentlichkeit benutzt die Vereinigungskirche verschiedene
Unterorganisationen. Die CAUSA propagiert die Philosophie der Vereinigungskirche, den „Gottismus“.
Ihr Vorsitzender war in den 80er Jahren Bo Hee Park. In Deutschland führte die CAUSA Deutschland
e.V. verschiedene Tagungen durch. Die Vorträge wurden regelmäßig in der CAUSA Zeitschrift „Forum
für geistige Führung“ veröffentlicht. Referenten waren unter anderem Günter Rohrmoser, Helmut
Bärwald, Konrad Löw oder Klaus Hornung.
Gezielt an Akademiker wendet sich die International Conference of the Unity of Sciences (ICUS), eine
Unterorganisation der gleichfalls der Kirche unterstehenden International Cultural Federation mit Sitz
in New York.
Die ICUS hält jährlich Kongresse ab, auf denen die teilnehmenden Wissenschaftler 1000 $ für jede
Rede und 500 $ für jedes eingereichte Papier erhalten sowie noch einmal 500 $ für dessen
Veröffentlichung. Senior Consultants erhalten 5000 $ im Jahr. An den Konferenzen nehmen namhafte
Wissenschaftler, auch Nobelpreisträger, teil. Der Soziologe Irving Horowitz nannte sie eine „brillante
Marketingstrategie“. Eine weitere Unterorganisation, die World Media Association, organisiert Reisen
für Journalisten, speziell von kleineren und mittleren US-Tageszeitungen. „Ich dachte, das sei die
einzige Möglichkeit für mich, nach Asien zu kommen“, sagte ein Journalist der Palm Beach Post nach
der Teilnahme an einer solchen Reise.[49]
Eine andere Unterorganisation Freedom Leadership Foundation finanzierte 1984 die Reise eines
Senatsausschusses nach Zentralamerika.[50] Die Aktivitäten des National Conservative Political
Action Comitee wurden im selben Jahr mit 500.000 Dollar unterstützt. Ferner gründete die Kirche ein
Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, das konservativ orientierte Forschung an
verschiedenen Universitäten, u.a. in Stanford, unterstützt. Zur Finanzierung ihrer Aktivitäten
transferierte die Kirche von 1975 bis 1984 800 Mio Dollar aus Japan in die USA; den Erlös aus
Spenden- und Verkaufsaktionen in den USA gab sie mit 20 Mio. Dollar an. Eine wichtige
Einnahmequelle ist der Verkauf von Blumen und Schmuck durch Anhänger, die sich verpflichten,
mindestens 100 Dollar pro Tag einzunehmen. Spendensammlern ist ausdrücklich erlaubt, die
Zugehörigkeit zur Kirche und den Verwendungszweck der Spenden zu leugnen (heavenly
deception).[51][52][53][54][55]
Bo Hee Park definierte den Zweck des politischen Engagements 1984 wie folgt:
“Wir wollen die Welt erwecken und erreichen, dass dieses gottlose, totalitäre System
verschwindet...Es ist ein totaler Krieg. Hauptsächlich ein Krieg der Ideen, der Köpfe, des
menschlichen Verstandes. Dort wird die Schlacht geschlagen. In diesem Krieg wird alles mobilisiert:
politische, soziale, ökonomische und propagandistische Mittel...Die Medienorganisation, die wir
schaffen, soll als Instrument unserer Sache eingesetzt werden, als Instrument Gottes“.[49]
Seit 1991 missioniert die Vereinigungskirche verstärkt in den Ländern der ehemaligen UdSSR.
Die baden-württembergische Landesregierung bezeichnete das Auftreten der „Vereinigungskirche“
1995 als „exemplarisch für die Instrumentalisierung der Religion für die Durchsetzung politischer
Ziele“[56].
Verbreitung und Mitgliedschaft
Einflussschwerpunkte der Vereinigungskirche sind Südkorea, Japan, USA und Westeuropa. In
Deutschland hat sie nach eigenen Angaben 1.300 Mitglieder und etwa 10.000 Sympathisanten[57],
weltweit rechnet man mit 2 Millionen. Nach Angaben der Vereinigten Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche
Deutschlands beträgt die Mitgliedschaft in Deutschland „mindestens 200“ Personen (incl. Kinder 350)
plus etwa 1000 Sympathisanten.[58]
Nach Angaben der Statistik Austria haben bei der Volkszählung 2001 in Österreich 297 Personen
angegeben, zur Vereinigungskirche zu gehören.
Bräuche
Durch zahlreiche Bräuche soll unter den Mitgliedern das Zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl und die innere
Ausrichtung auf Gott und Sun Myung Moon verstärkt werden. In den regionalen Gemeindezentren
werden sonntags Gottesdienste abgehalten, deren Ablauf dem der etablierten Kirchen ähnelt. So
werden gemeinsam Kirchenlieder gesungen, es wird eine Predigt gehalten und eine Kollekte
durchgeführt. Für die Kinder der Gemeindemitglieder werden Kindergottesdienste durchgeführt. An
den Feiertagen der Moon-Bewegung - wie z.B. dem Gottestag, dem bedeutendsten Feiertag am 1.
Januar - werden in den Gemeindezentren feierliche Zeremonien abgehalten.
An Sonn- und Feiertagen sowie am Monatsersten wird üblicherweise im Familienkreise das
sogenannte Familiengelöbnis[59][60] gesprochen. Dazu versammelt sich die Familie um fünf Uhr
morgens am Hausaltar. Der Ablauf wird eingeleitet durch eine dreifache tiefe Verneigung vor den
Bildern Sun Myung Moons sowie seiner Frau bzw. Familie. Im Anschluss daran wird gemeinsam ein
Treueschwur rezitiert, an den häufig Gebete angeschlossen werden.
http://en.wikipedia.org
Sun Myung Moon
This article's introduction section may not adequately summarize its contents. To comply with
Wikipedia's lead section guidelines, please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible
overview of the article's key points. (December 2009)
Sun Myung Moon
Sun Myung Moon (born January 6, 1920) is the Korean founder and leader of the worldwide
Unification Church. He is also the founder of many other organizations and projects involved in
political, cultural, artistic, mass-media, educational, public service, and other activities. One of the
best-known of these is the conservative Washington Times newspaper.[1] He is famous for holding
blessing ceremonies, often referred to as "mass weddings".
Moon has said, and it is believed by many Unification Church members, that he is the Messiah and the
Second Coming of Christ and is fulfilling Jesus' unfinished mission.[2][3] He has been among the most
controversial modern religious leaders, both for his religious beliefs and for his social and political
activism.[4]
[edit] Early biography
He was born in 1920 in northern Korea and named Yong Myung Moon.(After changed to Sun Myung
Moon) His birthday was recorded as January 6 by the lunar calendar. [1]
[edit] Life in Korea
Moon was born in Sangsa-ri (上思里, lit. "high-thought village"), Deogun-myon, Jeongju-gun, North
P'yŏng'an Province[5] (now in North Korea; Korea was then under Japanese rule). His father, Kyungyoo Moon, was a scholar, while his mother, Kyung-gye Kim, was an active woman. They had six sons
and seven daughters, of which Sun Myung Moon was the second son. When he was a child, Moon
was heavily affected by his elder brother Yong-Su Moon's deep faith. The family went into bankruptcy
when the elder brother of Sun Myung's grandfather, Rev. Yunguk Moon, gave most of the money
belonging to the family to an independence movement from Japan. [6] In 2009, the Yonhap News
Agency reported that Moon had plans to establish a sacred sanctuary at his birthplace.[7]
In the Moon family, there was a tradition in the form of a superstitous belief that held that if the second
son was to receive a Western-style education, he would die early. As a result of this, Sun Myung
received a Confucian-style education when he was a child and did not receive his first Western-style
education until he was 14 years old.[8] The Moon family held traditional Confucianist beliefs, but
converted to Christianity and joined the Presbyterian Church when he was around 10 years old. Moon
taught Sunday school for the church.[9] On April 17, 1935, when he was 16 (in Korean age reckoning),
Moon says he had a vision or revelation of Jesus while praying atop a small mountain. He says that
Jesus asked him to complete the unfinished task of establishing God's kingdom on Earth and bring
peace to the world. When he was 19 (in Korean age reckoning), Moon criticized Japanese rule over
Korea and Japanese education at the graduation ceremony speech, which made himself a focus of
police.[10]
Moon's high school years were spent at a boys' boarding school in Seoul, and later in Japan, where he
studied electrical engineering. During this time he studied the Bible and developed his own
interpretation of it. After the end of World War II he returned to Korea and began preaching his
message.[9]
Moon was arrested in 1946 by North Korean officials. The church states that the charges stemmed
from the jealousy and resentment of other church pastors after parishioners stopped tithing to their old
churches upon joining Moon's congregation. Police beat him and nearly killed him, but a teenage
disciple named Won Pil Kim nursed him back to health.
Moon was arrested again and was given a five-year sentence in 1948 to the Hŭngnam labor camp,
where prisoners were routinely worked to death on short rations. Moon credits his survival to God's
protection over his life and his habit of saving half his meager water ration for washing the toxic
chemicals off of his skin after long days of work, bagging and loading chemical fertilizer with his bare
hands. After serving 34 months of his sentence, he was released in 1950 when UN troops advanced
on the camp and the guards fled.
The beginnings of the church's official teachings, the Divine Principle, first saw written form as Wolli
Wonbon in 1946. (The second, expanded version, Wolli Hesol, or Explanation of the Divine Principle,
was not published until 1957; for a more complete account, see Divine Principle.) Sun Myung Moon
preached in northern Korea after the end of World War II and was imprisoned by the regime in North
Korea in 1946. He was released from prison, along with many other North Koreans, with the advance
of American and United Nations forces during the Korean War and built his first church from mud and
cardboard boxes as a refugee in Pusan.[11]
In 1954, he founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity in Seoul (also
known as the Unification Church).[12] The Unification Church expanded rapidly in South Korea and by
the end of 1955 had 30 church centers throughout the nation. In 1958, Moon sent missionaries to
Japan, and in 1959, to the United States of America. In 1975, Moon sent out missionaries to 120
countries around the world.[11]
[edit] Marriages and children
In November 1943, Moon married Sun Kil Choi. Their son, Sung Jin Moon, was born in 1946. They
divorced in 1953 soon after Moon's release from prison in North Korea. Choi and Sung Jin Moon are
now both members of the Unification Church.[13] Sung Jin Moon married in 1973 and now has three
children.[14]
Moon was still legally married to Choi when he began a relationship with his second (common law)
wife Myung Hee Kim, who gave birth to a son named Hee Jin Moon (who was killed in a train
accident). The church does not regard this as infidelity, because Sun Kil Choi had already left her
husband by that time. Korean divorce law in the 1950s made legal divorce difficult and drawn out, so
much so that when Myung Hee Kim became pregnant she was sent to Japan to avoid legal
complications for Moon.[15]
Moon married his third wife, Hak Ja Han,[16] on April 11, 1960, soon after she turned 17 years old, in
a ceremony called the Holy Marriage. Han, called Mother or True Mother by followers, and her
husband together are referred to as the True Parents by members of the Unification Church.
Hak Ja Han gave birth to 14 children; her second daughter died in infancy. The family is known in the
church as the True Family and the children as the True Children. Shortly after their marriage, they
presided over a Blessing Ceremony for 36 couples, the first of many such ceremonies.
Nansook Hong, the former wife of Hyo Jin Moon, Sun Myung Moon's eldest son, said in her 1998 book
In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Family that both Sun Myung
Moon and Hak Ja Han told her about Moon's extramarital affairs (which she said he called
"providential affairs"), including one that resulted in the birth of a boy raised by a church leader, named
by Sun Myung Moon's daughter Un Jin Moon on the news show 60 Minutes.[17]
[edit] Name and titles
McCune–Reischauer Mun Yongmyŏng
In 1953, Moon changed his name from Mun Yong Myong to Mun Son-myong (which he spelled "Moon
Sun Myung"). In a speech Moon explained that the hanja for moon (문, 文), his surname, means
"word" or "literature" in Korean. The character sun (선, 鮮), composed of "fish" and "lamb" (symbols of
Christianity), means "fresh." The character myung (명, 明), composed of "sun" and "moon", (which
was part of his given name), means "bright." Together, sun-myung means "make clear." So the full
name can be taken to mean "the word made clear." Moon concluded by saying, "My name is
prophetic." [18]
In the English-speaking world, Moon is often referred to as Reverend Moon by Unification Church
members, the general public, and the media. Unification Church members most often call Moon Father
or True Father. He is also sometimes called Father Moon, mostly by some non-members involved with
Unificationist projects. Similar titles are used for his wife: Mother, True Mother, or Mother Moon. Dr.
Moon has also occasionally been used because Moon received an honorary doctorate from the Shaw
Divinity School of Shaw University.
[edit] Basic teachings
Main article: Divine Principle
Moon's main teachings are contained in the book Divine Principle (retranslated in 1996 as Discourse
on Divine Principle[19]).
[edit] 1970s
[edit] Move to the U.S.
In 1971 Moon moved to the United States, which he had first visited in 1965. He remained a citizen of
the Republic of Korea and maintained a residence in South Korea.[20]
[edit] Support for Nixon
In 1974 Moon supported President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal.[3] Church members
prayed and fasted in support of Nixon for three days in front of the United States Capitol, under the
motto: "Forgive, Love and Unite." On February 1, 1974 Nixon publicly thanked them for their support
and officially received Moon. This brought Moon and the Unification Church into widespread public
and media attention in the United States.[21]
[edit] Public speeches
In the 1970s Moon, who had seldom spoken to the general public before, gave a series of public
speeches to audiences in the United States, Japan, and South Korea. The largest were a rally in 1975
against North Korean aggression in Seoul and a speech at an event organized by the Unification
Church in Washington D.C. that also featured fireworks and music. The United States Park Police
estimated an attendance of 50,000 at this event.[13][22]
[edit] United States congressional investigation
Main article: Fraser Committee
In 1977 and 1978, a subcommittee of the United States Congress led by Congressman Donald M.
Fraser conducted an investigation of South Korea – United States relations and produced a report that
included 81 pages about Moon and what the subcommittee termed "the Moon Organization."[23] The
Fraser committee found that the KCIA decided to use the Unification Church as a political tool within
the United States and that some Unification Church members worked as volunteers in Congressional
offices. Together they founded the Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit organization
which acted as a propaganda campaign for the Republic of Korea.[24] The committee also
investigated possible KCIA influence on the Unification Church's campaign in support of Richard Nixon
during the Watergate scandal.[25] Robert Boettcher, the staff director of the committee, in his book
Gifts of Deceit: Sun Myung Moon, Tongsun Park, and the Korean Scandal (published by Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, 1980) reported what he described as financial corruption.[26]
[edit] 1980s
Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han[edit] U.S. tax case
Main article: Sun Myung Moon tax case
In 1982 Moon was convicted by the U.S. government for filing false federal income tax returns and
conspiracy. His conviction was upheld on appeal in a split decision. He was given a prison sentence
and spent 18 months in the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut. Many individuals,
organizations and religious figures protested the charges, saying that they were unjust and threatened
freedom of religion and free speech. Based on this case, reporter Carlton Sherwood wrote the book
Inquisition: The Persecution and Prosecution of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.
[edit] Support for Ronald Reagan
In 1980 Moon indirectly supported the campaign of Ronald Reagan for President. He asked the
church-owned New York newspaper News World to print a headline saying "Reagan Landslide" on the
day of the election, before the outcome was known.[27]
[edit] Death and "return" of second son
The second son of Hak Ja Han and Moon, Heung-Jin Moon, died on January 2, 1984, from injuries
suffered in a car crash in December 1983. Moon ascribed great importance to his son's death, and
Heung-Jin Moon is officially regarded to be the "king of the spirits" in heaven, and is now said to be
conducting seminars in heaven for departed souls. For several years church members "channeled" his
spirit, and in 1987-8 Cleopas Kundioni, a Zimbabwean member who became known as "the Black
Heung Jin Nim", was accepted by Moon and his family as Heung Jin Moon's continuous
channel,[citation needed] and toured the world giving speeches, getting confessions, and subjecting
some members to beatings. Long-time member Damian Anderson reports seeing Kundioni
"knock people's heads together, hit them viciously with a baseball bat, smack them around the head,
punch them, and handcuff them with golden handcuffs"
and describes
"brute force applied to stop people leaving the event, or the building, and imprisoning protesters by
force and with handcuffs in isolation."[28]
Nansook Hong recounts: "No one outside the True Family was immune from the beatings. Soon the
mistresses he acquired were so numerous and the beatings he administered so severe that members
began to complain. He beat Bo Hi Pak—a man in his sixties—so badly that he was hospitalized for a
week in Georgetown Hospital."[29] Washington Post staff writer Michael Isikoff reported that "Later,
Pak underwent surgery in South Korea to repair a blood vessel in his skull, according to Times
executives."[30]
[edit] Founding The Washington Times
Main article: The Washington Times
In Washington, Moon found common ground with strongly anti-Communist leaders of the 1980s,
including Reagan. Using Unification Church funds in 1982, Moon, Bo Hi Pak, and other church leaders
founded The Washington Times. By 1991, Moon said he spent about $1 billion on the paper[31] (by
2002 roughly $1.7 billion),[32] which he called "the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the
world".[33]
[edit] Opposition to the Soviet Union
In 1976, Moon told church members that one day he would organize "a great rally for God in the
Soviet Capital." In 1980 Moon founded the anti-communist organization CAUSA International. 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." Moon suggested the topic. In August 1987 the Unification Church student association CARP
led a reported 300 demonstrators in Berlin calling for communist leaders to bring down the Berlin
Wall.[13][34]
[edit] 1990s
[edit] Visit to the Soviet Union
In April 1990 Moon visited the Soviet Union and met with President Mikhail Gorbachev. Moon
expressed support for the political and economic transformations under way in the Soviet Union. At the
same time the Unification Church was expanding into formerly communist nations.[35] Massimo
Introvigne, who has studied the Unification Church and other new religious movements, has said that
after the disestablishment of the Soviet Union in 1991, Moon has made anti-communism much less of
a priority.[13]
[edit] Relationship with George H. W. Bush
In the mid-1990s, former U.S. President George H. W. Bush accepted millions of dollars from Moon's
Women’s Federation for World Peace to speak on Moon's behalf around the world, a fact[11] that
Moon and the Unification Church have widely publicised, particularly in efforts to improve the image of
the Unification Church outside the US. While discussing one of Bush's trips (a 1995 tour of Japan), Bo
Hi Pak said:
"Then George and Barbara Bush went to Fukuoka, the capital of Kyushu. The people of Kyushu were
flabbergasted at Father and Mother's power to tell a U.S. president what to do and plan his schedule.
Incredible. This completely changed the attitude of the Japanese government and media toward the
Unification community."[36]
[edit] Daughter-in-law's book questions role as "True Parent"
When the Moons' eldest son Hyo Jin Moon was 19 years old, Sun Myung Moon picked a 15-year-old
wife for him, Nansook Hong, with whom he had five children.[37] In 1998 Hong published a book
about her experiences in the Moon family, In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun
Myung Moon's Family (ISBN 0-316-34816-3), which the New Yorker Magazine called Moon's "most
damaging scandal".[2] The "tell-all memoir"[2] openly challenges Moon and his wife's role in church
teachings as "True Parents". According to Hong, and later confirmed by his public confessions and his
own statements in a court deposition on November 15, 1996,[38] Hyo Jin Moon had repeated
problems with substance abuse, pornography, infidelity, violence and run-ins with the law. A few years
later, Hong left the Moon estate with her children, subsequently publishing the book and appearing in
several interviews, including 60 Minutes.[39] She told TIME Magazine: "Rev. Moon has been
proclaiming that he has established his ideal family, and fulfilled his mission, and when I pinpointed
that his family is just as dysfunctional as any other family - or more than most - then I think his
theology falls apart."[40] For some Unification Church members, this book was a revealing portrait of
the way Sun Myung Moon and his wife had raised their children, and caused a great deal of soulsearching.[41]
[edit] Son's death
On October 27, 1999 the Moons' sixth son, Young Jin, fell to his death from the 17th floor of a Reno,
Nevada hotel. Police reports and the coroner officially recorded the death as a suicide. Moon has said
that he does not believe it was suicide.[42][43]
[edit] 2000s
In 2000 Moon joined Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in sponsoring the Million Family March in
Washington D.C., a follow-up event to the Million Man March held in 1995.[44]
In January 2001 Moon sponsored President George W. Bush's Inaugural Prayer Luncheon for Unity
and Renewal.[45]
In 2001 Moon presided over the wedding of now-excommunicated Roman Catholic Archbishop
Emmanuel Milingo and Maria Sung, a Korean acupuncturist. This attracted worldwide media attention.
Milingo later founded the controversial organization Married Priests Now.[46][47]
In 2003 Moon sponsored the first Peace Cup international club football tournament.[48][49][50]
[edit] Schengen ban
Between 2002 and 2006, Moon and his wife were banned from entry into Germany and the other 14
Schengen treaty countries. The Netherlands and a few other Schengen states let Moon and his wife
enter their countries in 2005.[51]
[edit] Coronation
In 2004, at a March 23 ceremony in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, in Washington D.C. Moon
crowned himself with what was called the "Crown of Peace." [52] United States Representative Danny
K. Davis (D-Ill.) carried a pillow holding the ornate crown which Moon "snatched up".[53] Other law
makers who attended included Senator Mark Dayton (D-Minn.), Representatives Roscoe Bartlett (RMd.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) , as well as former Representative Walter Fauntroy (D-D.C.) . Key
organizers of the event included George Augustus Stallings, Jr., a controversial former Roman
Catholic priest who had been married by Moon, and Michael Jenkins, the president of the American
Unification Church at that time.[52]
Moon delivered a long speech in which he stated that he was
sent to Earth . . . to save the world's six billion people.... Emperors, kings and presidents . . . have
declared to all Heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's
Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent.[52]
On June 27, 2004 the New York Times editorial board criticized the ceremony and the participation of
congressional members.[53] The Associated Press reported that "Many of the congressional members
in attendance have said they felt misled into making an appearance that later was used to promote
Moon's Unification Church."[54] Some stated that they didn't expect a coronation but thought the
awards dinner was only to honor activists from their home states as Ambassadors for Peace.[55]
[edit] 120-city world speaking tour
On September 12, 2005, at the age of 85, Moon inaugurated the Universal Peace Federation with a
120-city world speaking tour.[56] At each city, Moon delivered his speech titled "God's Ideal Family the Model for World Peace".
[edit] Successor
In April 2008, Moon appointed his youngest son Hyung Jin Moon to be the new leader of the
Unification Church and the worldwide Unification Movement, saying, "I hope everyone helps him so
that he may fulfill his duty as the successor of the True Parents."[57]
[edit] Helicopter crash
On July 19, 2008, Moon, his wife, and 14 others were slightly injured when their Sikorsky S-92
helicopter crashed during an emergency landing and burst into flames in Gapyeong.[58][59] Moon and
all 15 others were treated at the nearby church-affiliated Cheongshim Hospital.[60] Experts from the
United States National Transportation Safety Board, the United States Federal Aviation Administration,
Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, and General Electric assisted the South Korean government in its
investigation of the crash.[61][62]
[edit] Autobiography
In 2009, Moon's autobiography, As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen (Korean: 평화를 사랑하는
세계인으로)[63], was published by Gimm-Young Publishers in South Korea. An English translation
was expected to be published in the United States later that year.[64][65]
[edit] Criticism and controversies
Moon is known as the "True Father," his wife as the "True Mother," (together as the "True Parents"),
and their children as the "True Children" (collectively as the "True Family").[66] In her 1998 book In the
Shadow of the Moons, Nansook Hong, ex-wife of Sun Myung Moon's eldest son Hyo Jin Moon, (who
lived with the Moon family for 15 years) says the leader and his family live a "lavish" lifestyle and that
Sun Myung Moon is treated like a god.
Journalist Peter Maass, in an article in The New Yorker, wrote:
A little before dawn one day last April, a chauffeur-driven Mercedes sedan entered the grounds of an
estate in Tarrytown, New York, and stopped in front of a brick carriage house that had been converted
into a meeting room. An elderly passenger in a business suit got out of the car and, with his wife a few
steps behind him, walked inside, where some hundred and fifty people were singing hymns. The
singing stopped when the couple entered and made their way through the room. The worshippers
shuffled aside, bowing their heads. Once the man and his wife were seated, everyone bowed again,
this time dropping to their knees and touching their foreheads to the floor.
There are, certainly, differing degrees of devotion among Moon's followers; the fact that they bow at
the right moment or shout "Mansei!" in unison doesn't mean they believe everything Moon says, or do
precisely what he commands. Even on important issues, like Moon's claiming to be the messiah, there
are church members whom I met, including a close aide to Moon, who demur. A religious leader whom
they respect and whose theology they believe, yes; the messiah, perhaps not.[67]
[edit] Abuse of money
Critics contrast Moon's "opulent" personal lifestyle with that of church members who are asked to
sacrifice both in their careers and in donating most of what little they have.[68] The Moon family
situation is described as one of "luxury and privilege"[69] and as "lavish".[70]
Home for the True Family was a guarded 18-acre (73,000 m2) mini-castle in Irvington, New York, a
tiny suburb located along a sweep of the Hudson River. Named East Garden, after Eden, the estate
included two smaller houses and a three-story brick mansion with 12 bedrooms, seven baths, a
bowling alley, and a dining room equipped with a waterfall and pond. There were other castles and
mansions too — in South Korea, Germany, Scotland, England — and few expenses were spared. The
children had tutors from Japan, purebred horses, motorbikes, sports cars, and first-class vacations
with blank-check spending. "The kids got whatever they wanted," says Donna Collins, who grew up in
the church. "At one point, the Moon kids were each getting $40,000 or $50,000 a month for allowance.
They had wads of cash. I remember once in London where [one of Justin’s sisters] spent like $2,000 a
day; I saw a drawer filled with Rolexes and diamonds."[69]
Moon owns or sponsors major business enterprises, including The Washington Times, the United
Press International, and Pyeonghwa Motors.[71] A small sampling of other operations include
computers and religious icons in Japan, seafood in Alaska, weapons and ginseng in Korea, huge
tracts of land in South America, a recording studio and travel agency in Manhattan, a horse farm in
Texas and a golf course in California.[72]
In a 1992 letter to The New York Times, author Richard Quebedeaux, who had taken part in several
Unification Church projects, criticized Moon's financial judgement by saying, "Mr. Moon may well be a
good religious leader with high ideals, but he has also shown himself to be a poor businessman."[73]
[edit] Theocracy
According to the New York Times, "outside investigators and onetime insiders … give a picture of a
theocratic powerhouse that is pouring foreign fortunes into conservative causes in the United
States."[74] Moon's position on the First Amendment's Establishment Clause are unclear. He has
frequently relied on First Amendment protections in various legal matters relating to himself or the
Unification Church, but he also teaches that religion and politics are inseparable entities. Critics have
characterized his call for unity between religion and politics contrary to the principle of separation of
church and state.[75]
[edit] Church role in munitions manufacturing
Church-related businesses engaged in munitions manufacturing in South Korea during the 1960s, as
reported by the Fraser Committee a United States Congressional committee which investigated the
Unification Church and its relationship with the government of South Korea in 1978. According to the
same report, Unification Church owned Tongil Group, then South Korea's 35th largest industrial
conglomerate[76], which was involved in weapons manufacture and "is an important defense
contractor in Korea. It is involved in the production of M-16 rifles, antiaircraft guns, and other
weapons." In fact, as South Korea is technically still at war with North Korea, all large manufacturers
are required by law to accept military contracts, as Tongil Group was obligated to do under mandatory
South Korean law.
Moon's fourth son, Kook Jin "Justin" Moon founded Kahr Arms, a small-arms company based in
Blauvelt, New York with a factory in Worcester, Massachusetts.[77][78]
According to the Washington Post, "Some former members and gun industry critics perceive a
contradiction between the church's teachings and its corporate involvement in marketing weapons
promoted for their concealability and lethality."[79]
[edit] Comments on homosexuality
In 1997 gay rights advocates criticized Moon based on comments he made in a speech to church
members, in which he said: "What is the meaning of lesbians and homosexuals? That is the place
where all different kinds of dung collect. We have to end that behavior. When this kind of dirty
relationship is taking place between human beings, God cannot be happy," and referred to
homosexuals as "dung-eating dogs."[80][81] He also said in 2007 that "free sex and homosexuality
both are the madness of the lowest of the human race," and that God detests such behavior, while
Satan lauds it.[82]
[edit] Jews and the Holocaust
Main article: Unification Church antisemitism controversy
Other controversies arose over Moon's statements about the Holocaust being (in part) "indemnity"
(restitution) paid by the Jews, a consequence of Jewish leaders not supporting Jesus, which
contributed to his murder by the Roman government.[83][84]
[edit] Allegations of sex rituals
In the early years of the Unification Church in South Korea, opponents of the church made unproven
claims that Moon led his congregation as a sex cult. The church has vehemently rejected the claims,
and a former member, South Korean pastor Sa Hun Shim, was convicted of criminal libel for
publishing the allegation, in 1989, when a Seoul court held that this persistent rumor was without
basis.[85]
In 1955, Moon himself had been arrested and acquitted of charges that the church calls fabricated.[86]
And in 1960, in what Moon calls the "climax of persecution,"[87] fourteen students and two professors
were dismissed from Ehwa Women's University in Seoul on the grounds that their participation in the
faith was immoral.[88]
Rumors of polyamory made it into early U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and FBI reports monitoring
the church. The intelligence cables claimed Moon conducted sex rituals among six married female
disciples (the "Six Marys") to prepare the way for the virgin who would marry Moon and become the
"True Mother." Conservative journalist Carlton Sherwood has argued that the claims were invented by
Christian missionaries. An FBI field report alleged that Moon's rites involved "having a nude women in
a darkened room with MUN[sic] while he recited a long prayer and caressed their bodies. . . . At these
meetings, MUN prepared special food and drink, and gathered his nude congregation into a darkened
room where they all prayed for twenty-four hours."[89]
In 1993, a wartime friend of Moon, Chung Hwa Pak, revived the allegations in his book "Tragedy of the
Six Marys," released in Japan as "Roku Maria no Higeki." But he subsequently rejoined the church
and recanted, publishing a 1995 confession, "The Apostate," in which he said he had lied about Moon
out of jealousy.[90] Moon's estranged daughter-in-law, Nansook Hong, has said that she believes the
sex claims are true, writing: "I've always wondered what the price was of that retraction." [91]
http://en.wikipedia.org
Unification Church
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Unification Church
Hangul 통일교회
Hanja 統一敎會
Revised Romanization Tongil Gyohoe
McCune–Reischauer T'ongil Kyohoe
The Unification Church is a new religious movement founded by Korean religious leader Sun Myung
Moon. In 1954, the Unification Church was formally and legally established in Seoul, South Korea as
The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC). In 1994, Moon
changed the official name of the church to the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.[1]
Members are found throughout the world, with the largest number living in South Korea or Japan.[2][3]
Church membership is estimated to be several hundred thousand to a few million.[4][5] The church
and its members own, operate, and subsidize organizations and projects involved in political, cultural,
commercial, media, educational, and other activities. The church, its members and supporters as well
as other related organizations are sometimes referred to as the "Unification Movement." In the English
speaking world church members are sometimes referred to as "Moonies,"[6][7] (which is sometimes
considered offensive)[8][9] church members prefer to be called "Unificationists".[10]
Unification Church beliefs are summarized in the textbook Divine Principle and include belief in a
universal God; in striving toward the creation of a literal Kingdom of Heaven on earth; in the universal
salvation of all people, good and evil, living and dead; and that a man born in Korea in the early 20th
century received from Jesus the mission to be realized as the second coming of Christ.[11] Members
of the Unification Church believe this Messiah is Sun Myung Moon.[12]
Contents [hide]
1 History
2 Beliefs
2.1 The Principle of Indemnity
2.2 Spiritualism
2.3 Sex and marriage
3 South America
4 Campaign to replace the Cross with a Crown
5 Related organizations
6 Controversy
6.1 Cult status
6.2 Use of money
6.3 Allegations of fraud
6.4 Recruitment and allegations of brainwashing
6.5 Political activities
6.6 Reports of children conceived out of wedlock
6.7 Accusations of antisemitism
6.8 Use of term 'moonie'
7 Future church leadership
8 Notes
9 See also
10 Annotated bibliography
11 External links
[edit] History
Unification Church members believe that Jesus appeared to Mun Yong-myong (his birth name) when
Moon was 16, and asked him to accomplish the work left unfinished after his crucifixion. After a period
of prayer and consideration, Moon accepted the mission, later changing his name to Mun Son-myong
(Sun Myung Moon).[13]
The beginnings of the church's official teachings, the Divine Principle, first saw written form as Wolli
Wonbon in 1946. (The second, expanded version, Wolli Hesol, or Explanation of the Divine Principle,
was not published until 1957; for a more complete account, see Divine Principle.) Sun Myung Moon
preached in northern Korea after the end of World War II and was imprisoned by the communist
regime in North Korea in 1946. He was released from prison, along with many other North Koreans,
with the advance of American and United Nations forces during the Korean War and built his first
church from mud and cardboard boxes as a refugee in Pusan.[14]
Moon formally founded his organization in Seoul on May 1, 1954, calling it "The Holy Spirit(ual)
Association for the Unification of World Christianity." The name alludes to Moon's stated intention for
his organization to be a unifying force for all Christian denominations. The phrase "Holy Spirit
Association" has the sense in the original Korean of "Heavenly Spirits" and not the "Holy Spirit" of
Christianity. "Unification" has political as well as religious connotations, in keeping with the church's
teaching that restoration must be complete, both spiritual and physical. The church expanded rapidly
in South Korea and by the end of 1955 had 30 church centers throughout the nation.[14]
In 1958, Moon sent missionaries to Japan, and in 1959, to America. Moon himself moved to the United
States in 1971, (although he remained a citizen of the Republic of Korea). Missionary work took place
in Washington D.C., New York, and California. UC missionaries found success in the San Francisco
Bay Area, where the church expanded in Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco as the Creative
Community Project. By 1971 the Unification Church of the United States had about 500 members. By
1973 the church had some presence in all 50 states and a few thousand members.[14] In other
countries church growth was slower. In 1997 the Unification Church of the United Kingdom only had
an estimated several hundred members.[15][16]
Irving Louis Horowitz compared the attraction of Unification teachings to American young people at
this time to the hippie and radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s, saying:
"[Moon] has a belief system that admits of no boundaries or limits, an all-embracing truth. His writings
exhibit a holistic concern for the person, society, nature, and all things embraced by the human vision.
In this sense the concept underwriting the Unification church is apt, for its primary drive and appeal is
unity, urging a paradigm of essence in an overly complicated world of existence. It is a ready-made
doctrine for impatient young people and all those for whom the pursuit of the complex has become a
tiresome and fruitless venture."[17]
In 1974, Moon took full-page ads in major newspapers defending President Richard M. Nixon at the
height of the Watergate controversy.[18]
In 1975, Moon sent out missionaries to 120 countries to spread the Unification Church around the
world and also in part, he said, to act as "lightning rods" to receive "persecution."
In the 1970s Moon gave a series of public speeches in the United states including one in Madison
Square Garden in New York City in 1974 and two in 1976: In Yankee Stadium in New York City, and
on the grounds of the Washington Monument in Washington D.C., where Moon spoke on "God's Hope
for America."
Starting in the 1960s the Unification Church was the subject of a number of books published in the
United States and the United Kingdom, both scholarly and popular. Among the better-known are: The
Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing? (1984) by British sociologist Eileen Barker, Inquisition :
The Persecution and Prosecution of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon (1991) by American journalist
Carlton Sherwood, and In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's
Family (1998) by Nansook Hong, Moon's former daughter-in-law.
In 1978, the Fraser Committee a subcommittee of the United States Congress which was investigating
the political influence of the South Korean government in the United States issued a report that
included the results of its investigation into the Unification Church and other organizations associated
with Moon and their relationship with the South Korean government. Among its other conclusions, the
subcommittee's report stated that "Among the goals of the Moon Organization is the establishment of
a worldwide government in which the separation of church and state would be abolished and which
would be governed by Moon and his followers."[19]
In 1982 Moon was convicted of tax fraud and conspiracy in United States federal court and was
sentenced 18 months in federal prison.
In 1991 Moon announced that church members should return to their hometowns in order to
undertake apostolic work there. Massimo Introvigne, who has studied the Unification Church and other
new religious movements, has said that this confirms that full-time membership is no longer
considered crucial to church members.[20]
Starting in the 1990s the Unification Church expanded its operations into Russia and other formerly
communist nations. Moon's wife, Hak Ja Han, made a radio broadcast to the nation from the Kremlin
Palace of Congresses.[21] In 1994 the church had about 5,000 members in Russia and came under
criticism from the Russian Orthodox Church.[22] In 1997, the Russian government passed a law
requiring the Unification Church and other non-Russian religions to register their congregations and
submit to tight controls.[23] Starting in 1992 the church established business ties with still communist
North Korea and owns a automobile factory, a hotel, and other properties there. In 2007 it founded a
"World Peace Center" in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital city.[24]
In 2000, the Unification Church was one of the co-sponsors of the Million Family March in Washington,
D.C., along with Louis Farrakhan the leader of The Nation of Islam.[25] Starting in 2007 the church
sponsored a series of public events in various nations under the title Global Peace
Festival.[26][27][28][29]
In April 2008, Sun Myung Moon, then 88 years old, appointed his youngest son, Hyung Jin Moon, to
be the new leader of the Unification Church and the worldwide Unification Movement, saying, "I hope
everyone helps him so that he may fulfil his duty as the successor of the True Parents." [30]
In January 2009, Unification Church missionary Elizaveta Drenicheva was sentenced to two years in
jail in Kazakhstan for "propagating harmful religious teachings." She was freed and allowed to leave
the country after international human rights organizations expressed their concern over her
case.[31][32]
In April 2009 the British school system was criticized for including study of the Unification Church in
proposed religious studies guidelines for British students.[33]
[edit] Beliefs
See also: Divine Principle
The beliefs of the Unification Church are outlined in its textbook, Divine Principle.
God is viewed as the creator,[34] whose nature combines both masculinity and femininity,[34] and is
the source of all truth, beauty, and goodness. Human beings and the universe reflect God's
personality, nature, and purpose.[34]
"Give-and-take action" (reciprocal interaction) and "subject and object position" (initiator and
responder) are "key interpretive concepts",[35] and the self is designed to be God's object.[35] The
purpose of human existence is to return joy to God.[36] The "four-position foundation" is "another
important and interpretive concept",[36] and explains in part the emphasis on the family.[36]
[edit] The Principle of Indemnity
Main article: Indemnity (Unification Church)
Indemnity, as explained in the Divine Principle, is a part of the process by which human beings and
the world are restored back to God's ideal.[37][38][39][40][41]
[edit] Spiritualism
The Unification Church upholds a belief in spiritualism, that is communication with the spirits of
deceased persons. Moon and early church members associated with spiritualists, including the
famous Arthur Ford.[42][43] The Divine Principle says about Moon:
"For several decades he wandered through the spirit world so vast as to be beyond imagining. He trod
a bloody path of suffering in search of the truth, passing through tribulations that God alone
remembers. Since he understood that no one can find the ultimate truth to save humanity without first
passing through the bitterest of trials, he fought alone against millions of devils, both in the spiritual
and physical worlds, and triumphed over them all. Through intimate spiritual communion with God and
by meeting with Jesus and many saints in Paradise, he brought to light all the secrets of Heaven."[44]
The ancestor liberation ceremony is a ceremony of the Unification Church intended to allow the spirits
of deceased ancestors of participants to improve their situations in the spirit world through liberation,
education, and blessing. The ceremonies are conducted by Hyo Nam Kim, a woman who church
members believe is channeling the spirit of Soon Ae Hong, the mother of Hak Ja Han (church founder
Sun Myung Moon's wife). They have taken place mainly in Cheongpyeong, South Korea, but also in
various places around the world.[45][46][47]
In the 1990s and 2000s the Unification Church has made public statements claiming communications
with the spirits of religious leaders such as Confucius, the Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad and Augustine,
as well as political leaders such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky,
Mao Zedong, and many more. This has distanced the church further from mainstream Christianity as
well as from Islam.[42]
[edit] Sex and marriage
Main article: Blessing ceremony of the Unification Church
The Unification Church is well-known for its marriage or marriage rededication ceremony, which is
sometimes referred to by the news media and others as a "mass wedding." The Blessing ceremony
was first held 1961 for 36 couples in Seoul, South Korea by Reverend and Mrs. Moon shortly after
their own marriage in 1960. All the couples were members of the Unification Church. Rev. Moon
matched all of the couples except 12 who were already married to each other from before joining the
church.[48]
Later Blessing ceremonies were larger in scale but followed the same pattern with all participants
Unification Church members and Rev. Moon matching most of the couples. In 1982 the first large
scale Blessing held outside of Korea took place in Madison Square Garden in New York City. In 1988,
Moon matched 2,500 Korean members with Japanese members for a Blessing ceremony held in
Korea, partly in order to promote unity between the two nations.[49]
The Blessing ceremonies have attracted a lot of attention in the press and in the public imagination,
often being labeled "mass weddings".[50] However, in most cases the Blessing ceremony is not a
legal wedding ceremony. Some couples are already married and those that are engaged are later
legally married according to the laws of their own countries.[51]
Several church-related groups are working to promote sexual abstinence until marriage and fidelity in
marriage, both among church members and the general public.[52]
The church does not give its marriage blessing to same-sex couples.[53] Moon has spoken
vehemently against "free sex" and homosexual activity. In talks to church members, he has compared
people involved in free sex, including gay people, to "dirty dung-eating dogs"[54] and prophesied that
"gays will be eliminated" in a "purge on God's orders." These statements were criticized by gay rights
groups.[55]
[edit] South America
In the 1990s Moon directed church members to buy land in the Mato Grosso do Sul region of Brazil,
which he compared to the Garden of Eden. 200,000 acres of farmland was purchased and building
projects started.[56] In 2000 the church purchased 300,000 hectares of land in Paraguay for the
purpose of logging and timber exportation to Asia. The land is the ancestral territory of the indigenous
Chamacoco (Ishir) people, who live in northern Paraguay. They have told local anthropologists that
they wish to purchase the land back, because it is considered a sacred area in their shamanic belief
system, but they do not have the capital to purchase the huge tracts back from the Unification Church
members. This loss of land has been devastating to the Chamacoco people, who are traditional
hunter-gatherers, and in return the church members have financed the construction of schools for
them. [57]
In May 2002, federal police in Brazil conducted a number of raids on organizations linked to Sun
Myung Moon. In a statement, the police stated that the raids were part of a broad investigation into
allegations of tax evasion and immigration violations by church members. Moon's support of the
government of Argentina during the Falklands War was also mentioned by commentators as a
possible issue.[58]
In 2009, the church gave 30,000 acres of land back to residents of Puerto Casado after a series of
land disputes came before Paraguayan courts. It had acquired more than 1.48 million acres of land in
2000 for an environmental and tourism project in northern Paraguay.[59]
[edit] Campaign to replace the Cross with a Crown
In 2003 Moon began his "tear down"[60], or "take down the cross"[61] campaign. The campaign was
begun in the belief that the cross is a reminder of Jesus' pain and has been a source of division
between people of different faiths. The campaign included a burial ceremony for the cross and a crown
to be put in its place. The American Clergy Leadership Conference (ACLC), an interfaith group
founded by Moon, spearheaded the effort, calling the cross a symbol of oppression and
superiority.[62]
Unification Church member and theologian Andrew Wilson said, "The crucifixion was not something
that God loves, but something that God hates. It hurts every time he sees people glorifying the cross,
which was the instrument of execution used to kill his beloved son."[63]
Michael Schwartz, a spokesperson for the Christian advocacy organization Concerned Women for
America, responded: "Just imagine if some misguided Christian were to suggest that the Jews have to
take away their symbol and the Muslims would have to take away their symbol, not display it in public
any longer. That would be identified instantly as a statement of intolerance. Reconciliation and peace
do not grow out of intolerance." [64]
[edit] Related organizations
See also: List of Unification Church affiliated organizations
There are a number of organizations founded, run, or backed by church founder Sun Myung Moon.
Among them are interfaith, educational, arts, sports, and political organizations as well as profitmaking businesses.[65] Commentators have mentioned Moon's belief in a literal Kingdom of Heaven
on earth to be brought about by human effort as a motivation for his establishment of groups that are
not strictly religious in their purposes.[66][67] Others have said that one purpose of these groups is to
pursue social respectability for the church.[68]
[edit] Controversy
This article's Criticism or Controversy section(s) may mean the article does not present a neutral point
of view of the subject. It may be better to integrate the material in those sections into the article as a
whole. (May 2009)
[edit] Cult status
The Unification Church is among the most controversial religious organizations in the world
today.[citation needed] In response to doubt regarding the organization's religious origins, Frederick
Sontag, a professor of philosophy, concluded that "one thing is sure: the church has a genuine
spiritual basis" after an 11-month study of the worldwide Unification Church.[69][Need quotation on
talk to verify] A German court made a similar finding.[70][self-published source?]
[edit] Use of money
Critics also allege irregularities in the use of money and claim that the church has enriched Moon
personally.[71] The Moon family situation is described as one of "luxury and privilege"[72] and has
been referred to as "lavish."[73]
Nansook Hong, who lived with the Moon family for 14 years, describes the Unification Church as "a
cash operation" and reports on a number of incidents of questionable movement of money, citing this
instance as one example:
"The Japanese had no trouble bringing the cash into the United States; they would tell customs agents
that they were in America to gamble at Atlantic City. In addition, many businesses run by the church
were cash operations, including several Japanese restaurants in New York City. I saw deliveries of
cash from church headquarters that went directly into the wall safe in Mrs. Moon's closet."[73]
[edit] Allegations of fraud
In the 1990s, thousands of Japanese elderly people claimed to have been defrauded of their life
savings by church members.[74] The Unification Church was the subject of the largest consumer fraud
investigation in Japan's history in 1997 and number of subsequent court decisions awarded hundreds
of millions of yen in judgments, including 37.6 million yen ($300,000) to two women coerced into
donating their assets to the Unification Church.[75] In 2009 the president of the Unification Church of
Japan, Eiji Tokuno, resigned after the church was raided, and some church members were arrested
and indicted, for a scam involving selling expensive personal seals, telling people that failure to buy
would bring bad fortune.[76]
[edit] Recruitment and allegations of brainwashing
In the United States in the 1970s, the media reported on the high-pressure recruitment methods of
Unificationists and said that the church separated vulnerable young people from their families through
the use of brainwashing or mind control.[citation needed] In 1979, Dr. Byron Lambert, in a foreword to
a book highly critical of Unification Church beliefs, wrote that accusations of brainwashing were
extremely dangerous to the religious freedom of other religious groups, which used some of the same
recruitment techniques as the Unification Church.[77] Eileen Barker, a sociologist specializing in
religious topics, studied church members in England and in 1984 published her findings in her book
The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing? Observing Unificationists' approach to prospective
new members, Barker came to reject a strict interpretation of the "brainwashing" theory as an
explanation for conversion to the Unification Church. Nor did she find the Unification Church's
methods of recruiting members to be very effective.[78] In 1985 Anson Shupe, a sociologist who is
considered a leading expert on cults and new religious movements, told Time: "What the Moonies do
is ludicrous. Most people who go through that experience with them walk away later." [79]
[edit] Political activities
See: Unification Church political activities
The Unification Church has been criticized for its political activities, especially its support for United
States president Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal[80], its support for anti-communism
during the Cold War[81][82], and its ownership of various news media outlets, especially the
Washington Times, which tend to support conservatism.[83]
[edit] Reports of children conceived out of wedlock
In her 1998 book In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Family,
Nansook Hong-- ex-wife of Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han's eldest son, Hyo Jin Moon-- said that
both Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han told her about Sun Myung Moon's extramarital affairs (which
she said he called "providential affairs"), including one which resulted in the birth of a boy raised by a
church leader, named by Sun Myung Moon's daughter Un Jin Moon on the news show 60 Minutes.
In 1993, Chung Hwa Pak released the book Roku Maria no Higeki (Tragedy of the Six Marys) through
the Koyu Publishing Co. of Japan. The book contained allegations that Moon conducted sex rituals
amongst six married female disciples ("The Six Marys") who were to have prepared the way for the
virgin who would marry Moon and become the True Mother. Chung Hwa Pak had left the movement
when the book was published and later withdrew the book from print when he rejoined the Unification
Church. Before his death Chung Hwa Pak published a second book, The Apostate, and recanted all
allegations made in Roku Maria no Higeki.[84]
[edit] Accusations of antisemitism
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) released a report on antisemitism in in 1976, centers on
passages found in Divine Principle, the church's basic text, stating that it contained "pejorative
language, stereotyped imagery, and accusations of collective sin and guilt."[85] In a news conference
consisting of the AJC, and representatives of Catholic and Protestant churches, panelists stated that
the text 'contained over 125 anti-Semitic references.' The panelists noted Moon's public recent
condemnation of "anti Semitism and anti-Christian attitudes", and called upon him to make a
"comprehensive and systematic removal" of antisemitic and anti-Christian references in Divine
Principle as a demonstration of good faith.[86]
In 1977 the Unification Church issued a rebuttal to the report, stating that it was neither
comprehensive nor reconciliatory, but was rather had a "hateful tone" and was filled with "sweeping
denunciations." It denied that Divine Principle teaches antisemitism and gave detailed responses to 17
specific allegations contained in the AJC's report.[87]
Leo Sandon Jr. wrote in Theology Today in 1978 supporting the AJC's charge of antisemitism in
Unification Church teachings, but noted that the church argued that this resulted from "Korean
ignorance of Jewish sensitivities". He stated that he was more troubled by the "unmistakable antisemitism" of "a highly placed and veteran Korean Moonist".[88]
The Unification Church explanation for the Holocaust, that its victims were paying indemnity for the
crucifixion of Jesus, has been reported in a number of sources, including in the official record of the
parliament of the United Kingdom.[89] Some commentators, including David G. Bromley, a sociologist
and expert on New Religious Movements, have suggested that this is a reason for the church being
"considered anti-Semitic".[90]
In 2003, journalist John Gorenfeld criticized the Anti Defamation League (ADL) in an article in Salon
Magazine for its silence on antisemitic statements by members of the Unification Church, in contrast to
the its outspoken criticism of the Nation of Islam and other groups.[91]
[edit] Use of term 'moonie'
Main article: Moonie (Unification Church)
Moonie (plural Moonies) is a term which refers to members of the Unification Church; it is derived from
the name of church founder Sun Myung Moon.[92] Some dictionaries call it offensive or
derogatory;[93][94] others do not.[95][96] It has been used by critics of the church since the 1970s.[97]
Church members have used the term, including Sun Myung Moon,[98] President of the Unification
Theological Seminary David Kim,[99] and Moon's aide Bo Hi Pak.[100] Members of the Unification
Church have stated that they currently prefer the term "Unificationists".[10] It has seen usage in
languages including English,[95][96] French,[101][102] German,[103][104] Spanish,[105][106] and
Portuguese,[107][108] and according to Religion and Politics In America Unification Church followers
are "universally known, often derisively" by the term.[109]
[edit] Future church leadership
Observers of the Unification Church, as well as some church members, have speculated about the
issue of Unification Church leadership after Moon's death. Among those sometimes mentioned are his
wife Hak Ja Han Moon, and their sons Hyun Jin Moon[110] and Hyung Jin Moon.[30][111][112] In
2001, Moon said:
"I have to set up a representative or successor before I can complete this mission. Is there anyone?
Rev. Kwak? Dr. Bo Hi Pak? Is there? No, not one is qualified."[113]
In 2009 the BBC reported on recent changes in the Unification Church and concluded that:
"...Unificationism has a long way to go before it is simply regarded as one religion among many."[114]
[edit] Notes
…
http://www.religio.de
Geschichte der Vereinigungskirche
Die Mun-Sekte (engl. Moon) oder "Vereinigungskirche geht auf den Koreaner San Myung Mun (geb.
1920) zurück. In Deutschland ist die Sekte etwa seit 1964 nachweisbar.
San Myung Mun entstammt einer zum Christentum übergetretenen koreanisch-konfuzianistischen
Familie, die von der heimatlichen Volksreligiosität stark geprägt war. Mun hatte nach eigenen
Angaben mit 17 Jahren eine Vision, in der ihm Jesus erschien und auftrug, seine Missionsarbeit
weiterzuführen. Im kommunistischen Nordkorea wurde er 1948 zu fünf Jahren Arbeitslager verurteilt,
kam aber im Zuge des Korea-Krieges 1950 wieder frei und liess sich danach in Südkorea nieder. Dort
erarbeitete er seine religiöse Lehre und veröffentlichte diese in den sogenannten Göttlichen
Prinzipien. Diese Prizipien sind auch die Grundlage des Gelöbnisses der Vereinigungskirche. Am 15.
Mai 1954 gründete Mun seine Bewegung offiziell. Nachdem er sich zuerst als spiritistisches Medium
betätigte, wurde er dann selbst zum Inhalt der Offenbarungsreden. Thomas Gandow schreibt in einem
unveröffentlichten Manuskript folgendes:
"Entscheidende Wenden der Bewegung erfolgen um 1960: Im Dezember 1959 gründet Mun die Firma
"Yeohwa Shotgun", die zunächst Luftgewehre produziert und später als Tong Il Company Ltd. zum
Kern eines Industriekonzerns wird. Mun vertritt jetzt die Lehre von "Gottes letzter Dispensation der
Wiederkunft", bei der er selbst im Mittelpunkt steht: als zweiter Messias und 3. Adam. Im April 1960
findet im Hauptquartier der Gruppe in Seoul die "Hochzeit des Lammes" (nach Offenbarung 19,7)
statt: Mun heiratet - nach Scheidung von seiner damaligen (3.) Frau, von der er drei Kinder hatte - die
18jährige Han, Hak-Ja. Seine Interpretation: Damit ist die "vollkommene Ehe", die Got bei seiner
Schöpfung beabsichtigt hatte, zum ersten Mal verwirklicht; sie ist die Grundlage der heilen Welt der
Zukunft; das neue Zeitalter ist angebrochen, denn nach Auffassung der Munbewegung wurden in
dieser Hochzeit des Lammes der vollkommene Mann und die vollkommene Frau durch ihre
Vereinigung zum "substantiellen Gott" (vgl. Kim, Young-Whi: Die Göttlichen Prinzipien, Teil 1,
Studienführer, Frankfurt o.J. S. 108). Die Mitglieder werden nun neu verpflichtet und organisiert: Mun
und seine Frau sind jetzt ihre "wahren Eltern", die Gemeinschaft wird ihre "neue Familie"."
(Maschinenschriftliches Manuskript vom 21.2.1990, S. 4)
Nachdem Mun seine Lehre formuliert hatte, begann die Mission der Bewegung, die durch die
Auslandserfahrung seiner Frau auch sehr schnell in der westlichen Welt Fuss fasste. Während des
Militärputsches in Südkorea Mitte der achtziger Jahre, flossen stark antikommunistische Inhalte in die
Lehre, der kommunistische Block wird als Instrument des Satans angesehen, der besiegt werden
müsse. 1963 wird die Mun-Bewegung durch die südkoreanische Regierung anerkannt und in der
Folge entstehen eine Vielzahl von Organisationen und Vereinen, die alle dazu bestimmt sind,
"schulend und werbend für die Mun-B. zu wirken". (Gandow, a.a.O. S. 5) Es entsteht ein Geflecht von
untereinander verwobenen Industrieunternehmen und religiösen Organisationen. Man kennt weltweit
über 80 Unterorganisationen der Mun-Bewegung, die alle nur ein Ziel haben: Errichtung der
Weltherrschaft der Familie Mun. Nach der Wende wurde die Mun-Bewegung auch in den Neuen
Bundesländern aktiv, besonders in Leipzig, wo schon zu DDR-Zeiten ein der Mun-Bewegung
anhängender Wissenschaftler an der dortigen Universität als Gastdozent lehrte. Gegenwärtig
konzentrieren sich die Aktivitäten der Mun-Bewegung sehr stark auf die Bereiche Weltfrieden und
Religionsfreiheit.
Vereinigungskirche (Mun-Sekte)
Massenhochzeit bei Mun
Das Frankfurter Zoo-Gesellschaftshaus ist in dieser Nacht (24./25.8.1995) festlich geschmückt.
Annähernd 100 Brautpaare wollen an der "größten Hochzeitszeremoniegeschichte" teilnehmen. Rund
um den Globus, die Satellitentechnik macht es möglich, haben sich über 360.000 Paare versammelt,
um sich von Sektenführer Sun Myung Mun und seiner Frau segnen zu lassen.
So sitzen sie im repräsentativen Bürgerhaus, lauschen zunächst der Gründungsansprache einer
weiteren Munorganisation, der "Familienförderation für Vereinigung und Weltfrieden", und warten auf
ihren großen Auftritt. Die Spannung ist spürbar. Doch Geduld ist gefragt, denn der Zeitunterschied
zum koreanischen Seoul kann nur durch geduldiges Warten und heißen Kaffee überbrückt werden.
Kurz vor Mitternacht sammelt man sich zur heiligen Weinzeremonie. Die Anordnung erinnert an ein
Abendmahl mit Einzelkelchen. Durch vielfältige Verbeugungen vollziehen die Paare die
Wiederherstellung von Mann und Frau. Gemeint ist damit, daß der Sündenfall überwunden ist.
Demgegenüber weist der Sektenbeauftragte der Evangelischen Kirche in Berlin-Brandenburg,
Thomas Gandow, darauf hin, daß die Frauen zur Braut des wahren Vaters, gemeint ist Sun Myung
Mun, werden. Deshalb wird auch bei dieser Zeremonie nicht einfach nur Wein benutzt, sondern ein
Gebräu, bestehend aus 21 verschiedenen Zutaten. Früher soll auch das Blut des wahren Elternpaares
Mun darin enthalten gewesen sein.
Ungetrübt von aller befremdlichen Symbolik freuen sich die Paare. Als Teil dieser Zeremonie gilt es,
sich die Hände ineinander zu falten. Es ist den Paaren anzusehen, daß sie sich noch fremd sind. Kein
Wunder. Manche mögen sich erst einige Stunden kennen. Haben sich doch die Teilnehmer und
Teilnehmerinnen an dieser Massenhochzeit dazu verpflichtet, die Partnerauswahl durch das Ehepaar
Mun zu akzeptieren. Beim sogenannten "Matching", dem Zusammenführen der Partner, schlägt das
Ehepaar Mun auf Grund von Fotos den Partner oder die Partnerin vor. Eine Mutter ist stolz. Ihr Sohn
ist, wie viele junge deutsche Mitglieder der "Vereinigungskirche", direkt im Olympiastadion von Seoul
dabei. Und sie berichtet, daß alles geklappt habe. Ihr Sohn habe eine Ehefrau zugeteilt bekommen.
Anders ergeht es einer jungen Tschechin. Sie nimmt zwar auch an dieser Segnung teil, doch sie ist
betrübt. Ihr Mann ist erkrankt. Für die Organisation des Massenereignisses ist dies kein Problem. Die
Segnung kann trotzdem vollzogen werden. Wie in Kriegszeiten wird eine Fernsegnung durchgeführt.
Die Braut trägt das Bild ihres Partners würdevoll vor sich her, um sich hier symbolisch segnen zu
lassen.
Doch bis es soweit ist, müssen noch einige Stunden und die Müdigkeit überwunden werden. Die
Paare können sich kurz nach Mitternacht festlich kleiden. Langsam füllt sich spät in der Nacht der Saal
mit zahlreichen in weiß gekleideten Bräuten jeden Alters. Die Herren tragen dunkle Anzüge oder das
heilige Gewand der Mun-Bewegung, ebenfalls ganz in weiß. Um drei Uhr versammelt sich die sichtlich
übermüdete Gemeinde. Das Segensversprechen der Partner wird geprobt, der Ablauf der live per
Satellit übertragenen Zeremonie aus dem Olympiastadion von Seoul erklärt.
Endlich, um vier Uhr, ist es soweit. Unter Fanfarenklängen erscheint das Bild auf der großen
Leinwand. Sicher wären viele der hier Anwesenden auch gerne nach Asien gereist. Doch eines stimmt
sie versöhnlich: In Seoul regnet es in Strömen. Tausende von Brautpaaren stehen im Regen,
notdürftig durch Plastikmäntel geschützt. Vor der Großleinwand 100 Paare, die am anderen Ende der
Welt den glücklichsten Tag ihres Lebens mitvollziehen wollen.
Nach dem Abspielen der koreanischen Nationalhymne ist es dann endlich soweit. Und während Mun
im fernen Seoul symbolisch 36 Paare segnet, segnet das ehemalige Leiterehepaar der deutschen
"Vereinigungskirche" im Frankfurter Zoo-Gesellschaftshaus ein Paar, um anschließend durch die
Reihen zu gehen und die gesegneten Ehepaare mit Wasser zu besprenkeln.
Dies ist keineswegs ein Eheschliessungsritual, wie in der Öffentlichkeit häufig dargestellt, sondern
eher ein Vorgang der Adoption. Die so gesegneten Partner sind jetzt Teil der wahren
Menschheitsfamilie, gegründet von dem neuen Messias Sun Myung Mun. Allein auf den Philippinen
sollen über 40.000 Paare am Ende der Zeremonie gegenseitig den Ring mit dem Symbol der
"Vereinigungskirche" anstecken. Jetzt gehören sie dem neuen, auserwählten Volk Gottes an.
Und während rund um das Bürgerhaus der morgendliche Autoverkehr langsam zunimmt, lauscht die
Gemeinde Muns drinnen noch den Grußworten einiger koreanischer Politiker. Korea ist das
auserwählte Volk Gottes, unter dessen Führung sich die Völker dieser Welt vereinen dürfen? (KurtHelmuth Eimuth, Frankfurt) Mit freundlicher Genehmigung
Aus: EZW-Materialdienst Nr. 12, 58. Jahrgang, 1.Dezember 1995 - (Quell Verlag, Postfach 100033,
Stuttgart Konferenz deutscher Elterninitiativen in Berlin: Politiker von CSU, SPD und CDU fordern neues
Einreiseverbot für Mun
Aus: -Berliner Dialog Nr. 3-Weihnacht 1995
Die Erneuerung des Einreiseverbotes für den Führer der Mun-Sekte (Vereinigungskirche) fordern der
Berliner Bundstagsabgeordnete Senator a.D. Thomas Krüger (SPD), der Bayrische
Landtagsabgeordnete Markus Sackmann (CSU) und der jetzt in Leipzig lebende ehemalige Stellv.
Bundesvorsitzende der Jungen Union Udo Schuster (CDU) im Rahmen einer Konferenz der
Vorstände von Betroffeneninitiativen in der deutschen Hauptstadt. In der Begründung ihrer Forderung
heißt es:
"Sektenführer Mun, der in den USA wegen krimineller Delikte in Haft saß, will am 12. November zum
ersten Mal seit 23 Jahren wieder öffentlich in Deutschland auftreten. Bisher hatte ihn ein
Einreiseverbot daran gehindert. Die Mun-Bewegung ist voll auf ihren Gründer und 'Messias' Mun
ausgerichtet. Sie weist totalitäre Züge auf. Sie zerstört Familien. Darauf wiesen bei der Konferenz
besonders die anwesenden, persönlich betroffenen Familienmitglieder hin. Ihre Anhänger beutet die
Mun-Bewegung gnadenlos aus.
Mun und seine Führungsriege greifen in sämtliche Lebensbereiche ihrer Mitglieder ein. Berüchtigt sind
die sogenannten Massenhochzeiten, bei denen Tausende junge Menschen zur Schaffung einer neuen
Menschheit und 'Blutslinie' von Mun getraut werden."Die drei Politiker fordern das
Bundesinnenministerium auf, alle notwendigen Schritte einzuleiten, damit Mun keine Einreise in die
Bundesrepublik Deutschland erhält. Im Hinblick auf die Gefahren, die von der Mun-Bewegung für
Jugend, Familie und öffentliches Wohl ausgehen, hat Großbritannien bereits auf persönliche Initiative
des Innenministers Michael Howard ein Einreiseverbot verhängt."
Einreiseverbot verlängert
Inzwischen hat das deutsche Innenministerium unter Bundesinnenminister Manfred Kanther das aus
den achtziger Jahren stammende Einreiseverbot für Mun ausdrücklich verlängert. Begründet wurde es
mit der zu erwartenden Beeinträchtigung für die öffentliche Sicherheit und Ordnung. Auch für seine
Frau Han, Hak-Ja besteht nun Einreiseverbot. Wie am Rande der dann als Lesung durchgeführten,
von ca. 800 Personen besuchten Veranstaltung aus Kreisen von Führern der Mun-Bewegung gesagt
wurde, scheint die Bundesregierung jetzt auch darauf zu dringen, daß diese Einreiseverbote im
gesamten Gebiet des Schengener Abkommens gelten
Non olet: Bush und die Mun-Million
Der frühere amerikanische Präsident Bush und seine Frau Barbara Bush sollen etwa eine Million
Pfund für ihre Mitwirkung bei dem Mun-Familien-Festival in Japan erhalten haben, behauptet die Daily
Mail am 5. September 1995. Organisator des Bush-Trips und der sechs Veranstaltungen ist die zur
Mun-Bewegung gehörende "Frauenvereinigung für Weltfrieden". Japanische
Betroffenenhilfsorganisationen und christliche Gruppen hatten Bush vergeblich gebeten, auf seine
Tournee zu verzichten, weil sein Honorar aus Geld bestehe, das auf ungesetzlichem Weg Tausenden
von Mun-Opfern weggenommen worden sei. Die United Church of Christ in Japan z.B. hatte an Bush
geschrieben: "Bitte lassen Sie sich nicht durch den Namen der Vereinigung täuschen, sondern
bedanken Sie, welche Gruppe dahintersteht, und denken Sie an den Schaden, den Ihre Verbindung
mit dieser Organisation für zahllose Menschen anrichten kann. (Q: Washington Post vom 8.9.1995,
Daily Mail vom 5.9.1995 und eigene Berichte)
Verschwesterung zur Schaffung der Munschen Weltfamilie
Nach (angeblich) 160.000 japanischen Frauen, die nach Korea gereist waren, um sich dort mit
Koreanerinnen zu "verschwestern", werden solche Zeremonien jetzt überall in der Welt von der
"Frauenföderation für den Weltfrieden" unter Leitung der Mun-Frau Han, Hak-Ja durchgeführt, so z.B.
im Januar in Washington, USA, und am 22./24.4.1995 in Wien.
Verschwesterungs-Gelöbnis
Bei den Verschwesterungszeremonien wird ein Gelöbnis mit folgendem Wortlaut gesprochen und
unterzeichnet:
"Durch diese Schwesternschaftszeremonie verbinde ich mich in Freundschaft mit meiner Partnerin,
um so eine Brücke des Friedens und der Versöhnung zwischen unseren Nationen, XY und YZ zu
bilden. Als eine Frau, die um den Frieden auf allen Ebenen menschlicher Bestrebungen besorgt ist,
werde ich mich darum bemühen, eine Friedensstifterin zu sein und im Bereich meiner Familie, der
Gemeinde, Gesellschaft und zwischen Nationen vereinigend zu wirken." Kultur und Sportfestspiele der
Munbewegung Unter einem neugeschaffenen Symbol findet das Kultur- und Sportfest der MunBewegung (World Culture and Sports Festival" WCSF) statt. Die verwendete Swastika ist im
Gegensatz zum Nazi-Hakenkreuz rechtsdrehend und soll die Ausbreitung des Ideals wahrer Liebe
und die Bewegung in Richtung auf die Realisierung der einen Weltfamilie symbolisieren.
Neue Mun-Jugendorganisation
Eine weitere Organisation fügt die Mun-Bewegung ihrer an Vereinigungen nicht armen Bewegung bei:
Die 1994 gegründete Youth Federation for World Peace (YFWP) soll Ausbildungsprogramme,
Diskussionsforen über Jugendprobleme, Stipendien, Programme für Werte-Erziehung, Konfliktlösung
und ähnliches organisieren.
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-41170576.html
09.08.1976
Messias muß der Reichste sein
Der koreanische Sektenführer San Myung Mun, seine Gläubigen und sein Imperium
Ein Koreaner namens Mun will der neue Messias sein. Seine rabiat antikommunistische Sekte soll
schon zwei Millionen Anhänger zählen, die für ihren Heiligen einen Millionenreichtum gespendet und
zusammengebettelt haben. Hunderte von Eltern bangen um ihre Kinder, die, falls sie heimkehren,
zutiefst verwirrt sind.
Er war 16 Jahre alt, als ihm, anno 1936, auf einem Hügel in Korea der Gott der Christen erschien und
ihm den "Schlüssel zur Wiederherstellung des himmlischen Königreichs auf Erden" übergab.
Nach achtzehn Jahren Nachdenkens war für San Myung Mun -- sein Name bedeutet etwa "Kunde, so
hell leuchtend wie Sonne und Mond zusammen" -jene Schlüsselübergabe etwas Sonnenklares. Denn
Gott, glaubt Mun, pflegt ein paar tausend Jahre zu warten, bis er einen neuen Messias schickt.
Adam, der als erster das Paradies auf Erden errichten sollte, hat kläglich versagt. Denn er ließ sich
von Eva zum Geschlechtsverkehr herumkriegen, nachdem die es schon, pfui Teufel, mit dem Satan
getrieben hatte. Erschwerend kommt bei der Munschen Interpretation des Sündenfalls hinzu, daß Eva
erst 15 war. Sex ist bei Mun ab 21 erlaubt.
Christi Mission wurde durch die Juden verhindert, indem sie ihn ans Kreuz schlugen. So hatte Satan
wieder freie Bahn. In jüngerer Zeit bezog er das Hirn des Juden Karl Marx sowie die Köpfe von
dessen Gefolgschaft, der Kommunisten. Die gilt es auszurotten, alsdann alle Völker der Welt unter
Muns Herrschaft in Liebe zu vereinen. All das soll schon bald, in den 80er Jahren womöglich, erledigt
sein.
Mun, ein spinnerter Heiliger? Keineswegs. Einer der gefährlichsten Sektenführer, dessen 1954
gegründete "Vereinigungskirche" angeblich zwei Millionen Anhänger, 30 00<) davon in den USA,
zählt.
Als "Sun Myung Moon", so die amerikanische Schreibweise, residiert der mondgesichtige Koreaner
heute mit Frau Han Hak-ja, acht Kindern und Beraterstab abwechselnd auf zwei fürstlichen Landsitzen
nahe New York. Der Wert seiner US-Latifundien wird auf über 30 Millionen Mark geschätzt.
in seinem göttlichen Namen tanzt das koreanische Kinderballett "Little Angeis" durch die halbe
(westliche) Welt, zu seinen Ehren jubeln die "New Hope Singers". Er genießt die volle Unterstützung
des Park-Regimes in Südkorea, wo er mit Sektengeldern ein 30-Millionen-Industrieimperium
(Ginseng-Tee, Titanium, Draht, Handfeuerwaffen) aufgebaut hat.
Das Geheimnis seines geschäftlichen Erfolges ist einfach. Tausende von "Moonies", so die
amerikanische Bezeichnung der Mun-Anhänger. die dem harten Kern angehören, widmen sich Tag für
Tag dem Verkauf von Votivkerzen, Erdnüssen und Blumen, oder sie sammeln für vorgeblich
wohltätige Zwecke wie Drogenzentren und Anstalten für geistig Behinderte.
Sie wissen, daß sie die Spender täuschen, aber da alles Geld der anderen des Teufels ist, beunruhigt
sie das nicht. "Messias muß der Reichste sein", lehrt Mun, "nur Messias hat die Fähigkeit, alle Dinge
zu beherrschen. Solange er das nicht erreicht hat, können weder Gott noch Messias glücklich sein."
Gute Moonies geben der Sekte alles -- Ersparnisse, Auto, persönliche Habe bis hin zu
Erbüberschreibungen. Sie hökern und sammeln, bis 20 Stunden am Tag, das bringt im Schnitt pro
Kopf 100 bis 200 Dollar ein. "Sinnlose Sklavenarbeit", erregte sich die New Yorker "Daily News", "die
es Mun erlaubt, wie ein Pharao zu leben."
Da aktive Mun-Süchtige -- in den USA schätzungsweise 7000 -- in Schlafsäcken auf Fußböden ihrer
Sektenhäuser schlafen und sich mit einem Minimum an Nahrung zufriedengeben, kostet ihr Unterhalt
den "Father" oder "Master", wie Moonies ihren Halbgott nennen, nur wenige Cent pro Tag und Kopf.
Muns Vermögen fließt teils nach Südkorea, teils wird es in den USA angelegt, teils in europäische
Missionierungszentren transferiert. Bei diesen Geldgeschäften, argwöhnte kürzlich ein britischer
Staatsanwalt, gebe es "wohl mehr Mond- als Sonnenschein".
Weit rätselhafter aber als Muns finanzieller Aufschwung sind seine Erfolge als religiöser Führer.
Beobachter können an dem Asiaten mit den erstklassigen Schneideranzügen keine Spur von
Charisma entdecken.
Wohl verspricht Mun seinen Adepten "Antwort auf alle Fragen". Doch seine Pseudoreligion bietet
neben militantem Antikommunismus lediglich ein diffuses Gemisch aus westlichen wie östlichen
Wahrheiten, aus Astrologie, Numerologie sowie aus Altem und Neuem Testament, deren Inhalt, weil
verschlüsselt, angeblich nur Messias Mun entschlüsseln kann.
Warum dann geraten immer mehr Menschen, meist im Alter zwischen 16 und 30, überwiegend
Angehörige der weißen jüdischen und katholischen Mittelklasse, in Muns Bann? Warum stutzen sie
sich die Haare, legen kreuzbrave Kleidung an und erklären Drogen, Zigaretten, Alkohol und
vorehelichen Sex für Teufelszeug? Carl Waranowski, 23, Ex-Moonie: "Durch Gehirnwäsche."
Ted Patrick, Mitverfasser eines gerade in Amerika erschienenen Buches* über diverse obskure USSekten, stützt diesen weitverbreiteten Verdacht, wobei ihm Muns Herkunft schon suspekt vorkommt:
"Der Begriff 'brainwashing' kam aus Korea, als dort, während des Korea-Krieges, viele unserer
Gefangenen intensiver politischer Indoktrinierung unterworfen waren. Dieselben Methoden wendet die
Vereinigungskirche an."
"Reverend" Mun erwartet von jedem seiner Ganztagsanhänger, daß er etwa alle zehn Tage ein neues
Mitglied wirbt. Rekrutierer verbergen sich hinter einem halben Dutzend verschieden benannter
Vereinigungen -- so wirbt etwa auf Universitätsgelände die "Hochschulvereinigung für die Erforschung
von Prinzipien" (C.A.R.P.).
Die Anwerber laden zu unverbindlichen Diskussionsabenden ein und propagieren dann
Trainingskurse, deren Dauer von drei Tagen über 21 bis zu 120 Tagen eskaliert.
Muns Name kommt meist erst nach einigen Schulungstagen ins Spiel -- wohl mit Bedacht, denn er hat
keine gute Presse. Moonies werden, wenn sie hinter grüngestrichenen Tischen Blumen anbieten oder
in schneeweißen Overalls New Yorks verdreckte Straßen schrubben, von Passanten verhöhnt oder
bei Demonstrationen Abtrünniger beschimpft.
Der New Yorker Reporter John Cotter, ein erbitterter Kritiker der Mun-Sekte, der sich aus beruflichem
Interesse einem Wochenend-Einführungskurs unterzogen hatte, war entsetzt über sei
* Ted Patrick/ Tom Dulack: "Let Our Children Go!'. Thomas Congdon Books, E. P. Dutton & Co., New
York: 286 Seiten: 8,95 Dollar.
ne eigene Reaktion: "Wem immer ich ins Gesicht sah -- es wurde gelächelt. genickt. Hier ist doch alles
fabelhaft, dachte ich, und fast hatte ich ein schlechtes Gewissen, daß ich hier eingedrungen war."
Seine kritische Haltung gegenüber den Moonies verblaßte nach drei Tagen mit folgendem
Stundenplan:
7.00 -- Wecken
7.15 -- Kaffee
7.30 -- Turnen
8.00 -- Frühstück
8.15 -- Diskussion
8.45 -- Singen, Beten
9.00 -- Einführung
9.30 -- Vorlesung
12.00 -- Singen, Beten
12.15 -- Vorlesung
13.30 -- Singen, Beten
13.45 -- Mittagessen, Diskussion
15.00 -- Singen, Beten
15.15 -- Pause, Diskussion
15.30 -- Spiele
16.45 -- Singen, Beten
17.00 -- Pause
17.30 -- Singen, Beten
17.45 -- Vorlesung
19.30 -- Singen, Beten
19.45 -- Diskussion
20.15 -- Singen, Beten
20.30 -- Abendessen
21.00 -- Diskussion
21.45 -- Singen, Beten
22.00 -- Vorlesung
22.45 -- Singen, Beten
23.00 -- Reflexion, Diskussion
Drei solcher Tage, und die Moonies werden "fund-raising" geschickt. Noch ein paar, und sie brechen
erfahrungsgemäß sämtliche Kontakte der Vergangenheit ab, erklären Eltern, Familie. Freunde,
Schule, Kollegen als des Satans. Wer dann besonders hingebungsvoll die Taschen seines "wahren
Vaters" San Myung Mun füllt, ist bald reif für Missionierungsaufträge in anderen Kontinenten, für
Elitekurse in Seoul -.-. und für den Psychiater.
Hunderte von Eltern in den USA. in Frankreich, England und auch in der Bundesrepublik haben sich
unterdessen zu Interessengruppen zusammengefunden und Anwälte gebeten, ihre Söhne und
Töchter aus den Klauen des koreanischen Heilsbringers zu lösen. Polizei und Staatsanwaltschaft sind
höchst selten zur Mithilfe bereit -- religiös darf hüben wie drüben eben jeder nach eigener Facon selig
werden. Die Elternsorgen sind jedoch sehr wohl auch politisch begründet.
Mun sieht Korea als sein Israel, das, ganz im Sinne Parks, von den Kommunisten befreit und
wiedervereint werden muß. Er umgibt sich mit den rechten Leuten: Muns Top-Assistenten Bo Hi Pak,
Ex-Militär-Attach6 an der koreanischen Botschaft in Washington, werden Verbindungen zur
koreanischen CIA nachgesagt.
Nachdem Mun im Juni vergangenen Jahres in Seoul vor über einer Million Zuhörern die Kommunisten
als "Partisanen des Teufels" bezeichnete, nachdem Vereinigungskirchler aus 60 Nationen ihren
Entschluß verlasen, ein "internationales Korps von Freiwilligen" zu hilden, frohlockte Mun gegenüber
der " Korean Times": Dieses Korps werde "eine wichtige Rolle spielen für das Überleben Koreas".
Seine Entschlossenheit demonstriert Mun mit verbalen Kraftakten. "Eines Tages", weiß er, "wird mein
Wort, ohne daß ich danach strebe, fast als Gesetz gelten." Gott habe sich auf einen großen Tag
vorbereitet, "ähnlich dem Tag der Landung in der Normandie".
Opfer sind in seinen Schlachtplan einkalkuliert: "Zehn- oder Hunderttausende von euch", so Mun vor
Jüngern, müßten bereit sein, für die Ziele der Vereinigten Familie auf Erden zu sterben.
Der körperliche Verfall und der psychische Zustand von Mun-Jüngern sind oft beängstigend. An
Moonies, die beispielsweise ins Krankenhaus von Barrytown (US-Staat New York) eingeliefert wurden
-- in Barrytown ist das Hauptschulungszentrum der amerikanischen Vereinigungskirche stationiert -,
stellte ein Arzt alle klassischen Symptome extremer Paranoia fest. In einem NBC-Interview
bezeichnete er diese Patienten als desorientiert, realitätsfern, zutiefst verwirrt.
Falls es Familien gelingt, ihre verloren geglaubten Kinder unter Vorwänden wie Familienfest oder
Todesfall nach Haus zu locken, sind sie hilflos: Die Sektierer wirken wie hypnotisiert, sind von
schwersten Ängsten geplagt.
Ein Frankfurter über seine heimgekehrte Tochter: "Noch immer hat sie Angst, daß Mun eines Tages
persönlich kommen könne, um die Abtrünnigen zu strafen." Bebende Dielen in der Wohnung,
verursacht durch einen Preßlufthammer auf der Straße, deutete das Mädchen als Satans Vergeltung.
http://www.stern.de/panorama/sun-myung-moon-guru-mit-geschaeftssinn-536981.html
Sun Myung Moon: Guru mit Geschäftssinn
25. Februar 2005
Aufgewachsen als Bauernsohn, baute Sun Myung Moon eine globale Bewegung auf, die ihn als
Messias verehrt. Doch der Sektengründer, bekannt für seine Massentrauungen, denkt pragmatisch
und erschuf ein Wirtschaftsimperium.
Auf einem Berg in Korea soll ihm Jesus Christus erschienen sein: Sektenführer Sun Myung Moon
Von seinen Anhängern wird der koreanische Gründer der "Vereinigungskirche", weltweit bekannt als
"Moon-Sekte", als Messias verehrt, der auf Erden einen himmlischen Auftrag erfüllt. In den Augen
seiner Kritiker ist Sun Myung Moon, der an diesem Freitag 85 Jahre alt wird, ein ideologischer
Verführer, der es dank einer ergebenen Gefolgschaft zum Milliardär gebracht hat und eine religiös
legitimierte Herrschaftsordnung in der Welt erschaffen will.
Spektakulär sind Moons Massentrauungen, bei denen er in Stadien und per Satellit tausenden von
Paaren rund um den Globus seinen Segen erteilt. Aufgewachsen in einer Bauernfamilie im
Nordwesten Koreas, baute Moon eine globale Bewegung ("Moonies") auf, die über ihr religiöses
Anliegen hinaus auch mit ihren politischen und wirtschaftlichen Aktivitäten bekannt wurde.
"Retter der Menschheit"
Um den selbst ernannten "Retter der Menschheit" Moon ist es in den vergangenen Jahren im Westen
ruhiger geworden. Ein Grund ist der starke Mitgliederschwund der Gemeinschaft in Westeuropa und
vor allem in den USA, wo er in den 70er Jahren als der wohl umstrittenste Sektenführer galt und 1982
wegen Steuervergehen zu einer 18-monatigen Haftstrafe verurteilt wurde. Damalige Vorwürfe der
"Gehirnwäsche" von neuen Mitgliedern tat die Gruppe als Verleumdung ab. "Die westlichen Medien
haben sich an die Aktivitäten seiner Kirche gewöhnt", sagt der ehemalige Korea-Korrespondent der
zur Moon-Gruppe gehörenden "Washington Times", Michael Breen, in Seoul. Auch seien die
Anwerbeaktivitäten der Sekte nicht mehr so sichtbar wie früher.
Weihwasser für die Paare: Sun Myung Moon und seine Frau Han Hak Ja bei einer Massenhochzeit im
Olympiastadion von Seoul 1999
Dafür verlagerte Moon den Schwerpunkt der Aktivitäten seiner Sekte immer mehr in andere
Weltgegenden, vor allem nach Lateinamerika, Osteuropa und Nahost. In Deutschland wurde dem
Ehepaar Moon allerdings die Einreise verweigert. Die Bundesregierung rechnet die
Vereinigungskirche den so genannten Psychogruppen zu, von denen eine Gefahr für junge Menschen
ausgehen könne.
Moon wurde am 6. Januar 1920 in Jeongju in der stark christianisierten Provinz Nord-Pyongan als
fünftes von acht Kindern geboren. Am Beginn seines Werdegangs als Führer einer asiatischen
Neureligion steht eine Vision: Mit 16 Jahren soll ihm auf einem Berg in seiner Heimat Jesus Christus
erschienen sein. Dieser soll ihm verkündet haben, er werde seine "unvollendete Mission" auf Erden
beenden. Der charismatische Moon sieht sich und seine Frau Han Hak Ja als die "Wahren Eltern".
Restaurantketten, Pharma- und Medienunternehmen
Doch seine Tätigkeit als Prediger im Norden Koreas brachte ihn im Mai 1948 in ein Straflager. Im
Korea-Krieg wurde er im Oktober 1950 von UN-Streitkräften befreit. Im Mai 1954 gründete Moon in
Seoul die Vereinigungskirche, der er 1996 den programmatischen Namen Familienföderation für
Weltfrieden und Vereinigung verlieh. Die Bezeichnung als Sekte lehnt die Gruppe wegen des
negativen Untertons ab. Moon schuf ein breit gefächertes Wirtschaftsimperium, zu dem
Pharmaunternehmen, eine Waffenfabrik, Restaurantketten, Zeitungen wie die konservative
"Washington Times" und die US-Nachrichtenagentur UPI gehören. Durch die Medienunternehmen
sichert sich Moon nicht zuletzt seinen Einfluss in der US-Hauptstadt.
Seit seiner Erfahrung im Arbeitslager ist Moon erklärter Gegner des Kommunismus. Das hielt ihn
jedoch später nicht davon ab, Millionen in Nordkorea zu investieren. Moon denke pragmatisch, sagt
Breen. In der Vorstellung des Sektenführers ist das irgendwann vielleicht einmal wieder vereinte
Korea das neue Israel, von dem der Weltfrieden ausgehen wird.
http://www.atimes.com
Oct 31, 2009
Korea: New moons are rising
By Bill Berkowitz
OAKLAND, California - This month, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon went to Washington to introduce
As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen, his autobiography that, according to the Moon-owned Washington
Times, "recounts the joys and challenges, the teachable moments and the monumental experiences of
his life - much of it spent as a spiritual leader".
The newspaper reported that Moon received "congratulatory greetings" from Senator Joe Lieberman,
former secretary of state Alexander Haig and former president George H W Bush, "hand-delivered by
his son Neil Bush".
The younger Bush, who has a long track record of working with Moon-sponsored organizations, told
the audience of 1,300 that "Reverend Moon is presenting a very simple concept. We are all children of
God."
In January, Moon will turn 90, and while he's alive and apparently well, he is deeply involved in
charting his group's future.
Last year, Moon named his Harvard-educated youngest son, the 30-year-old Hyung Jin Moon, as the
president of the World Unification Church. Another son, Hyun Jin Moon, Moon's oldest, is also in the
mix. Whenever he dies, Moon's death will nevertheless usher in a major period of adjustment.
Moon founded the Unification Church in the 1950s, and it remains a controversial, powerful and
misunderstood enterprise to this day.
To many observers, Moon's activities - including accusations of cult-like practices, his imprisonment
for tax evasion, the prayer vigils for a Watergate-afflicted president Richard Nixon, his support for
right-wing death squads in Central America, the strange spectacle of mass weddings, the church's
close ties to the Bush family and legions of stories about de-programs trying to reclaim Moonified
souls - may seem so 20th century.
The Unification Church has been a religious, business and political enterprise and there are a number
of routes it could take to the future: It could grow like The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
(Mormons), it could remain controversial similar to the path of the Church of Scientology or it could try
to become just another church among many - in other words, more mainstream.
While the Moon organization has been prepping for transition to younger leaders for quite some time,
Frederick Clarkson, a journalist who has written widely about the church, including in his 1997 book,
Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, told Inter Press Service (IPS) that
"even with the passing from the scene of the man many believe to be the messiah, the more things
change, the more they stay the same".
"Many of the Moon offspring and the children of other members of the inner circle have been very well
educated and have been given experience in running the core operations," veteran journalist Robert
Parry told IPS. "I think the business aspects could be rather smoothly transferred. And with the money
goes the political influence."
"There also is an element of 'The Godfather' in this, as the second generation may try to further
sanitize the organization's history," said Parry. "That could make the political influence-buying even
safer, though it is hard to know whether the second generation shares some of the right-wing politics
of the elder Moon, even as that repressive ideology is disguised under the happy-sounding phrase
'world peace'."
In addition to the myriad Moon-sponsored conferences and events that always seem to be taking
place somewhere, it might surprise you to learn that the Unification Church recently sponsored a major
soccer tournament in Spain.
And while most of the matches didn't draw huge crowds, the media gave it extensive and generally
positive press coverage, a longtime Moon-watcher told IPS. One of the major purposes of the
tournament was to mainstream people's acceptance of Moon and his organization as simply "one
religion among many".
According to Hyung Jin Moon, garnering favorable press coverage is an important part of the
organization's mainstreaming strategy as it moves forward. He recently proudly noted that there had
been some 85 major articles on the Unification Church in Korea last year and none were negative.
Hyung Jin Moon grew up in the US and as such, appears to be interested in introducing some new
practices into the organization's culture.
"His background means he has already been exposed to a wide range of religious traditions and
seems unafraid to introduce aspects of how other faiths worship into Unification Church services,"
Christopher Landau pointed out in a recent BBC report.
For example, a recent service attended by Landau started off with "contemporary mainstream
Christian songs written in the US", instead of "one of the movement's own hymns".
Perhaps the most notable cultural and religious change being considered revolves around the issue of
marriage.
For years, Moon presided over mass wedding ceremonies - like the one held earlier this month at the
Sun Moon University campus in Seoul, South Korea - involving hundreds of couples, most of whom
had never met prior to their wedding day and were chosen by Moon himself.
While the public was fascinated by these ceremonies, they were mostly a big turnoff. Hyung Jin Moon
told Landau that those practices were under review.
Founded as the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, in the 1990s it became
the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. According to Landau, "The emphasis now
seems to be shifting back to conceiving of the movement as a church, and using that clearly defined
religious status as a way to campaign for the freedom of its followers."
Rethinking its policies regarding marriage and the introduction of popular Christian music into church
services appear to be aimed at making the church less idiosyncratic and more acceptable to the
public.
However, the piece of the puzzle left unexplored by Landau, and most other mainstream journalists
reporting on Moon's operations, is the recognition of the organization's political power and influence
both in the US and abroad.
At the heart of Moon's political project in the US is the Washington Times, a newspaper that,
according to some reports, has cost Moon more than US$3 billion since its founding. However, the
importance of the Times to the conservative movement far outweighs its expensive price tag.
The newspaper recently announced that in collaboration with the powerful Washington-based thinktank, the Heritage Foundation, and several other organizations, it was launching
TheConservatives.com, "a website with technology that allows activists to talk up to ideological and
party leaders and interact in innovative ways".
"The Conservatives.com creates a cutting-edge new marriage between the social publishing world of
bloggers and the social networking world of Twitter, YouTube and the like," said John Solomon,
executive editor and vice president for content of The Times.
"Most opinion sites today enable thought-leaders to talk down to the masses, but
TheConservatives.com empowers users to change the direction of that dialogue, allowing the Joe the
Plumbers of the world to speak up to major thinkers, like Newt Gingrich," he said.
"Using the Washington Times as a propagandist for the Reagan-Bush crowd, Moon sanitized himself
as much as anyone could ever imagine," Parry pointed out. "By investing smartly in the American
conservative movement - and thus gaining influential defenders of his own - he also intimidated much
of the US news media and US government investigators from discussing his real history or looking too
deeply at his curious funding methods."
Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His column "Conservative Watch"
documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the US right.
http://www.spiegel.de
07.01.2000
Auto: Mun-Sekte will in Nordkorea Fiats bauen
Sie kommen in friedlicher Absicht. Die südkoreanische Regierung hat einem Unternehmen der MunSekte genehmigt, im verfeindeten Norden ein Werk für Fiat-Autos zu errichten. Der Name des
Gemeinschaftsunternehmens ist Programm: Peace Motor.
Seoul - Das Vereinigungsministerium in Seoul teilte mit, Pyonghwa Motors werde in der Fabrik
gemeinsam mit der nordkoreanischen Ryongbong Fiat-Modelle montieren und reparieren. Pyonghwa
gehört zum Wirtschaftsimperium der Vereinigungskirche des südkoreanischen Sektenführers San
Myung Mun.
Pyonghwa will 70 Prozent der Planinvestitionen von 300 Millionen Dollar übernehmen. Ende Januar
soll der Grundstein für das Werk in Nampo, 30 Kilometer südwestlich von Pjöngjang, gelegt werden.
Bis Ende 2001 sollen 10.000 Autos des Fiat-Modells Tempra von den Bändern rollen.
Die Vereinigungskirche wurde 1954 von dem im Norden der Halbinsel geborenen und heute 80jährigen Moon in Seoul gegründet. Die Gemeinschaft nennt sich heute offiziell Familienföderation für
Weltfrieden und Vereinigung.
http://www.zeit.de/1982/19/Wirbel-um-Firmenkauf
Moon-Sekte: Wirbel um Firmenkauf
Wanderer-Management: Die Vereinigungskirche hat keinen direkten Einfluß auf das Unternehmen
Von Hermann Bößenecke, 7.5.1982
Der Münchner SPD-Landtagsabgeordnete Klaus Warnecke läßt nicht locker. Nachdem er bereits Mitte
vergangener Woche vor dem Eindringen der „für die faschistoiden Tendenzen bekannten" MoonSekte in die bayerische Industrie gewarnt hatte, schob er nun in der letzten Woche eine schriftliche
Anfrage an die bayerische Staatsregierung nach.
Was den Abgeordneten, im Privatberuf Rechtsanwalt, alarmiert hat, ist die Beteiligung des
koreanischen Werkzeugmaschineminternehmens Tong II Industries Company Ltd. in Seoul an der
traditionsreichen Wanderer Maschinen GmbH in Haar bei München. Denn Tong II gilt als „Tarnfirma"
der Sekte, der von dem heute 62jährigen San Myung Moon gegründeten und geführten Unification
Churcb. Sie nennt sich in Deutschland „Vereinigungskirche" und zählt weltweit angeblich knapp eine
halbe Million Anhänger. Sie verehren Moon als „dritten Adam, nächsten Jesus und wahren Vater der
Menschheit".
Der SPD-Abgeordnete, der hier ohne Zweifel eine Art publizistische Marktlücke entdeckt hat, sieht in
dem Engagement bei Wanderer allen Ernstes „Anlaß zur größten Sorge". Einmal sei dadurch eine
„Kapitalbeschaffung für die Moon-Sekte" möglich gewesen, zweitens tauchten »mittelfristig Gefahren
für die Sicherheit der Wanderer-Arbeitsplätze" auf und drittens könne „nicht ausgeschlossen werden,
daß die Moon-Sekte ihr rechtsradikales Gedankengut nicht nur in die Industrieverbände einschleust,
sondern auch in die Gremien der Industrieund Handelskammern, die für die Ausbildung zuständig
sind".
Darüber kann Rolf-Wilhelm Rütten, Geschäftsführer von Wanderer, nur den Kopf schütteln. Er wehrt
sich heftig gegen die Vorstellung, daß seine Firma direkt etwas mit der umstrittenen Sekte zu tun habe
und wirft dem SPD-Mann vor, daß erst er mit seinen Attacken die 300 Wanderer-Arbeitsplätze in
Gefahr bringe.
„Das hat Wanderer nicht verdient", meint auch Herbert de Kloot, Außenhandelsreferent der Industrieund Handelskammer Düsseldorf, der sich als erster intensiv mit den Aktivitäten der Koreaner in der
Bundesrepublik befaßt hat, weil diese sich zunächst auf den Düsseldorfer Kammerbezirk
konzentrierten und von dort aus der „Brückenkopf" nach Bayern vorgetrieben wurde. Der Abgeordnete
Warnecke bezog sich so auch auf eine Veröffentlichung de Kloots in der Düsseldorfer
Kammerzeitschrift Unsere 'Wirtschaft.
De Kloot hatte erstmals auf die wirtschaftlichen Zusammenhänge zwischen Tong II, einem „sehr
gesunden Unternehmen" mit 60 Millionen Dollar Umsatz und 1300 Mitarbeitern und der Moon-Sekte
hingewiesen. Er bedauert nun aber, daß damit allzu viele gewagte Spekulationen verquickt wurden
und den Wanderer-Werken daraus Schwierigkeiten erwachsen seien. Es sei nun dringend nötig, die
Diskussion zu versachlichen und zwischen Religion und Wirtschaft zu trennen. Darum bemüht sich
nun auch Wanderer. Eine Düsseldorfer PR-Agentur wurde eingeschaltet, um negative Auswirkungen
abzufangen.
Wanderer kam zu dem exotischen Problem „wie die Jungfrau zum Kind", klagt Rütten. Das wenig
profitable Unternehmen mit 28 Millionen Mark Umsatz suchte nach Angabe seines Geschäftsführers,
der gleichzeitig Vorstandssprecher der bisherigen Muttergeselischaft Wanderer Werke AG ist, seit
langem nach einem potenten Partner.
Nach erfolglosen Verhandlungen mit diversen Interessenten kam schließlich – vermittelt von Carl
Zimmerer, dem Chef der Düsseldorfer Inter- Ünanz – der Kontakt mit Tong II zustande. Rütten
schaute sich selbst in Korea um, auch bei Tochterunternehmen in Japan. Und er gibt ohne veiteres
zu, daß er zu diesem Zeitpunkt nichts ron den Verbindungen zwischen Tong II und der Moon-Sekte
wußte. „Sie erfahren als Vorstand ja meist nicht, wer hinter den Aktionären steht."
Im Herbst letzten Jahres stimmten die Wandefer-Aktionäre (die Harpener AG) und die Münchner
Familie Winklhofer) dem Verkauf der Maschinenbau-Tochter für 8,7 Millionen Mark zu. Käufer war die
erst im August 1981 in Düsseldorf gegründete UTI Industries Holding. Ihr Kapital liegt voll bei der UTI
United Trade Industries BV in Amsterdam, die wieder jeweils zur Hälfte Tong II direkt und der
Schweizer Interindustrial Holdings Corp. Ltd. in Zürich gehört.
Auch für de Kloot ist zwar ein direkter Zusammenhang zwischen den Moons und Tone II nicht
nachweisbar, aber die Hinweise auf vielerlei Querverbindungen sind doch nicht zu leugnen. Rund 75
Prozent des Tong-Il-Kapitals liegen bei der Foundation for the Support of the Holy Spirit Association
for tbe Unification of World Cbnstianity, und in dieser Stiftung haben sich gewiß Moon- Gelder
angesammelt. Sie wird offensichtlich von Mitgliedern der Sekte getragen. Der Tong-Il-Präsident heißt
ebenfalls Moon und soll mit dem Sektengründer weitläufig verwandt sein.
Offenbar sind die deutschen Moon-Ableger auch an anderen Unternehmen in der Bundesrepublik
interessiert. Bei der Pittler Maschinenfabrik in Hessen sollen sie schon angeklopft haben. Der
gelegentlich als „Prophet des Profits" bezeichnete Moon hat dank nimmermüder Bettel- und
Verkaufsaktivitäten seiner meist blutjungen Anhänger anscheinend viel Geld anzulegen.
http://www.zeit.de
Ehemalige Jünger der Moon-Sekte sprechen von „Bettelmaschinen". Das Fernsehen zeigt selbstlose
Samariter.
Der Knabe war doch wirklich ilieb
Thomas v. Randow, 15.8.1980
„Was macht Ihr Sodbrennen?" fragt der freundliche blonde Jüngling. „Das ist längst wieder vorüber",
antwortet die alte Frau und lacht dazu. Sie ist sichtlich fröhlich, weil der junge Mann, der sich so
angelegentlich nach ihrem Wohlbefinden erkundigt, wieder einmal gekommen ist, ihr die Einsamkeit
vertreibt und auch mal anpackt, wo's nottut. Das Fernsehen schaut dabei zu. Wir sehen den
jugendlichen Helfer in einer neuen Kameraeinstellung beim Feuerholzhacken, wieder für alte Leute.
Diese Bilder vom selbstlosen Samaritertum, dem sich, wie wir erfahren, eine ganze Reihe junger
Menschen verschrieben hat, werden kommentiert. Der Reporter freilich, das spüren wir bald, findet
das, was er uns zeigt, ganz und gar nicht erfreulich. Er wähnt Teuflisches dahinter, denn diese
Jugendlichen sind weder katholisch noch evangelisch. Sie gehören einer Sekte an, die, so der
Sprecher, nicht wie bisher, nur junge Mitglieder anzuwerben versucht, sondern eine neue Zielgruppe
ausgemacht hat: die Alten. Das findet der Kommentator schlimm.
Um Meinungen anderer bemüht – die Sendung läuft immerhin in den Tagesthemen – , fragt das
Fernsehen einen Pfarrer vom Ort, was er von dem Tun der Sekte halte. Der Gottesmann ärgert sich
lediglich darüber, daß es die Sekte wagt, sich eine Kirche zu nennen. Kommt dieses Privileg nur den
Religionsgemeinschaften zu, für die der Staat das Geld eintreibt?
Die Einigungskirche, von der in dem Nachrichtenstreifen die Rede ist, macht ihr Geld auf andere
Weise. Sie nimmt es ihren Gläubigen direkt ab (sie bringen, wie die Urchristen, ihr Hab und Gut ein).
Deshalb hat die Sekte überall in der Welt ansehnlichen Besitz erworben; sie betreibt große
Ländereien, Ladenketten, Fischfabriken und allerlei andere gewinnbringende Unternehmungen. Kein
Wunder also, daß ihr oberster Priester, Herr Moon aus Korea, in eiriem Palast wohnen kann und
kostbares Geschmeide trägt.
Dieser Mister Moon, sagt das Deutsche Fernsehen voller Entrüstung, hat Jesus Christus einen
Versager genannt. Eine Schrift der Sekte wird ins Bild gerückt. Dazu heißt es, sie halte einen Dritten
Weltkrieg für unvermeidlich und notwendig. Flugs wird der Verdacht eines getarnten
Rechtsradikalismus hergeleitet und der Vorwurf erhoben, die Kirche treibe, unter dem Deckmantel
einer neuen Religion, fragwürdige und gefährliche Propagand". Ende dieses Tagesthemas. Selbst
Klaus Stephan fällt dazu nichts Verbindliches mehr ein.
Der Zuschauer freilich denkt noch eine Weile nach. Das Fernsehen hatte ihm etwas Böses vorführen
wollen, doch daß es eine Religionsgemeinschaft gibt, die von ihren Mitgliedern Geld eintreibt und
damit nicht nur caritative Werke tut, sondern auch Reichtümer aufgehäuft hat, und die ihren obersten
Hirten in einem Palast wohnen und kostbare Geschmeide tragen läßt? Das trifft doch auch auf andere
Kirchen zu. Auch spart zum Beispiel die Bibel der Christen nicht mit Vorhersagen einer
Weltkatastrophe, die unvermeidlich und notwendig sei. Die Propheten kannten nur noch nicht die
Bezeichnung „Weltkrieg".
Gewiß, mit einem Satz behauptet der Sprecher, die Moon-Sekte diszipliniere ihre Mitglieder, aber dies
ruft beim Zuschauer allenfalls Assoziationen an strenge Klosterordnungen wach.
Wer also unvorbelastet diesen Kurzbeitrag des Fernsehens sah, mußte zu dem Schluß kommen, es
kritisiere die Einigungskirche nur, weil ihre Glieder etwas anderes glauben als die meisten von uns
und einen dicken Asiaten verehren, der aus kleinen Verhältnissen kommt. Das ist ärgerlich, weil sich
so die öffentlich-rechtliche Anstalt den Verdacht mangelnder Liberalität zuzieht, vor allem aber, weil
Berichte von ehemaligen Moon-Anhängern vermuten lassen, daß diese Sekte mit mittelalterlichen
Kirchenpraktiken junge Menschen zu willenlosen Bettelmaschinen abrichtet. Diesen schweren Vorwurf
hätte das Fernsehen unter die Lupe nehmen müssen. Wo aber Belege gänzlich fehlen, wie in dem
kurzen Tagesthemen-Streifen, wird eher dies suggeriert: Der blonde Knabe war doch wirklich lieb, die
Oma lachte vor Glück und daß ein Pastor neben den etablierten keine andere Kirche dulden möchte –
je nun.
http://www.netzeitung.de
Verfassungsrichter geben Moon-Sekte Recht
09.11.2006
Verfassungsrichter geben Moon-Sekte Recht
Die Gründer der Moon-Sekte kann damit rechnen, wieder nach Deutschland einreisen zu dürfen. Das
Bundesverfassungs-Gericht sieht in dem Verbot einen Verstoß gegen die Religionsfreiheit.
Das Bundesverfassungsgericht betrachtet das Einreiseverbot für den Gründer der so genannten
Moon-Sekte als Verstoß gegen die Religionsfreiheit. Das geht aus der am Donnerstag veröffentlichten
Entscheidung hervor.
Die Richter in Karlsruhe gaben einer Verfassungsbeschwerde von Moons Vereinigungskirche statt.
Das Urteil des Oberverwaltungsgerichts Rheinland-Pfalz muss nun neu verhandelt werden. Allerdings
könne daraus kein automatischer Anspruch auf Einreise abgeleitet werden, hieß es weiter.
1995 hatte der damalige Bundesgrenzschutz auf Betreiben des Bundesinnenministeriums Sun Myung
Moon und dessen Frau die Einreise verwehrt, als der aus Korea stammende Religionsstifter Anhänger
in Deutschland besuchen wollte. Das damals vom CDU-Politiker Manfred Kanther geführte
Ministerium hatte argumentiert, dass die von der Vereinigungskirche vertretenen Glaubensinhalte den
Wertvorstellungen des Grundgesetzes widersprächen.
Das Einreiseverbot wurde bis 2004 verlängert. Die als Verein eingetragene Vereinigungskirche hatte
dagegen zunächst ohne Erfolg geklagt. Im Juni 2002 bestätigte das Oberverwaltungsgericht
Rheinland-Pfalz das Einreiseverbot mit der Begründung, dass der Besuch keinen spezifisch religiösen
Gehalt für die Sektenmitglieder habe. Das Bundesverwaltungsgericht korrigierte diese Entscheidung
nicht. Daraufhin erhoben Moons Anhänger Verfassungsbeschwerde.
Karlsruhe sieht keine Sicherheitsgefahr
Im aktuellen Urteil der Kammer des Zweiten Senats des Verfassungsgerichts heißt es nun, dass das
Oberverwaltungsgericht das eigene Verständnis der Religionsgemeinschaft zu wenig berücksichtigt
habe. Außerdem dürfe nach dem Schengener Abkommen die Einreise nur bei Gefahren für die
öffentliche Sicherheit und Ordnung verweigert werden.
Es liege nicht auf der Hand, dass eine Einreise des Ehepaares Moon solche Folgen haben würde,
entschied die Kammer einstimmig. Auch der Hinweis des Bundesinnenministeriums, dass die von der
Vereinigungskirche vertretenen Glaubensinhalte den Wertvorstellungen des Grundgesetzes
widersprächen, sei nicht ausreichend. Bei Glaubensfragen und rein internen Angelegenheiten dürften
Religionsgemeinschaften nicht auf die Wertvorstellungen des Staates verpflichtet werden.
Das deutsche Einreiseverbot für Moon war sogar im letzten Jahresbericht des US-Außenministeriums
als Beispiel für Einschränkungen der Religionsfreiheit kritisiert worden.
http://www.berlinonline.de
/2001/08.16
PASSION
Nicht ohne meinen Moon
Maritta Tkalec
Sie war eine schöne Braut, ganz in Weiß, und sie bekam es hin, überzeugend glücklich auszusehen –
so glücklich wie ihr Angetrauter und fast so glücklich wie diejenigen, die ihr zu diesem Glück verholfen
hatten. Das war vor allem Sektenführer Reverend Moon, der die bis dahin unbekannte koreanische
Akupunkturärztin Maria Sung zur Trauung mit dem länger bekannten katholischen Erzbischof Milingo
aus dem afrikanischen Sambia auserwählt hatte. Die Moon-Sekte, die es lieber hat, wenn sie
Vereinigungskirche genannt wird, sicherte sich mit dieser speziellen Trauung während der
Massenhochzeit am 27. Mai wochenlange Aufmerksamkeit, und über die auserwählte
Hauptdarstellerin kann sie sich bis heute nur freuen.
Da war zunächst der vorteilhafte Umstand, dass sie Maria heißt – was der weltweit einzigen Gattin
eines katholischen Erzbischofs gut ansteht. Auch äußerlich scheint die 46-Jährige passend gewählt
für den Geschmack eines als aktiv bekannten 71-Jährigen, der gern so robuste Zeremonien wie
Teufelsaustreibungen praktiziert. Maria Sung tritt selbstbewusst und kräftig auf, so manche Seele mag
auch von ihrer Emotionalität beeindruckt sein. Das ist wichtig, denn Gefühl hat im Drehbuch dieser
religionspolitisch aufgeladenen Seifenoper mit der alten Geschichte (Sie dürfen zueinander nicht
kommmen .) die entscheidende Rolle zu spielen. Die Stimmungen waren heiter gefärbt im ersten Teil
(Hochzeit, Flitterwochen), Wechselbad der Gefühle (sie lieben sich, aber böse Mächte, sprich der
Papst, lassen es nicht zu) im Mittelteil. Und dann ein Ende, das vom sentimentalen Beobachter als
tragisch empfunden werden kann, für die Moon-Kirche aber in jedem Fall auf ein Happyend
hinausläuft.
Maria Sung arbeitet mit vollem, auch körperlichem Einsatz daran. Sie bietet den nach Sommerstorys
dürstenden Medien ihre Tränen. Sie droht dem Vatikan mit Klage wegen Entführung ihres Mannes.
Sie spricht – frei nach Sektenvater Moon – davon, dass Mann und Frau ein göttlich Ding seien und
wunderbar schöpferisch zusammen wirken können. Dann erwähnt sie, jetzt ganz zart, die Möglichkeit
einer Schwangerschaft. Trotz dieser (vielleicht) veränderten Umstände trat Maria Sung in den
Hungerstreik, und die vatikanische Kulisse hilft, ihre Passion öffentlich zu halten.
Jetzt ist der Konflikt auf seinem Höhepunkt angelangt. Erzbischof Milingo schrieb, seiner
Exkommunikation zuvorkommend, am Dienstagabend dem Papst: ". gliedere ich mein Leben in
diesem Moment von ganzem Herzen wieder in die katholische Kirche ein. Ich verzichte auf mein
Zusammenleben mit Maria Sung und auf meine Beziehungen mit Rev. Moon und der FamilienFöderation für Weltfrieden."
Maria Sung wird jetzt noch einige kämpferische Szenen darbieten können und – früher oder später –
zwar in der Pose der Verzweifelten, dennoch im Triumph vom Petersplatz ziehen. Gerade über dem
Grab Petri, gerade in Rom, wo das Christentum dank seiner Märtyrer zu Kräften kam, ward eine
Märtyrerin. Was für ein Geniestreich ist Moon da gelungen.
http://www.petermaass.com
Moon at Twilight
The New Yorker, September 14, 1998
Amid scandal, the Unification Church has a strange new mission.
A little before dawn one day last April, a chauffeur-driven Mercedes sedan entered the grounds of an
estate in Tarrytown, New York, and stopped in front of a brick carriage house that had been converted
into a meeting room. An elderly passenger in a business suit got out of the car and, with his wife a few
steps behind him, walked inside, where some hundred and fifty people were singing hymns. The
singing stopped when the couple entered and made their way through the room. The worshippers
shuffled aside, bowing their heads. Once the man and his wife were seated, everyone bowed again,
this time dropping to their knees and touching their foreheads to the floor.
The Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification Church, had come to deliver a sermon
at Belvedere, as the church’s Hudson Valley estate is called, and on this Sunday, April 19th, his topics
included love, God, Satan, money, Christianity, Adam and Eve, sin, the afterlife, kissing, adultery,
America, redemption, and numerology. Moon, who has the leathery complexion of a fisherman,
occasionally spoke English, but his accent is heavy and his grammar imperfect. Most of the time, he
spoke Korean, and his remarks were translated.
As he moved lightly around the small stage, followed by an interpreter, Moon drew abstract diagrams
on a chalkboard – circles and swirls and crosses and graphs, which had the appearance of
mathematical formulas intertwined with football plays; occasionally he drew Chinese characters.
Several times, he held up someone’s hair, to make the point that even the thinnest strands can
contain both good and evil. His sermon was punctuated with comic touches, including an interlude in
which he chalked a line down his interpreter’s forehead, nose, and lips, down his chin and neck, and
down his shirt as far as his waist. I heard giggles.
By that time, everyone was sitting cross-legged on the floor – women on the left, men on the right.
They had left their shoes in a pile at the door. Because of the early hour and the length of the sermon,
there was some fidgeting, some nodding off. Moon noticed this, but the sermon continued. At one
point, Moon complained about financial mismanagement by senior aides, and thereafter he harangued
them intermittently and threw a glass of cold tea at one of them. He then picked up another glass of
tea and looked at his slightly stunned followers. “Anyone want a cold shower?” he asked, winding up
as if to throw it. There was a ripple of nervous laughter. “No one understands Father,” he concluded,
referring to himself by the name his followers use. “Not even Mother and his children.”
Many people have had trouble understanding Sun Myung Moon, who came to America in 1971 with a
handful of followers, most of them from South Korea and Japan. He soon had greater financial
resources than seemed possible for the leader of a small group from a poor Asian nation. Moon’s
message was clear enough: he warned that if the world became dominated by an atheistic political
system, Communism, there would be no hope for religion. Some skeptics, though, came to view him
as a puppet for the anti-Communist interests of South Korea’s government and Japan’s far-right
nationalists.
Yet Moon’s breakaway theology, which mixes Christianity with anti-Communism and Confucianism,
attracted thousands of disciples. It also brought with it considerable controversy. His critics, including
some former church members, said that new recruits were discouraged from having contact with the
outside world – and especially with family members. The church denied this, as well as charges that
Moon was brainwashing followers; many parents hired professional"deprogrammers” to return their
wayward sons and daughters from the control of what became known as the Moonies.
Moon also established businesses that make everything from machine tools to ginseng extract,
although it has never been clear how these ventures produced the amounts that were needed to
nourish his movement’s cultural and political projects. A conspicuous beneficiary of his largesse is the
Washington Times, the newspaper that he founded in 1982 to promote a conservative agenda in the
nation’s capital; the paper has received more than a billion dollars from the Unification movement.
(Moon has also started papers in New York, Seoul, Tokyo, and, in 1996, Buenos Aires.) Although a
number of editors and staffers left the Washington Times amid controversy over church meddling, the
paper became, and has remained, an important source of information for the American right.
With the end of the Cold War, Moon’s message began to change in substantial ways. Church-linked
firms have been investing in Communist nations rather than combatting them. A church firm runs a
hotel in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea; Panda Motors was a costly (and unsuccessful) venture
to manufacture cars in southern China. Moon still believes that Satan is battling God for control of the
world and must be defeated, but he declares that the main threat no longer comes from Communism
but from moral decay.
Today, much of Moon’s energy and money is being channelled into the Family Federation for World
Peace and Unification, inaugurated by Moon and his wife in 1996, which promotes family values and
faith in God. The business cards now handed out by church leaders usually bear the name and logo of
the Family Federation, and it was under the auspices of the federation, not the Unification Church, that
a mass wedding was staged in June in Madison Square Garden. Moon has strengthened his alliances
with a number of conservative religious figures, including Jerry Falwell. (Falwell’s Liberty University
was saved from bankruptcy after an organization founded by Moon turned over three and a half million
dollars to it in 1995.) Moon has also reached out to the Nation of Islam, and its members attend his
events; last year, Louis Farrakhan spoke at a mass wedding in Washington, D.C.
This shift toward the federation comes at a time of difficulty for the Unification Church. The church
claims that at its peak, in the nineteen-eighties, it had an active membership in America that exceeded
thirty thousand, and that the number remains at roughly that level today. Critics say membership never
reached ten thousand and has fallen to just a few thousand. Former church insiders have spoken of
financial excesses at the heart of the “true family,” as Moon’s family is called. At least two of the
thirteen children Moon had with his current wife (he has a son from an earlier marriage that ended in
divorce) reportedly rebelled against him.
The most damaging scandal involves Hyo Jin, Moon’s eldest son by his current wife and onetime heir
apparent. In 1995, Hyo Jin’s wife, Nansook Hong, fled the family compound in Irvington, New York,
taking her five children, and subsequently filed for divorce and for a restraining order against Hyo Jin.
In affidavits, she outlined a tale of drug use and spousal abuse by Hyo Jin, accusing him of “secreting
himself in the master bedroom, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days, drinking alcohol, using
cocaine and watching pornographic films.” She said he beat her repeatedly, even when she was
pregnant. Hyo Jin, through his lawyer, denies Nansook’s accusations. Hyo Jin was jailed for a few
months after failing to obey a court order to pay sixty-five thousand dollars toward Hong’s legal fees.
At the end of 1997, Hyo Jin and Nansook reached a divorce agreement, in which she was granted full
custody of their children. Nansook Hong has written a tell-all memoir, “In the Shadow of the Moons,”
which is being published this month byLittle, Brown, and she is scheduled to appear this Sunday on
“60 Minutes.” Yet despite such problems, Moon, who is seventy-eight, is beginning what may be his
most ambitious campaign to eliminate evil from the world.
Moon often travels in his private jet between estates in New York, Alaska, Seoul, and Punta del Este,
Uruguay, but his latest venture is unfolding in an expanse of jungle and grassland near Brazil’s border
with Paraguay. There Moon is building a utopian community called New Hope, which is heralded as
the beginning of a modern-day Garden of Eden.
Moon envisions a total of thirty-three communities within a hundred-and-twenty-mile radius of New
Hope, and he wants these to inspire similar communities elsewhere in Brazil, throughout South
America, and beyond. According to the official Web site (www.new-hope-farm.com.br), “Project New
Hope has the ambition of becoming, within 7 or 8 years, an example of progress, beauty and
happiness for the whole world.” So far, Moon’s movement has invested about twenty-five million
dollars, according to the project manager, Cesar Zaduski, and has acquired more than eighty-six
thousand acres of land.
New Hope is situated outside the town of Jardim, in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, and last
spring I went there to see what progress had been made. I arrived by bus from the state capital,
Campo Grande, and on a warm evening in May my taxi-driver headed out of town on a two-lane road
with no painted lines and no shoulder. There were no houses and no road signs on either side – just
the Brazilian hinterland and a succession of cattle eyes in our headlights. Then a sign said “New Hope
Farm” and an arrow pointed left, into more darkness. We soon came upon a bridge, and as we
reached its crest a row of lights appeared a short distance away.
When I was at New Hope, more than a hundred construction workers were on the job, and a dozen
bulldozers and tractors were parked in front of several nearly finished buildings, which had the look of
a California community college. The complex is dominated by two buildings nearly the size of football
fields, with roofs of red tile and walls of white stucco. One of them, crowned with oversized insignias of
the Unification Church and the Family Federation, is a meeting hall. The other is the dining hall, but it,
too, contains a number of meeting rooms. Not far away is a small lake, and a few hundred yards from
that are six structures, in various stages of completion, that are to be classrooms for the some three
thousand students who will eventually study there. The first group of students – most of them to be
recruited from the area, with only a modest number of church members among them – are supposed
to arrive in February.
If all goes as planned, students and researchers at New Hope will be linked via satellite to classrooms
across the globe, but particularly to the University of Bridgeport, in Connecticut, which a church-linked
organization took effective control of in 1992, in exchange for a loan of sixty million dollars (much to
the dismay of some members of the university community, who felt that their impoverished campus
had been taken over by a cult). One aim of New Hope, according to Zaduski, a former church pastor,
is to focus on ways to encourage environmentally responsible development in the Third World. “What
Moon says is that the era of big cities, like São Paulo and Rio, is over,” Zaduski told me. Zaduski, who
speaks fluent English, conducts himself much like the harried manager of any construction job; he
complains about the quality of workers and the need to alter things if the boss-Moon-doesn’t approve.
“Sometimes we do something and he comes here and…we have to change it,” he said with a shrug.
During our talk, the door to Zaduski’s office was shut to keep out the construction noise. Technicians
were fiddling with the compound’s phone system, which will have high-speed data links. A Japanese
architect was soldering together a model for a three-hundred-foot-tall geodesic dome that he hopes to
build. The office had a Samsung computer in one corner and several new phones behind a modular
desk. A blueprint of New Hope was propped against a wall, showing university buildings, a soccer
field, a convention center, a spacious home for Moon, and much more.
Moon has frequently cited the significance of the number thirty-three, the age Jesus was when He was
crucified. Zaduski pointed out that there were thirty-three signers of a Korean declaration of
independence in 1919, there were thirty-three “immortals” who led the fight for Uruguayan
independence, and there are thirty-three countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Hence, the
thirty-three communities planned for the area centered on New Hope. The project’s Web site states,
“Each city…should choose one type of tree, one kind of fish, one kind of bird or animal, one kind of
fruit, foodstuff, or flower to produce in a massive concentrated way with coöperation from surrounding
farmers, in order to make possible prosperity and development in their area.” The region around New
Hope is supposed to become a “Micro-World” in which the culture of every member of the United
Nations will be displayed in their own areas. Or, as the Web site puts it, “Micro-Germany, microHungary, micro-Italy, etc.”
I suggested to Zaduski that the project seems at times like a fusion of “Heart of Darkness” and
“Through the Looking-Glass.” He smiled. “What he (Moon) said is ‘If people help me, it will go faster. If
they don’t help me, it will take longer, but I won’t stop.’ I believe him, because that’s what Reverend
Moon is like. If Brazil doesn’t like it, we will go to Uruguay. If Uruguay doesn’t like it, we will go to
Paraguay. If South America doesn’t like it, we will go to Africa.”
About two dozen church members – from Asia, the Americas, and Eastern Europe – were living at
New Hope when I visited, and they were busying themselves with odd jobs related to the construction,
accompanied by a menagerie that included parrots and emus. The dorms seemed Spartan – beds
were narrow and walls were bare – but there was electricity and running water.
On my first day, a Sunday, a bell pealed at four-thirty in the morning. Church members gathered for a
service in the dining hall, which was furnished with a few plastic patio chairs. They faced a photograph
of Moon and his wife, and the service began with everyone bowing before the photo. Two talks were
given in Portuguese by ranking church members, and then, after another prayer, the service ended. It
was six o’clock: the sun was rising over the tree line, and the jungle’s million and one creatures began
screeching and singing and cawing.
Sun Myung Moon was born in a farming village in northwestern Korea, and at the age of fifteen, he
says, while he was praying alone on a hillside near his home Jesus appeared before him and asked
him to fulfill His mission. Moon says Refused-twice – but after Jesus asked a third time he consented.
According to a sympathetic biograpy by Michael Breen, a journalist and lapsed church member Moon
studied electrical engineering in Seoul and later in Tokyo. When he returned to Seoul, he joined a
group called the Israel Jesus Church, which taught that Korea would be the new Israel, where the
Second Coming of Christ would occur. In 1946, Moon travelled to Pyongyang to spread the word, but
he was arrested and imprisoned by the Communist authorities there for disturbing the social order.
Released after a few months, he was arrested again in 1948, and this time he was sentenced to five
years of hard labor. He and his fellow-prisoners were apparently freed by their guards in 1950, the first
year of the Korean War, after bombing destroyed the labor camp.. He thereupon made his way south,
and in 1954 he established the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, which
eventually became known as the Unification Church.
The core of Moon’s beliefs, expressed in “Divine Principle,” a four-hundred-and-eleven-page book, is
that Eve was seduced by Satan in the Garden of Eden and had illicit sexual relations with Adam.. This
violated God’s desire that Adam and Eve await His blessing of their union before becoming intimate
and having children. Their offspring were thus tainted by Satan’s influence; evil invaded the human
spirit. God later sent Jesus to establish a pure family on earth, free of evil, but Jesus was crucified
before He could marry and have children. Moon sees the essence of his own mission as completing
the one given to Jesus – establishing a “true family” untouched by Satan while teaching all people to
lead a God-centered life under his spiritual leadership.
Moon rarely allows outsiders an intimate glimpse of his private life and, apart from a meeting with a
group of Soviet journalists in 1989, hasn’t granted an interview in two decades. Church members are
not supposed to tape-record or take photographs during his sermons, and journalists are generally
prohibited from attending. Although I was refused an interview with Moon, earlier this year his aides
allowed me to attend his sermons at Belvedere, and also to visit his residential estate, in nearby
Irvington. There were many reasons for this, the most important of which seemed to be that I had once
lived in South Korea, as a correspondent for the Washington Post, and had become acquainted with
some church members.
The sermons begin at 5:30 a.m., but church members, dressed in their Sunday finest, arrive earlier,
forming a stop-and-go caravan at Belvedere. A guard recognizes members and waves them through,
but shines a flashlight on people he doesn’t recognize and inspects their I.D.s. At a basement
entrance to the carriage house, there is a metal detector, and a guard lightly inspects handbags and
briefcases. A narrow, rickety staircase leads to the meeting room, a former garage. It has a piano in a
corner and a collection of pictures on the walls: there is a picture of one of the mass weddings (known
as “blessings” in church parlance), and another of a 1976 rally at the Washington Monument. The
majority of the church members at the sermons are of Asian origin – mostly Korean and Japanese.
The garage door at the back of the room is kept open, and latecomers sit outdoors, on folding chairs,
and if it happens to rain they stay in place and open umbrellas.
Moon speaks at great length. During one sermon I attended, Moon sensed restlessness and said to
his flock, smiling, “Are you enjoying this? Father’s record for giving sermons is sixteen hours and forty
minutes.” Frederick Sontag, a professor of philosophy at Pomona College who interviewed Moon in
1977, had expected something like a half-hour session but ended up talking with Moon for nine hours.
“I ran out of questions and he was still sitting there,” Sontag told me.
Moon uses people in the front rows as props. He often talks about the unity of all races, and on
occasion he will nudge together the heads of followers who have taken the sought-after front-row
places. If he wants to dramatize a point, he may slap the top of someone’s head with his hand or with
the back of his eraser. This is made of hard plastic, and the sound of it hitting a head is like that of a
bat hitting a baseball.
Moon will on occasion slap the brow of his interpreter, Peter Kim, and this makes a lively sound. Moon
may grab Kim’s tie and tug him one way or another, playfully kick his behind, or paw the front of Kim’s
jacket, imitating, on one occasion, a baby looking for its mother’s breast. Kim has been Moon’s
interpreter for many years, so they are like a team – in their happier moments, a spiritual Abbott and
Costello.
There are darker moments, of course, because Moon has a relatively dark view of the state of things.
Although Moon moved to America because he saw it as the leading Christian nation of the world, now
he sees it as a nation of moral rot.
“Don’t you think Father has loved America?” he said on April 19th.
“Yes,” his followers responded, together.
“More than anyone else?” Moon asked.
“Yes,” the crowd said.
“More than even George Washington?”
“Yes.”
“Who was the first one to love this country?”
“Father.”
“Between George Washington and True Parents, who is in a higher position?”
“True Parents.”
Little seems to shock Moon’s followers – not even his unorthodox discourses about sex and anatomy.
One of the unusual aspects of his sermons is that, although he talks relentlessly about the evils of
“free sex” – that is, premarital sex, adultery, and homosexuality – he engages in intimate discussions
of sexual activity, and he makes it clear that a fulfilling sex life within marriage makes God happy.
“Can we say that the waste of a holy man is holy waste?” he asked during a sermon on May 1st. “Can
we say that the anus of a holy man is a holy anus?”
Nobody in the audience was quite sure what to say, so Moon continued: “On the human body we have
many orifices, but which orifice does the baby come through, the most special one?”
“Sexual organ,” a few people replied, tentatively.
“But doesn’t urine also come out of there? Why? It’s like that with a seed. You bury it under smelly
topsoil. You understand?”
“Yes.”
Moon noted that a man’s penis-“love organ” was the term used by Peter Kim, looking a bit uneasy –
goes into the same “hole” that urine flows through.
“Think about it,” Moon said. “Do you think that hole is a dirty hole or holy hole?”
“Holy hole,” someone ventured.
“Holy hole!” Moon bubbled in English. “Holy hole! Holy hole! Make sound!”
“Holy hole!” the crowd repeated.
To some extent, they are humoring the old man – or, at least, responding as they think he wants them
to respond. At his Easter sermon, Moon talked about his hopes for converting krill, which whales feed
on, into food for human beings. He heard a few giggles in the room.
“This all looks impractical, but it is practical,” he said. “As a religious leader, Father was expected to
behave in a certain way, but Father never behaved in that way. He became active in politics and
economics. Father had to do it.Now Father is thinking of space. Father is thinking of Olympics not only
on land but in space.”
There were more giggles, but when the crowd noticed Moon’s less than pleased expression, applause
broke out.
“Do you think this is a dream, or will it be achieved?” he asked.
“Achieved!” the crowd roared.
“Whatever Father says, do you believe and want?”
“Yes!”
After the April 19th sermon, Tyler Hendricks, who is the president of the American branch of the
Unification Church, suggested that he and I go up the road to Irvington and visit Moon’s residential
estate, East Garden. The compound, which has a splendid view of the Hudson River, is gated,
monitored by security cameras, and patrolled by a private security force. At the front gate, there is a
brick guardhouse; from there, a steep, winding driveway, about a quarter mile long, leads to three
houses. One is an old mansion with twelve bedrooms. Moon’s children and grandchildren live there
and in a recently built Tudor-style house. Moon lives in a three-story house that looks like an immense,
attractively designed bunker. A church insider acknowledged that it cost more than ten million dollars
to build.
Hendricks and I took off our shoes and went inside. The ground floor includes a banquet hall, a
restaurant-size kitchen, and a dining room with a wall-to-wall skylight. The dining table is bordered on
two sides by a pond filled with carp. A rock garden, watered by an overhead sprinkler system, slopes
down toward the pond, which is fed by a waterfall. It is like dining in a rain forest.
Moon was upstairs in his living room, but his advisers were in the dining room, having a lunch of
bibimbap, a Korean dish of rice, vegetables, and meat. Bowls of kimchi, a spicy cabbage appetizer,
were placed on the table. Hendricks and I sat down and joined the others, using silver chopsticks that
had been laid out for us. There was intermittent conversation; it had been a long morning for Moon’s
brain trust. Peter Kim rubbed his lower back and grimaced, making it clear that interpreting for five
hours is a hard job, especially when the person you are translating for tends to slap your forehead and
draw on your face.
The path to Moon himself leads through an inner circle of perhaps half a dozen Koreans, including Bo
Hi Pak, a former colonel in South Korea’s Army, and Dong Moon Joo, the president of the Washington
Times. This circle is joined, in part, by a network of arranged marriages. For example, Bo Hi Pak’s son
Jin Sung is married to one of Moon’s daughters, and Bo Hi Pak’s daughter Julia was engaged to
Heung Jin, a son of Moon’s, who died in a car crash. A marriage ceremony was held after Heung Jin’s
death, and Julia, considered one of Moon’s daughters-in-law, adopted a child born to one of Moon’s
other sons. She is the leading ballerina in the Seoul-based Universal Ballet, which is sponsored by
Moon.
Bo Hi Pak came to America as an attaché in the South Korean Embassy, and later became Moon’s
point man in America. In 1978, while the church was under investigation as part of a congressional
probe into the influence-peddling scandal known as Koreagate, Pak used the occasion of a Capitol Hill
hearing to accuse the subcommittee chairman, Representative Donald Fraser, of being “an instrument
of the Devil.” The committee’s report, released late that year, accused Moon of trying to establish “a
worldwide government in which the separation of church and state would be abolished and which
would be governed by Moon and his followers.” In 1981, Moon was indicted by a federal grand jury for
tax evasion; he was convicted in 1982 and later incarcerated at the federal penitentiary in Danbury,
Connecticut, for just under a year.
Late last year, over lunch in Washington, Pak told me about a visit to Moscow in 1990, and how Moon
had declared that they would meet the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. “I was astounded,” Pak said.
“I was the man trying to make arrangements!” But the meeting took place, helped, no doubt, by the
prospect of investments from firms under Moon’s control. Pak was at Moon’s side as they drove away
from the Kremlin, and he recalled, “He said to me, ‘I’m going to meet Kim Il Sung.’ I said ‘Who?’” A
year later, Moon did meet the North Korean leader. I asked Pak what he thought of Moon. “He’s an
enigma,” Pak said. “Even after forty years, I can’t pinpoint who he is.”
Moon gets harder to pinpoint because his mission keeps changing – right now it’s acampaign, under
the aegis of the Family Federation, to “bless” millions of couples. Moon’s followers around the world
have been collecting signatures on an innocuous pro-family pledge in which couples affirm their fidelity
to each other and their faith in God. Church officials say that a hundred and twenty million couples
have already received their blessing, although that figure seems unlikely.
The campaign has dismayed some church members, because a blessing from Moon used to be a
hard-won privilege, typically attained only after a person had joined the church, worked in it for several
years, and agreed to marry someone – usually a stranger – selected by Moon. But grumblings about
the blessing campaign are just the beginning of Moon’s current troubles. Instead of being damaged by
various traditional foes – Communists, Catholics, deprogrammers, the I.R.S. – Moon is being hurt,
perhaps fatally, by problems in his own family.
The affidavits by Moon’s former daughter-in-law, Nansook Hong, brought into view another damaging
claim that had never been made by a family member: that corrupting amounts of cash accumulated
around the upper echelons of the Moon family. “On one occasion, I saw Hyo Jin bring home a box
about 24 inches wide, twelve inches tall and six inches deep,” she said in one affidavit. “He stated that
he had received it from his father. He opened it and showed me its contents. It was filled with $100
bills stacked in bunches of $10,000 each for a total of $1,000,000 in cash!” She added that he had
given six hundred thousand dollars to the Manhattan Center Studios, a recording facility he ran for the
church, and had kept four hundred thousand dollars right in their room – petty cash for his own use. A
church spokesman has said that her allegations about the misuse of church funds are untrue.
What draws people to a man who seems distinctly uncharismatic and speaks language that most of
his American followers don’t understand? David Bromley, a professor of sociology and religious
studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, who has co-written a book about the Unification Church,
believes that the bulk of Moon’s remaining followers were recruited in the seventies, when both the
establishment and the counterculture were falling apart. Bromley says that the sense of joining a
close, purposeful community was crucial, and that it is no coincidence that church members refer to
each other as “brother” and “sister” or that Moon is called Father.
One evening in late spring, I was driving from Manhattan to Moon’s East Garden estate with several
church members. I asked Betty Lancaster, one of the first Americans to join the Unification Church,
how she had managed to stay with Moon for so long, given that he seemed to have achieved so little
and was so isolated, with only a handful of followers. She mentioned the story of Noah, and said that
Noah was mocked while building his ark and probably felt a bit lonely.
But what of Moon’s peculiarities – his bizarre ideas, such as building a highway around the world? (He
has had brochures drawn up and routes outlined.) His loyalists say he tests their faith, just as God
tested that of the Israelites in the Old Testament. Why, they ask, cannot the messiah be as
temperamental and unpredictable as God? “Often, he says his life style doesn’t follow human logic or
human thinking,” said Christian Lepelletier, a longtime church member, who is from France. “He is
connected to God.”
There are, certainly, differing degrees of devotion among Moon’s followers; the fact that they bow at
the right moment or shout “Mansei!” in unison doesn’t mean they believe everything Moon says, or do
precisely what he commands. Even on important issues, like Moon’s claiming to be the messiah, there
are church members whom I met, including a close aide to Moon, who demur. A religious leader whom
they respect and whose theology they believe, yes; the messiah, perhaps not.
Although some critics view Moon’s movement as a continuing menace, a mellowing of sorts is under
way, according to Larry Moffitt, a prominent American member. Moffit joined the church in 1974 and
later married a Japanese woman chosen for him by Moon. The couple have five children and live in
Buenos Aires, where Moffitt is an associate publisher of Tiempos del Mundo, a church-linked
newspaper based in Buenos Aires and available in sixteen countries. Although Moon often predicts in
his sermons that a breakthrough is near, Moffitt realizes that Moon may not come to be seen as the
messiah in his lifetime. “You can’t look at it in a ten-year frame,” he said. “A new religion is a sixhundred-year start-up. Look at all the major faiths. It required four hundred years for Christianity to
take over Rome.” That wasn’t the attitude two decades ago, or even a decade ago, when there was a
greater sense of urgency in the church – a sense that victory was just around the corner.
On a windy day in April, with the accord of Moon’s advisers, I went to a marina near his estate and
waited there with a dozen of his followers. At eight-thirty in the morning, he pulled up in a chauffeured
sports utility vehicle. He was dressed casually, in green slacks and a baseball cap. He walked to the
dock, and, after receiving quick bows from his followers, he boarded his fishing boat. His gear was
already laid out on the craft, including a tackle box with the words “True Father’s” imprinted on it.
Three boats headed out with Moon’s, and I was on one of them, along with Tyler Hendricks and
Takeru Kamiyama, who had been imprisoned with Moon at Danbury in the eighties. The weather was
miserable: a strong wind kicked up choppy waves, and water splashed over the gunwales. Moon sat at
the stern, watching his rods, which were held in place by brackets. He rarely spoke, and when he
reeled in a line, an aide quickly handed him another rod, with fresh bait on its hook. Moon then cast
the line into the Hudson, stuck the pole into a bracket, and waited.
The striped bass were not biting; the waters were too turbulent. But Moon stayed on the Hudson. At
irregular intervals an order would come over the ship-to-ship radio, and suddenly we would speed off
in a new direction, chasing after Moon’s boat. “We go! We go!” the Japanese pilot of my boat yelled,
half in exultation, half in fear that we might lose Moon. The pilot had no idea where we were headed;
we just followed Moon’s boat for miles up and down the Hudson. This went on for nine chilly hours.
Moon has told followers that he meditates while he is fishing, and that his goal is not to catch fish but
to get closer to God and, on days like this, pay “indemnity” for the sins of humankind. If the weather is
foul and the fish aren’t biting, it’s because God wants it that way.
http://www.nytimes.com
October 15, 2009
At Time of Change for Rev. Moon Church, a Return to Tradition
By CHOE SANG-HUN
SEOUL, South Korea – Thousands of couples from more than 100 countries traveled here to tie the
knot Wednesday in what was seen as the last mass wedding officiated by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon,
the controversial and enigmatic founder of the Unification Church.
The mass wedding – often involving the exchange of vows between partners selected by Mr. Moon
himself – is perhaps the best-known and most controversial feature of Mr. Moon’s church. But for
members of his flock, the weddings symbolize his teachings of “trans-religion, trans-national and transracial" love.
The confetti-filled 90-minute spectacle, broadcast live on the Internet in three languages, was the
largest Mr. Moon had organized since 1999, when 21,000 couples filled Seoul’s Olympic Stadium. It
came as the church has been struggling to revamp its image and increase its stagnant membership
under Mr. Moon’s three sons, who have begun taking over day-to-day responsibilities for his religious
and business empire.
The three sons, all U.S.-educated, are more media savvy than their reclusive father and have given a
series of interviews in recent months. The church has also revamped its Web sites, which are filled
with video clips of Mr. Moon and his sons.
Mr. Moon, who is 89, and his wife, Han Hak-ja, are known among his followers as the “true parents of
all humankind.” Seated at an altar festooned with flowers and shaped like an ancient Korean royal
throne, they smiled and nodded when 10,000 couples gathered at a lawn of the church’s Sun Moon
University south of Seoul bowed to them on Wednesday.
Row after row of brides in white gowns or traditional wedding costumes of their countries stood holding
hands with grooms mostly clad in black suits.
Half of them were married for the first time, with the rest renewing their wedding vows.
When Mr. Moon led three rounds of “Hurray” at the end of the ceremony, firecrackers exploded and
confetti rained down from above.
Similar mass weddings, smaller but hooked up to the South Korean event via Web links, took place
around the world – in Norway, Sweden, Japan, Venezuela, Honduras and the United States.
“The blessing you are receiving today is the most precious thing, one cannot exchange anything in the
world,” the Rev. Moon Hyung-jin, the 30-year-old son of Mr. Moon, said as he opened the ceremony.
Mr. Moon began the group weddings in the 1960s, marrying a few dozen couples at a time. But they
grabbed world attention when they grew in size.
Some 2,500 church couples exchanged or affirmed their vows in November 1997 in a ceremony at
RFK Stadium in Washington. A crowd of nearly 40,000 turned out for that event.
The global mass weddings on Wednesday were to celebrate Mr. Moon’s upcoming 90th birthday in
January, church officials say. In recent years, the ceremonies became smaller as Mr. Moon came
under pressure amid accusations at home and abroad that he was brainwashing his followers into
donating their life savings to his church and marrying partners selected by him.
Previously, most couples met their spouses for the first time at the wedding. He also arranged for
South Korean church members, including some of his own grandchildren, to marry followers from
Japan, the former colonial ruler of Korea, saying that the two nations could build love through
marriages.
In recent media interviews, Moon Hyung-jin, who married a bride chosen by his father when he was
17, said that the church had modified the practice and that couples now met and dated well before
their weddings.
He was designated last year to take over religious leadership of the church. Another son, Moon Kookjin, 39, was put in charge of the church’s business ventures in South Korea, which include
construction, newspapers, hospitals, schools, tourism, ski resorts, beverages and a professional
soccer team. A third son, Moon Hyun-jin, 40, oversees international operations.
The church owns the Washington Times newspaper and the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan, as well
as the New York-based gun manufacturer Kahr Arms. The senior Mr. Moon served 13 months in a
U.S. prison on tax evasion charges in the 1980s.
Moon Hyung-jin studied theology at Harvard University, where he went about campus with a shaved
head and dressed in a Buddhist robe. Today, with slicked-back hair, he leads a congregation in Seoul,
where he plays rock-like gospel music and has vowed to undertake reforms like increasing
transparency in fund-raising. But he said he “could never replace my father,” who church officials say
will remain forever as the “Messiah.”
The elder Mr. Moon, born in what is now North Korea, said that when he was 15, Jesus appeared to
him while he was praying on a mountaintop and asked him to complete his unfinished work. According
to his official biography, he was persecuted by the Communists and fled to South Korea during the
1950-3 Korean War. He founded his church, officially named the Family Federation for World Peace
and Unification, in 1954.
In 1991, he traveled to North Korea to meet Kim Il-sung, the North Korean founder and president. His
church now runs an auto company and a hotel in Pyongyang.
Mr. Moon claims his church has a presence in 193 countries. But it was never recognized by orthodox
Christian churches in South Korea, which dominate religious life here, along with Buddhist sects.
Indeed, the mass wedding on Wednesday drew little attention here. South Korean media only carried
brief dispatches on the event, but many of them focused on the fact that a daughter of the late military
strongman Park Chung-hee renewed her wedding vows during the event, although she said she was
not a church member.
Park Geun-ryeong, 55, a Roman Catholic, told the mass-circulation Dong-A daily: “I join in a transreligious spirit. I like the Unification Church way of interpreting the Bible, incorporating the Koran and
Buddhist scripts.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com
A Church in Flux Is Flush With Cash
By Marc Fisher and Jeff Leen, November 23, 1997
Even as the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church falters as a religion in the United States, it
remains a robust, diverse business – especially in the Washington area, where the movement controls
more than $300 million in commercial, political and cultural enterprises.
From rundown city storefronts to gleaming suburban office buildings, from ornately refurbished
mansions to mundane tract housing, organizations owned or sponsored by Moon and his inner circle
of Korean and American followers hold properties stretching from Prince George's to Fairfax counties,
according to corporate, property and court records.
This vast and bewildering multinational could be called Moon Inc. It is a sprawling collection of
churches, nonprofit foundations and for-profit holding companies whose global operations include
computers and religious icons in Japan, seafood in Alaska, weapons and ginseng in Korea, huge
tracts of land in South America, a university in Bridgeport, Conn., a recording studio and travel agency
in Manhattan, a horse farm in Texas and a golf course in California.
In the Washington area, the Unification Church's investment is an important cog in a global machine
that Moon uses to boost his credibility, spread his spiritual doctrine and win political influence,
according to current and former church members.
As the Unification movement evolved from selling roses on street corners to acquiring control of a
nationwide cable channel, the nation's capital became the epicenter of Moon's U.S. holdings. Those
include the Washington Times newspaper, a video production firm and a stately old church, once the
pride of the Mormons, along 16th Street NW. Washington-area property owned by the church, its
affiliated companies or senior church officials is worth more than $200 million, according to property
and corporate records.
Washington will be the focus of the worldwide Unification movement this week, as Moon-sponsored
organizations hold a series of academic conferences and the World Sports and Culture Festival,
culminating Saturday with a mass wedding at RFK Stadium. Here and at locations around the world,
the church says it will marry or reaffirm wedding vows of 3.6 million couples.
At 77, Moon presides over a church in flux, an embattled religion that has found only a small following
in this country despite nearly four decades of proselytizing. The South Korean self-declared Messiah
has grown increasingly vehement in his denunciations of American society; earlier this year, he
declared his intent to give up on his U.S. church. As the religion fades, even some loyal followers now
fear that Moon's most enduring legacy will be his multibillion-dollar business empire.
Within the Unification movement, Moon's spiritual and business ventures are viewed as part of a
unified whole. "Ideas without the money to back them up are just dreams," said Richard Rubenstein,
president of the movement-controlled University of Bridgeport. In church parlance, a position at a
church-related business is not a job, but a mission.
"The corporate section is understood to be the engine that funds the mission of the church," said
Virginia Commonwealth University sociologist David Bromley, who has studied the church for more
than 15 years. "The wealth base is fairly substantial. But if you were to compare it to the Mormon
Church or the Catholic Church or other churches that have massive landholdings, this doesn't look on
a global scale like a massive operation."
Since the 1970s, Moon has gained his highest profile in this country not with his church, but with the
Times, the 100,000-circulation daily that competes with The Washington Post.
Moon said earlier this year that he has spent more than $1 billion in subsidies for the paper over 15
years. Church members say the publication has never come close to turning a profit, but the paper has
become an established voice of conservative America, winning readers in the White House and praise
for its professionalism and scoops on national and local stories.
Beyond the Times, Moon-affiliated entities are linked by a complex web of interlocking directorships
and nurtured by a seemingly endless flow of cash from the Far East. That has enabled them to buy
new businesses such as the Nostalgia Network cable channel and even help bail out the Rev. Jerry
Falwell's foundering Liberty University.
Executives of Unification-related entities have acknowledged that money from Japan and Korea fuel
U.S. operations, but the magnitude and mechanism of those payments, as well as their exact sources,
have eluded investigators on three continents over the past three decades.
The rise of Moon's U.S. businesses and decline of his U.S. church – leaders say membership is
stagnant, former members contend it is declining – may prove merely that it is easier to sell seafood or
jewelry than a religion based on a unique merger of Western Christian theology and Eastern
Confucian temperament. Bromley compares Unificationism to 19th century American communal
religions such as the Oneidas, Shakers and Amanas, new faiths that began with a burst of energy, but
settled into entropy dominated by their business interests.
"Membership plummeted, and what remained was the corporate structure," Bromley said.
Moon's businesses exist for several purposes, church leaders and critics agree: to employ members,
to gain influence in industries Moon considers crucial to worldwide recognition of himself as Messiah,
and to support Moon's spiritual and political agenda.
Sometimes, that support is direct, as when Moon's nonprofit organizations contribute to conservative
political and social causes with financial donations, staff and publicity. And sometimes it is indirect, as
when Moon-sponsored groups stage academic, religious and cultural conferences, inviting professors,
clergy, media executives and other opinion-shapers to meetings, expenses paid.
"Of course, the whole thing is to buy respectability," said Marvin Borderlon, a Roman Catholic ex-priest
who is president of the American Conference on Religious Movements, a Rockville-based group that
fights discrimination against new religions. The group is funded by the Church of Scientology, the Hare
Krishna organization, and most of all, by Unificationists, who give him $3,000 a month, Borderlon said.
"They'll have a conference on the essence of religious founders, like Buddha, Jesus and guess who,"
Borderlon said. "He gets a room full of academics to sit there while he pronounces himself the
Messiah. He gets his picture taken with them. He gets credibility, they get to have their conference. It's
all very messy."
Borderlon, like many people who have received some of Moon's generous bounty, has never been
able to figure out the blizzard of organizations that make up Moon Inc. "My money is never from the
church itself," he said. "It's always the International Something or Other."
Wide-Ranging Interests
On two floors of an office building in Falls Church – purchased by a church-owned property
development company from conservative activist Richard Viguerie – the startling range of Moon's
interests and activities is played out along hallways bare of art or decoration.
On one corridor, the International Coalition for Religious Freedom – the group that Borderlon said
signs his checks these days – shares a suite with the Martial Arts Federation for World Peace and a
company called Washington Times Aviation. The only person in the suite on a recent visit was a
Korean man who spoke little English, saying only, "I am Martial Arts Federation. I work for Father," the
term by which devotees of Unificationism refer to Moon.
Church officials have for years denied any direct control of the myriad businesses, saying its members
run the companies and contribute to the church. But some members and internal publications indicate
Moon is deeply involved in directing corporate activities.
A column in a Unification Church of Washington newsletter in 1990 informs members of "Father's
Instructions": work on "economic, political, cultural whole system activity," recruit precisely 84 new
members, and proceed with "national organization of the fish . . . video and electronic media . . . and
jewelry businesses."
"Rev. Moon says many things," said Farley Jones, president of the Family Federation for World Peace
and Unification, the most important nonprofit in Moon's network. "Sometimes you have to sort through
it and select which activities to focus on."
Jones and a few other church leaders and members spoke to Post reporters, but most officials at
church-connected organizations and businesses did not return repeated calls for comment over the
past six weeks.
Moon's Washington enterprises range from a ballet academy to an architectural molding company on
14th Street NW to magazines such as Insight and the World & I.
"The idea was that we'd be like Disney, controlling all kinds of media, working on behalf of God," said
Ron Paquette, who was president of Manhattan Center Studio, the church's New York recording
facility, until he left the faith in 1994.
Paquette, whose job gave him access to financial information about several church-related
businesses, said he believes virtually none of Unification's U.S. operations is profitable. "A lot of the
stuff they do is for prestige, so they can show President Bush our dance academy and our
newspaper," Paquette said. "The idea is to bring Bush in, use his name and picture, buy Moon
credibility."
A 1978 congressional investigation into "the Moon organization" concluded that "the Unification
Church and numerous other religious and secular organizations headed by Sun Myung Moon
constitute essentially one international organization" that moved money freely among its entities.
In 1994, the Unification movement opened an unusual window onto that flow of money, as well as its
willingness to suffer sustained losses, when its Concept Communications subsidiary paid $11.5 million
for a controlling stake in the Nostalgia Network. It was the movement's first foray into a U.S. public
company, forcing it to disclose detailed information to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The cable TV channel – featuring reruns such as "The Rockford Files," "Tony Orlando and Dawn" and
"The Captain and Tennille" – has suffered sharp losses and dwindling access to cable households.
The number of households that get Nostalgia has dropped from 12 million to 7 million in the three
years since church-connected companies acquired control. Moon-related companies have spent more
than $60 million to gain control of the network and keep it afloat, SEC filings show.
When the Moon subsidiaries – Concept, Crown Communications and Crown Capital – took over
Nostalgia, they paid at least $2.30 a share, according to the companies' statements. Last week,
Nostalgia was trading at 7 cents.
With numbers like that, said Bruce Leichtman, a cable TV analyst for the Yankee Group, "you have to
fold. Unless, of course, you have an endless source of cash."
SEC filings show that the cash for Nostalgia comes through a chain of companies leading to the
Unification Church International. It's a vertically integrated operation common in Moon's empire:
Nostalgia leases offices from the Unification-owned Washington Television Center, part of the $90
million office building at 650 Massachusetts Ave. NW, which is owned by U.S. Property Development
Corp., which in turn is one of many Moon-connected companies under One Up Enterprises Inc., the
main holding company for the movement's U.S. businesses.
Nostalgia's production facilities are in the Alexandria headquarters of Atlantic Video, a Moonconnected company that was one of the area's top video production firms in the late 1980s. Its billings
have suffered recently, according to video industry figures.
Asked whether Moon-connected ventures operate in service of the church, Jonathan Park, a church
member who until 1991 ran Atlantic and several other Moon-related businesses, said, "That's an
interesting question. It's a worldwide organization. Specifically how they're all connected, I don't think
is very clear."
What is clear is that the most important building for many local Unification ventures is the Falls Church
office complex at 7777 Leesburg Pike, purchased for $10 million in 1987. This is headquarters of One
Up, a primary conduit for overseas cash coming into Unificationism's U.S. operations, according to
Paquette and other former church executives. One Up president Michael Runyon did not return calls
from The Post. (One Up, like many Moon-related ventures, draws its name from Moon's spiritual
teachings. His chinchilla farm is called One Mind Farms; the movie production company that made his
epic flop about the Korean War, "Inchon," was called One Way Productions.)
One Up last year had estimated sales of $232.3 million and 2,000 employees in its subsidiaries,
according to Dun & Bradstreet.
One Up and its parent, Unification Church International, not only share hallways with many churchsupported nonprofit groups, but help many such groups get started, current and former members said.
"The idea was to connect all these businesses to the church," said Bromley, the sociologist. "UCI was
then to control all the profit-making companies and . . . the profits from that are channeled into the notfor-profit foundations."
Those groups range from an inner-city runners' club called D.C. Striders Track Club to a 210-student
private school in Landover Hills called New Hope Academy. The academy's principal, Joy Morrow,
said Moon personally contributed $250,000 for the down-payment on the school building. She said the
school was founded by Unificationists who were "really unhappy with the public schools," but she said
New Hope is not affiliated with the church. Morrow described the school as "God-centered," adding
that about 40 percent of the students come from Unificationist families, with the rest from about 20
other faiths.
Moon launched what is now the Kirov Academy of Ballet in Northeast, according to church
publications. Housed in a splendid mansion, Kirov is widely respected for the quality of its dancers and
faculty, led by artistic director Oleg Vinogradov, who was recruited from the Kirov Ballet in Russia.
Moon created the school in part for Julia Moon, whom Moon considers his daughter-in-law since she
married the spirit of his deceased son in a unique church ceremony.
"The idea behind all these arts, science and media projects is that they will assemble talented and
influential people and someday they will realize Moon is the whole truth," Paquette said. "His objective
is not to find great dancers, but great credibility."
Seeking Credibility
The road to that credibility, critics say, is paved with cash.
"Rev. Moon sent bags of cash, big fat bags, stacks and stacks of hundreds, from Korea and Japan to
Manhattan Center," the church's recording studio in New York City, Paquette said. "Whenever we
asked where the money was coming from, the answer was it just came `from Father.' "
Borderlon, too, said Moon's various groups seem awash in cash. "I've made numerous trips to Japan
for them," he said, "and they take me to see these great fancy businesses they have there. There's
always huge amounts of cash involved in doing anything with them. In dealing with them, you have to
accept cash. I came back from Japan once with $10,000 in my pocket – cash."
Some members believe the cash comes from the church's traditional core business – street sales of
flowers, laser prints and wooden engravings. No one has hard evidence of the ultimate sources, not
even a former high-ranking church member who said he once sneaked into Unification archives in an
unsuccessful search for answers to the money puzzle.
The wealth of Unificationism's worldwide economic empire remains a closely guarded secret.
Lawrence Zilliox, a private investigator who has studied the church for more than a decade, has
concluded from church documents that Unification Church International, the main holding company for
Moon's U.S. businesses, exceeded $500 million in the mid-1980s.
But the church's wealth has always been centered in Asia. A detailed analysis by the Far Eastern
Economic Review in 1990 valued the church's landholdings in South Korea alone at more than $1
billion. A single property on Seoul's Yoida Island was said to be worth $250 million. The collection of
Unification-related companies in Korea – known as the Tong Il group – was ranked as the country's
28th largest `chaebrol' or business conglomerate, with ventures ranging from titanium mining to
weapons manufacturing.
In recent years, several of the Korean companies have lost money, causing business experts there to
wonder – like their counterparts in America – where the money comes from.
The long-standing explanation: It is Japan, not Korea, that provides the bulk of the church's wealth –
as much as 70 percent, church observers estimate. A former high-ranking Japanese church member
told The Post in 1984 that $800 million had come from Japan into the United States in the previous
nine years.
Japanese church members have long turned profits selling ginseng products and religious items such
as miniature stone pagodas – products imported from Moon companies in Korea. But tough sales
tactics – as well as disputed claims of spiritual power – have led to class-action suits in Japan, and
hundreds of claimants have won judgments and settlements in the last five years.
Yet despite years of such legal and financial troubles, the Unification movement continues to pump
hundreds of millions of dollars into existing businesses and new ventures around the world, according
to business analysts and academics who study the church.
The Money Trail
Moon has repeatedly told his followers that money flowing into church coffers is meant for higher
purposes. Some money goes to cultural, educational and religious enterprises. But according to
former church members, the Unification movement also dedicates resources to winning political
influence in America.
"Tom McDevitt always told me that Father has directed us to get members elected to Congress so we
can take over America," said Craig Maxim, a church member who quit in 1995 after spending several
years as a regional leader and a singer at Moon's various mansions.
McDevitt ran an unsuccessful Republican campaign for a Virginia House of Delegates seat in 1993.
Campaign records show many of McDevitt's contributions came from church members and
businesses. Now press spokesman for several Moon-affiliated groups, he did not return repeated
calls.
Moon's most ambitious foray into the political process in recent years was the American Freedom
Coalition (AFC), a conservative group that built popular support for Col. Oliver L. North during the Irancontra probe. In addition to about $5 million, Unificationists provided the personnel that gave the
coalition its grass-roots strength, former church members said.
AFC appears to be dormant; its phone was not answered and its Falls Church office was unmanned
on a recent visit.
Unification support for nonprofit groups such as AFC ebbs and flows. Contributions to the International
Cultural Foundation, long the leading Moon entity devoted to spreading his values among professors,
book readers and the Washington policy elite, dipped from $7.9 million in 1988 to $1.1 million in 1994,
according to tax records filed with the IRS. The foundation funds other Unification affiliates, including
the Professors World Peace Academy, the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, and
Paragon House, the movement's book publishing arm, the records show.
When the tap tightened at the Cultural Foundation, groups such as the Institute for Values withered
and went out of business.
Other groups get quick infusions of cash for special projects. Gifts and contributions to the Women's
Federation for World Peace, for example, soared to $10.7 million in 1995. The federation sponsored a
series of speeches by George and Barbara Bush in Asia and the United States, with total fees
estimated at about $1 million.
Bush spokesman Jim McGrath said the ex-president "strongly believes in the mission" of Moon's
federations, but "has no relationship with Moon." McGrath said all of Bush's appearances have been
arranged through Wesley Pruden, editor in chief of the Washington Times.
Pruden denied arranging Bush's speeches, saying that the former president had merely asked the
editor to introduce him at the events. "I have no more connection with the Unification Church than I
have with the Vatican," Pruden added. "I don't book the pope and I don't book for the church."
Also in 1995, the Women's Federation made another donation that illustrates how Moon supports
fellow conservatives. It gave a $3.5 million grant to the Christian Heritage Foundation, which later
bought a large portion of Liberty University's debt, rescuing the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Lynchburg, Va.,
religious school from the brink of bankruptcy.
Journalist Robert Parry, who first reported the bailout in I.F. Magazine, quoted an official with the
Women's Federation confirming that the $3.5 million was meant for "Mr. Falwell's people."
The Post has learned of more recent and direct financial support from Moon to Falwell. Last year,
News World Communications, parent of the money-losing Times, lent $400,000 to Liberty at 6 percent
interest, according to the promissory note.
Liberty University spokesman Mark DeMoss said the school was not aware of News World's
connection to Moon when it obtained the loan through a broker. "I'm not going to be pious and tell you
we would have turned it down," DeMoss said. "Because it was a business transaction, we probably
would have moved forward even if Dr. Falwell or somebody in the organization knew who News World
Communications was."
Unification-related groups court clergymen, local officeholders and news reporters, inviting them to
conferences and ballgames. Their pictures then appear in church publications.
Frederick Sontag, a religion professor at Pomona College, quit organizing academic conferences for
church-related groups because his initial independence was curtailed. "They wanted to bring much
more Unification doctrine into it and more of their own people," he said. "I couldn't do that."
"What they're doing is buying people," said conservative columnist Armstrong Williams, who was
invited to watch a Redskins-Cowboys football game from a Moon organization's luxury box at Jack
Kent Cooke Stadium this fall. "They just kept wooing me, calling me."
Williams said Lavonia Perryman, who is handling press relations for this week's festival, told him her
client had asked her "to put together the top, most influential journalists in Washington and put them in
the box," Williams recalled. "Not once did she ever tell me it was the Moonies."
"They'll pay anything to get influence," said Sontag. "That's just fulfilling their doctrine, that they will
work spiritually through these famous people. They really aren't very practical. They get these little
interests, in business or academia, wherever, and hype them up, and then move on. It hasn't really
gotten them anywhere."
+++
Stymied in U.S., Moon's Church Sounds a Retreat
By Marc Fisher and Jeff Leen, November 24, 1997
In the twilight of a life devoted to building a new faith, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon has declared that
"the period of religion is passing away" and his Unification Church must be dissolved.
Moon's dramatic shift in strategy comes at a time of great uncertainty for Unificationism and its
worldwide network of churches, businesses and nonprofit groups. The founder's advanced age, the
lack of a clear succession, the failure of recruiting efforts in the United States, a series of scandals and
tragedies surrounding Moon's children, and a sense of disillusionment among some long-term
members have left the church reeling, according to former and current members.
In a series of sermons delivered this year, Moon, 77, has expressed deep disdain for American society
and its failure to embrace his religion. He has directed his followers to "cut down" their church and to
work instead through the New York-based Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, a social
and spiritual nonprofit group that holds conferences and stages events designed to promote Moon's
worldview. In Washington, the federation is sponsoring this week's World Culture and Sports Festival,
which culminates in Saturday's mass blessing ceremony at RFK Stadium.
"Things are very much in flux," said W. Farley Jones, president of the Family Federation, which he
described as "the successor organization" to the church. Jones said it was "a fair statement" to
describe Unificationism as a struggling faith. He said Moon wants to "get beyond denominationalism,"
but he cautioned that "we can't just abolish the church because many of the properties the Unification
Church holds are in its name."
This is the central conundrum facing Moon's followers in the United States today: In the face of a
dramatic change in the status of the church, will enough spiritual content remain to make
Unificationism something more than a business enterprise?
The church, said its U.S. president, Tyler Hendricks, has traditionally been a structure devoted to
saving the individual. That mission is now being superseded by "a family-centered structure, I guess
like an eggshell giving way to a chick. We ourselves are working out the implications of Reverend
Moon's vision here."
A Decline in Numbers
Whatever form it finally takes, Unificationism, even as it wins new followers in South America and
Africa, has had to face the fact that after three decades of Unification proselytizing, Americans have
shown little interest in Moon's theology.
"Their time ran out in the United States," said Frederick Sontag, a professor of religion at Pomona
College in California who has studied Unificationism since the 1970s and has occasionally worked for
Moon-sponsored organizations. "Moon's is a religion based on power, and the fact is they're not going
to dominate the world. In the '60s and '70s, kids in this country were looking for something different.
Now they're not.
"There's no question their numbers are way down. The older members complain to me that they have
a lot of captains but no foot soldiers."
Church leaders claim 50,000 members in this country, but current and former members say the actual
figure is closer to 3,000 nationwide. The Washington church, which once claimed 3,000 followers, has
perhaps 400 – and many of those have grown less involved, said four people who recently left the
church. A former church official estimated that only 10 percent of the members who joined during the
recruiting high point of 1972-75 remain.
"You have a church that's a shell in this country," said a former executive at the Washington Times
who drifted away from the church a few years ago. "The dissolution of the church in this country is not
even that relevant because the businesses are more rooted than the church as an institution."
"They are in steep decline," said Marvin Borderlon, a former Catholic priest who runs a Rockville
nonprofit that fights discrimination against new religions.
Sontag regularly interviews long-term Unificationists and has concluded that many have long since
stopped believing in the Divine Principle, the core statement of Moon's theology, which says Moon has
been sent from the East to be the Messiah and correct Jesus's mistakes.
Church members argue, however, that it is wrong to take Moon's every word literally and that, like
many visionaries, he often speaks in symbolic terms. In addition, Moon at times has said that all
human beings are capable of attaining the spiritual status of a messiah.
Jesus's greatest error, Moon has said, was his failure to marry, and marriage has always been at the
core of Unificationism. In the early years of the church, Moon personally selected mates for his
followers and performed their weddings, often in mass ceremonies in stadiums.
But experts on new religions say Moon's failure to win enough new recruits, along with his theological
attachment to numerology, has prompted him to change the "blessing," the wedding ceremony at the
core of the faith. Church officials say 3.6 million couples will gather at RFK Stadium and other facilities
around the world Saturday to be blessed by Moon, but only a few thousand of that number will actually
marry. The rest will reaffirm previous vows made in their own religions. (Moon's blessing has no legal
standing; church members generally obtain civil marriage licenses after Moon blesses them.)
Unification theologians say the central meaning of Moon's blessing remains unchanged, but some
members and many outsiders see the opening of the marriage rite to people of other faiths as an
admission that Unificationism as a religion is at a dead end.
"When I joined, you had to be in the church for seven years even to be considered for marriage," said
Ron Paquette, who was president of Manhattan Center Studios, a church-owned recording business in
New York, until he quit the church in 1994. "It was a really sacred event. It would make your children
sinless. It was what you were sacrificing for, it was why you would spend 3 1/2 years fund-raising on
the streets and 3 1/2 years witnessing [recruiting new members]. Now they walk up to people in the
Caldor parking lot and sign them up to be blessed."
Family Affairs
But the immediate reason Paquette and other long-term members quit the church was what they
viewed as betrayals of the faith by its founding family. Moon's eldest son, Hyo Jin, who many in the
church had assumed would succeed the founder, has been plagued by legal troubles.
Hyo Jin Moon, 34, is embroiled in a contentious divorce in which his former wife, Nansook, has
accused him of beating her and "secreting himself in the master bedroom, sometimes for hours,
sometimes for days, drinking alcohol, using cocaine and watching pornographic films," according to a
1995 affidavit she filed in Massachusetts. She also said, in another affidavit, that his father gave him a
box filled with $1 million in cash.
"Those allegations are denied," said James E. O'Connell Jr., Hyo Jin's attorney. He declined to
comment further.
In a deposition in Hyo Jin's bankruptcy proceedings, the son admitted attending the Betty Ford Center
and the Hanley Hazelden Center in Florida for addiction treatment. He said in the deposition that he
was "kicked out" of the Florida facility after three weeks there "because I wasn't cooperating."
At least two of Moon's daughters have expressed public doubts about their father and his faith. One,
Sunjin, left her husband and changed her name only a few weeks after receiving Moon's blessing,
according to recent British press reports. Moon's youngest daughter, Unjin, a 29-year-old who lives in
Orange, Va., has had a falling-out with her father and his faith, said Herbert Rosedale, a New York
lawyer who represents several former Unificationists. Rosedale also represents Hyo Jin Moon's former
wife, who he said is now in hiding and writing a book on her unhappy experience in the church's
founding family.
The airing of such turbulent family matters has undercut Moon's authority and moral stature, according
to the former members. Moon's own image within the church has been tarnished in recent years by
allegations that he has been married at least three times, had affairs and children outside his
marriages, and defended sleeping with many women in the 1950s by saying he needed to "purify
them." Those accusations, against a man claiming to be the "True Parent" of his theology, are
contained in books published in France, Japan and Korea over the past decade.
The assertions have been vociferously denied in church publications, which say the books are part of
a media campaign to discredit Moon. Church officials have said that the author of one of the books
has recanted his account. Moon's only public comment about the controversies was a 1994 reference
to "unresolved relationships in my family."
Some Unificationists worry that the church is ill prepared for Moon's death. None of Moon's children
has his charisma or stature within the church, former and current members agree. In recent years,
Moon has raised the position of his wife, 53-year-old Hak Ja Han Moon, in church theology, declaring
in 1992 that "True Mother was elevated to True Father's level horizontally." But some members
question whether she can maintain the church and its businesses.
Could Moon's empire disintegrate when he dies? Sontag said he put the question directly to Moon,
who responded, "I will continue to lead the church from the spirit world."
Land of the Lost?
If some leading U.S. church members have grown skeptical of the leader they call Father, Moon's
attitude toward this country has also soured. When Moon moved to New York from Korea in the early
1970s, he preached that the United States was the key to uniting the world's religions into one faith
and one government, led by Moon. "This nation," Moon told a congressional committee in 1984, "will
decide the destiny of the world." Church leaders asserted in those days that the Unification Church,
despite its Korean roots, was being Americanized.
Today, Moon's sermons are filled with derisive, angry references to America. "God hates the American
atmosphere," Moon declared last fall. "Satan created this kind of Hell on the Earth. . . . I don't like
fallen America. It is heading for destruction in the very near future."
"America is the kingdom of extreme individualism, the kingdom of free sex," Moon said in a May 1
speech at his mansion in suburban New York. "The country that represents Satan's harvest is
America. . . . America doesn't have anywhere to go now."
American women, Moon said in a speech last fall, "have inherited the line of prostitutes. . . . American
women are even worse because they practice free sex just because they enjoy it."
In the May sermon, Moon returned to the theme of America as a lost nation, a place that tolerates
homosexuals, whom he compared to "dirty dung-eating dogs." "Especially American people," Moon
said, "if they truly love such dogs, they also become like dung-eating dogs and produce that quality of
life."
"Moon is down on America and American membership," said John Stacey, 23, who left the church
earlier this year. "He's always saying Americans are stupid and lazy, they're evil."
Moon spends much of his time now at his compound in Uruguay, and he has devoted extensive
energy and $10 million in start-up costs to last year's launch of Tiempos del Mundo, a newspaper
based in Buenos Aires. "In a way, Father is abandoning North America in order to concentrate on
South America," Moon said in a 1996 speech in New York.
But Moon, who has persevered despite two jail sentences in Korea for disturbing the peace and one in
the United States for tax evasion, does not give up easily. Despite budget cuts and anemic circulation,
the Washington Times – as well as Unification's other large projects in this country – continues to draw
large subsidies.
Church leaders past and current say Unificationism in the United States is undergoing a Koreanization
process that is the mirror image of the Americanization of the 1970s. According to Unification News,
the church's monthly newspaper, "the new custom" at church ceremonies in the United States is that
speeches are no longer automatically translated from Korean to English.
Asians, Moon explains in sermons, are being brought to America to repair a satanic culture. "In the
Last Days, it is natural that Western women will long for Oriental men and Western men will long for
Oriental women," Moon said last year. "Orientals," he added, "are here to save your nation of
America."
Most of the faith's new members in the past decade have been Koreans and other Asians who come
to the United States. Many first arrive as students at the University of Bridgeport, the Connecticut
school the Unification movement took over in 1992 by assuming its debt and promising scholarship
money in a loan of more than $60 million. Many of the students are church members, according to a
member of the student government.
"If you own a college and want to get somebody into the country, all you have to do is call them a
student," said Bill Finch, a Bridgeport City Council member and former UB alumni director who now
heads the anti-Moon Coalition of Concerned Citizens. "And if you want to bring money into the
country, all you have to do is call it tuition."
University Vice President Donna Marino said Friday, "No one owns the university or has control of any
aspect of it." Marino said the Professors World Peace Academy has authority to nominate 60 percent
of the school's trustees. The World Peace Academy is a Unification nonprofit foundation, according to
church publications.
Moon appears to have given up for now on converting large numbers of Americans to his faith. In
recent sermons he has returned to a concept called "home church," a term he has used occasionally
since the 1970s. The idea was that Moon's followers would leave the Unification Church and return to
the faiths in which they grew up, paving the way for greater social acceptance of Moon and his
message of "marital fidelity, sexual purity and community welfare," as church President Hendricks
described it.
Unification loyalists say "home church" is a benign effort to recognize that people of other faiths can
nonetheless learn and accept Moon's teachings on family values and sexual purity.
"They are telling people to go home to your own place, relate to any church and win people over,
mend relations with other denominations," said Sontag.
But others see "home church" as an infiltration program, an effort to lure other Christians into Moon's
organizations by means less overt than traditional proselytizing.
"The question is, is this an end run?" Borderlon asked. "Is this heavenly deception? They go to
Catholics and Protestants and ask them to sign up for world peace. Who's against world peace?"
The History of Rev. Moon
Jan. 6, 1920: Sun Myung Moon is born in Northwestern Korea.
Easter Sunday, 1935: While deep in prayer on a mountainside in what is now North Korea, the 15year-old Moon claims that Jesus appears to him and asks him to complete Jesus's mission of creating
a Kingdom of God on earth.
1945: Moon, now 25, presents his views to Christian groups in Korea, who rebuff him.
1946: Charged with disturbing the social order, Moon is imprisoned by North Korean Communist
authorities.
1948: Moon is again arrested and sentenced to five years hard labor.
1950: Moon is freed when UN and American forces liberate Seoul in a counteroffensive following the
North Korean invasion of the South.
May 1, 1954: Moon founds the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, known
as the Unification Church, in South Korea. Stories in Seoul newspapers accuse Moon and his church
of having sex orgies and ties to North Korean intelli-gence; Moon denies them. He is briefly jailed
again.
1957: Moon divorces his first wife. His churches are established in 30 Korean cities and towns.
1958: Moon emissaries travel to Japan and establish a broad following.
1959: Using the labor of church members, Moon begins building the businesses that will eventually
grow into the Tong Il group, his giant Korean conglomerate. Moon's emissaries arrive in the United
States.
March 16, 1960: Moon marries Hak Ja Han, who eventually becomes known as the `True Mother` to
his `True Father.` They ultimately have 13 children in what is known inside the church as `the perfect
family.`
1971: Moon moves to the United States, which he views as the world's key spiritual battlefield.
1974: Moon presides over a mass wedding of 1,800 couples in Seoul.
1975: Moon starts first newspaper, Sekai Nippo, in Japan.
June 1, 1976: The Unification Church rents Yankee Stadium for its Bicentennial God Bless America
Festival; Moon proclaims that America has been invaded by Satan and God has dispatched Moon to
save the nation's soul.
First church-related U.S. newspaper, The News World, established in New York.
1977: Unification Church International, the main holding company for Moon's U.S. businesses,
incorporated in Washington, D.C.
The Securities and Exchange Commission sues UCI for illegally acquiring a controlling interest in
Diplomat National Bank. Suit is dropped after UCI signs a consent decree agreeing not to engage in
such activities.
National Council of Churches says Moon's theology is `incompatible with Christian teaching and
belief.`
1978: In the wake of revelations of Korean influence-buying in Congress, a congressional committee
reports evidence of Korean intelligence ties to Moon and concludes that Moon's organization
`systematically violated U.S. tax, immigration, banking, currency and Foreign Agents Registration Act
laws.' The committee recommends that the White House have Moon investigated.
A church-affliated film company produces `Inchon,' a $42 million Korean War epic that bombs at the
box office.
May 17, 1982: Church launches the Washington Times. Losses soon reach $35 million a year.
1982: Moon blesses 2,075 couples paired by church elders at a mass wedding in Madison Square
Garden.
Moon is convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to 18 months in Danbury Federal Penitentiary.
Appeals delay his incarceration for two years.
1984: Moon's 17-year-old son, Heung Jin, is killed in a car crash.
1985: Insight, a glossy national magazine, is launched by the Times' parent company. Losses soon
reach $30 million a year.
Aug. 20, 1985: Moon is released from prison after serving 13 months.
1988: American Freedom Coalition, a Moon-supported political group, distributes 30 million pieces of
conservative literature during the presidential campaign.
1989: Church affliate acquires 440,000 square-foot Media Tech Plaza, valued at $90 million, in
downtown Washington. Building gives Moon access to the biggest and most modern television
production facilities in the nation's capital.
Moon founds Segye Ilbo daily newspaper in Seoul. Losses soon reach $50 million a year.
1990: Moon businesses in Korea show $40 million loss.
1991: Moon travels to North Korea and meets then-President Kim Il Sung.
1992: Church group assumes control of the University of Bridgeport with $60 million loan that erases
school's debts.
1994: Church-affiliated companies acquire control of the Nostalgia Network, a national cable channel.
Losses soon reach $11 million a year
August 1995: Moon presides over mass wedding blessing of 360,000 couples.
Nov. 23, 1996: Church hosts gala opening for Tiempos Del Mundo, daily newspaper in Buenos Aires.
Source: Unification Church publications and news reports.
http//:www.washingtonpost.com
The Nation's Capital Gets A New Daily Newspaper
By Elisabeth Bumiller, May 17, 1982
The newsroom looks properly chaotic: Clacking typewriters, loosened ties, rolled-up shirt sleeves,
ringing phones, crumbled McDonald's bags, familiar faces from The Washington Star. The Metro
editor pecks out his budget of today's stories: Two men killed in Victorian town house, Virginia senator
wreaks havoc, it's pollen time again. A reporter comes in, leaps in the air and clicks his heels in
celebration.
Yesterday was the first day of deadline at The Washington Times, the newspaper owned by the Rev.
Sun Myung Moon's controversial Unification Church.
"The old Washington Daily News was always hectic and crowded," says George Clifford, who'll cover
Capitol Hill for The Times. "That's the way this is. Good to be home again."
The place, the old Parsons Paper Co. on New York Avenue NE near the National Arboretum, has all
the jumbled joy of news junkies getting together and doing the astonishing: Starting, not folding, a
paper. Washington, like other big cities, has been losing papers. The Times-Herald, the Daily News
and, 10 months ago, The Washington Star. At a time when urban papers are sputtering and dying
nationwide, The Times is a curiosity. As publisher and editor James Whelan says: "Launching a
newspaper. It's the goddamndest thing."
The Washington Times is not just any newspaper. Commonly referred to as "the Moonie paper" since
its plans were announced, it is supported by the religious movement that Moon founded in Korea 28
years ago. Preaching "The Divine Principle," Moon sees himself as the new Messiah and Korea as
God's chosen country. Since the church emerged in the United States in the early 1970s, questions
have been raised about its finances, its suspected ties to the Korean CIA and its alleged brainwashing
of young recruits. It is now an international business empire that encompasses entertainment, fishing,
food retailing, publishing and, for a time, the Diplomat National Bank here.
Robert Boettcher, the staff director of a 1978 House subcommittee investigation into Korean-American
relations, says the church aims at creating a global theocracy that Moon would control.
Moon already has one newspaper in the United States, the News World in New York City. According
to the House subcommittee report, it served "as a propaganda instrument of the Moon organization. A
casual reader would not detect its UC Unification Church affilation on most days. On issues affecting
Moon and the UC, however, the resources of the paper were mobilized along with other components
of the Moon organization to attack and discredit critics and investigators." When Moon was indicted in
a tax evasion case, one banner headline asked, "Why Rev. Moon, Mr. President?"
Although one-third of the 125 reporters and editors are Unification Church members, everyone
connected with The Washington Times adamantly says it won't be a church mouthpiece. Both Whelan
and Smith Hempstone, the executive editor, have written guarantees of editorial control in their
contracts that they insisted on. Reporters are equally wary. "If it doesn't work out, and I can't be
indepedent, I'll walk," says Clark Mollenhoff, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who'll cover the White
House for the paper this summer.
The paper's editors say its only purpose is to provide a conservative alternative to The Post. "I don't
know anyone in the New Right who hasn't felt this sense of desperation and frustration over the
absense of a voice in Washington," says Whelan.
But the real Washington story at The Times is its staff members – the ones who aren't church
members. Many are familiar bylines from the Star. Some were bored writing books, others joined
because of pleadings from already hired colleagues whom they trusted. Many badly needed a job; for
them, their decision was proof that you can't eat your principles.
Almost all had serious reservations. "You'd have to be a brick not to go though some sort of moral
convulsions," says Doug Lamborne, The Times sports editor and former Washington Star copy editor.
"I lost five pounds the first week. We all had these twitchy sort of feelings: 'Is what we're doing right?' "
But the names have rolled in: Jeremiah O'Leary, the former White House correspondent for The Star
who became the spokesman for national security adviser William P. Clark, will cover the White House
for The Times. Anne Crutcher, a former Star editorial writer, is editorial page editor at The Times.
Dana Adams Schmidt, a former reporter for The New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor,
will cover the State Department.
By now, the justifications are well-formed. Hempstone, a former Star associate editor, has been
quoted as saying, "I've worked for a lot of publishers who thought they were God." Richard Levine, a
general assignment reporter who published his own newspaper in New Hampshire until he ran out of
money, reasons: "We all work for sons-of-bitches. What's different?"
For Jack Mann, a sportswriter for The Star, it was money. "I hadn't had a job for 10 months," he says.
(His wife, Judy, is a columnist at The Post.) "Take our salaries and cut that in half – when you've got a
mortgage and kids in school. It was tough."
For Mark Kram, a former Sports Illustrated writer who was fired from the magazine five years ago, it
was a chance "to breathe some fresh air." "Frankly, I've been in a dungeon for so long writing books,"
he says. "Nobody knows if you're alive or dead. I wanted to peek my head out and see what's going
on."
For Phil Evans, an assistant managing editor and former managing editor at The Star, it was a chance
to get his blood flowing. "The anticipation of being able to work at home at your typewriter and sit in
your garden is very appealing," he says. "But it becomes very boring. Newspapers are inherently
exciting, and so far, no one has said, 'We don't do it that way.' In the last few years, hundreds of my
colleagues and friends have been thrown out of work. It's just incredibly challenging and exciting to be
starting a newspaper instead of closing one."
For Betty Beale, the longtime syndicated society columnist who lost her crucial outlet in Washington
when The Star folded, it was a surprise. She says she didn't know The Times had bought the column
from her syndicate until she saw a prototype edition. So how does she feel about her column
appearing in the paper?
"Well," she says. There is a very long pause. Finally: "I think it's fortunate that there's going to be
another paper. I think it's fortunate that James Whelan has a contract to be in total control of what
goes in it. And I think he's brought in a good staff."
But her feelings about being in the paper? Another long pause. "You put me on the spot," she says,
finally. "It's implied in what I said, don't you think?"
Clifford, the Capitol Hill correspondent, says of the Moon connection: "It's a heavy load."
The Quest for an Editor
"If we can manipulate seven nations at least," Moon was quoted as saying in a speech reported by the
House subcommitee investigators, "then we can get hold of the whole world: the United States,
England, France, Germany, Soviet Russia, and maybe Korea and Japan." Moon, the 62-year-old
father of 13 who is said to live on a sprawling New York estate, is now on trial for federal tax evasion.
Jo Ann Harris, the prosecutor, said in her summation to the court in New York last week that Moon is
guilty of "greed, arrogance and power." The jury begins its third day of deliberations this morning.
News World Communications Inc., the newspaper unit of the church empire, will fund The Times. The
president of News World is Bo Hi Pak, who has a personal parking space in The Times lot and who
was a central figure in the Korean influence-buying investigation here in the mid-1970s. In 1978, he
said in congressional testimony that he received cash payments from the South Korean CIA, but said
he was only a conduit for funds to reimburse others for anticommunist activities.
Pak recruited Whelan, and as Whelan says Pak's associates told him during one of their meetings: "If
we wind up with someone we don't have trust in, we're going to have to hold the paper tightly. And if
we hold the paper tightly, we won't succeed."
If the newspaper is legitimate, does that legitimize the church?
"Who the hell are you to stand in judgment?" Whelan asks during an interview in his office. "The only
way you could successfully ask that question is by impuning to them some sort of evil and sinister
quality. No, they're not zombies. No, they're not programmed. They're not freaks, for Chrissake."
Paul Herman, a church member sent down from the News World to help out with advertising sales,
sees it this way: "I think I'm mainstream. I think The Divine Principle is the deepest truth."
Whelan, 48, was the key to attracting the veteran journalists. He is the highly respected, politically
conservative editor who worked for Richard Mellon Scaife, the owner of the Sacramento Union.
Whelan was first approached by associates of Pak just before last Christmas. Soon after, he met with
Pak. "I liked him instantly," Whalen says. "He's a very decent guy, I have discovered. We hit it off."
For the next several weeks, Whalen says, there were "missions" sent to Sacramento to try to
persuade him to take the job. "By then, I was consulting people all over the country. Should I do this?
Do I dare do this?" Soon Scaife heard news of the offer and gave Whalen what Whalen characterizes
as an unrelated raise and a bonus. Whalen turned Pak down once and for all, then left for a family trip
down the California coast during the George Washington Birthday weekend. "I had been going
through a terrible soul-searching," he says. On the first night's stop, in a hotel in Santa Maria, he had a
mild heart attack.
The offer from Pak, he says now, "had everything to do with it, I think. It was a tough goddamned
decision for me. I believed very strongly in the need for the paper. But I didn't want to do it."
But on the night of his heart attack, "unbeknownst to me, Col. Pak had fretted over my decision. He
gathered up a couple of aides, jumped on an airplane, flew to Sacramento, holed up in a hotel and
called my house every hour on the hour." Whalen wasn't home convalescing from the hospital in
Santa Maria until a few days later. Pak and his aides came to see him, and talked for almost six hours
with Whalen and his wife. "And in the deep and dark of evening," Whalen recalls, "I agreed to do it." It
was 2:15 a.m.
"You know what I have now?" he says. "I have what I suppose is just normal anxiety – 'is it going to
work?' "
Hitting the Streets
The Washington Times planned to print 100,000 copies of this morning's edition, which is being sold
from bright orange sidewalk boxes, stores and newsstands inside the Beltway. The daily circulation of
The Post is 761,000.
The Times bought its offices on New York Avenue for $1.6 million, and ordered a new Goss Urbanite
offset press and a computerized typesetting system. It runs a reporters' shuttle bus between the
paper's offices and Metro Center; it is nearly impossible to get a cab that far from downtown. The
Times is accepting no advertising – most newspapers' bread and butter – for the initial months of
publication, saying it needs accurate circulation figures on which to base its rates. It is paying its
editorial employes well for a newspaper of its size, although apparently not as well as rumored. The
reporters' pay scale starts at $250 a week and goes to around $26,000 a year; some salaries,
however, are a bit higher. Whelan says he's making 12.5 percent more than what he was getting at
The Sacramento Union in salary and bonuses. He gets a company Cadillac, compared with the Buick
Riviera he was given at The Union.
Whelan won't say what the Unification Church will be spending on the paper this year, but John
Morton, the newspaper analyst with the Lynch, Jones & Ryan brokerage firm, estimated that Times
start-up costs and 1982 expenditures could run as high as $12 million.
After that, there is the prospect of losing money; when the Star folded, it was losing $20 million
annually. "It would be easy to lose a couple million a year on even a small newspaper if you don't have
any advertising support," says Morton. "And I suspect that's going to be the case. Rightly or not, the
Unification Church is not well thought of by most of the population. It's going to be perceived as a
publication of the church even if it produces, and I suspect it will, a respectable, neutral editorial
product."
But Whelan says the church is committed to supporting the newspaper "forever," if need be.
"These ventures have never worked anywhere else, and there's no reason to think it'll work here,"
says Morton. "But that's not the point. The point is that they want to publish a newspaper, and if the
pockets of the church are deep enough and full enough, they can do it for as long as they want."
No Welcome Mat
The Times, which has been publishing in-house prototypes since March, hasn't exactly had a warm
welcome in Washington.
Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee said that "it's financed by the Moonies and it's run by
someone who has been involved with the South Korean CIA. But let's see what kind of a paper they
turn out."
The Corcoran Gallery says that its approval of The Times as a corporate sponsor – allowing the paper
to hold its "inaugural" reception at the gallery tonight – has infuriated its executive committee.
The administrative assistant to House Speaker Tip O'Neill, Chris Matthews, has told staff members not
to bother with Times reporters. "The Rev. Moon can buy a newspaper, but I can't buy the idea he's a
newspaperman," says Matthews. "We work hard enough responding to legitimate press inquiries."
And at a party at socialite True Davis' home, a Times reporter who is a church member was asked to
leave. At another party, a reporter encountered Larry King, Washington personality and author of "The
Best Little Whorehouse in Texas."
"An attractive young lady came up and tried to interview me," King says. "And I said, 'Are you a
Moonie?' 'And she said, 'Yes, I am.' And I said, 'I don't talk to Moonies.' "
But Josette Sheeran, the 27-year-old editor of the newspaper's magazine and feature section who was
a White House correspondent for the News World, says that "the only reaction that I got was one of
curiosity." She is the daughter of a former mayor of West Orange, N.J. She was raised a Catholic and
joined the church in 1975. "For me, it has an intellectual appeal," she says. "I joined the church full
well knowing it is something not yet understood by society."
So far, reporters and editors say that the church members and other staffers get along well.
"The thing about them, is number one, they're not as cynical as most newspeople," says Tom Breen,
the metro editor who was the former night city editor at The Star. "And number two, they're committed.
It's nice to have someone who'll work 12 hours." Breen also says the staff can joke about church
members' attempts to convert the others. "It's at the point now where the guy on the metro desk can
look at me and say: 'Now, I've got you.' "
What Matters
In the end, Times editors say the paper will best be judged by the news it prints. "The questions are all
pretty much the same," says Hempstone. "They won't last long, once we're on the streets."
And in the newsroom? "So far, it's been a ball," says reporter Levine. "It really has."
http://www.consortiumnews.com
Moon's Billions & Washington's Blind Eye
By Robert Parry, 1997
Somewhere, some political Einstein must have figured out a mathematical equation for computing how
much money it takes to gain "respectability" in Washington. It would read something like "perceived
respectability equals genuine decency or depravity (expressed in plus or minus numbers), plus money
spent on favorable image-building minus money spent by detractors to boost the negatives, times
some factor for the quality of the pro and con spinmasters."
Over the past quarter century, Rev. Sun Myung Moon is someone who has practiced the limits of this
"theory of perceived respectability." He has spent billions of dollars in the United States to gain a
political standing that would seem unthinkable without counting the money.
In Korea during his early years as a "messiah," Moon lustily took on the job of "blessing the wombs" of
Korean women supposedly corrupted by Satan's seduction of Eve eons ago. Because of these
"purification" rituals, he spent some time in jail on morals charges.
Since then, Moon has declared his goal of ruling the world through a Korea-based theocracy that
would "digest" those foolish enough to try to retain their individuality. During Moon's first forays into the
United States, hundreds of anguished parents charged that he was "brainwashing" their children into
becoming robotic followers who hawked flowers and cheap toys.
Next, a congressional investigation in the late 1970s exposed Moon as an intelligence agent for the
South Korean government which was engaged in a clandestine operation to penetrate the U.S.
Congress, Executive Branch, news media and academia. U.S. intelligence files of the time showed
that Moon had close connections, too, with leading Asian organized crime figures.
Expanding his unsavory connections in 1980, Moon's operatives rushed to congratulate right-wing
military thugs who seized power along with drug lords in Bolivia, an event that became known as the
Cocaine Coup and gave rise to the modern cocaine cartels. [For details on Moon's history, see our
recent series, "Dark Side of Rev. Moon."]
But Moon must have understood the "respectability" equation well. With the election of Ronald
Reagan, Moon began pouring hundreds of millions of dollars a year into conservative causes. He
launched The Washington Times daily newspaper in 1982. He funded dozens of front groups. He
bought political allies by the score with fat speaking fees and side business deals. His costly
operations blasted anyone who crossed the Reagan-Bush administrations.
Justice Protection
Despite a brief stint in federal prison for tax fraud – a prosecution which Reagan's Justice Department
tried unsuccessfully to halt – Moon saw his "respectability" climb through the 1980s. According to
Justice Department documents recently released under the Freedom of Information Act, Moon also
won protection from the Reagan-Bush administrations from any new criminal investigation.
Federal authorities rebuffed hundreds of requests – many from common citizens – for examination of
Moon's foreign ties and money sources. Typical of the responses was a May 18, 1989, letter from
assistant attorney general Carol T. Crawford rejecting the possibility that Moon's organization be
required to divulge its foreign-funded propaganda under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).
"With respect to FARA, the Department is faced with First Amendment considerations involving the
free exercise of religion," Crawford stated. "As you know, the First Amendment's protection of religious
freedom is not limited to the traditional, well-established religions."
A 1992 PBS documentary about Moon's political empire and its free-spending habits started another
flurry of citizen demands for an investigation, according to the Justice Department files.
One letter stated, "I write in consternation and disgust at the apparent support, or at least the
sheltering, of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, a foreign agent ... who has subverted the American
political system for the past 20 years. ... Did Reagan and/or Bush receive financial support from Moon
or his agents during any of their election campaigns in violation of federal law?" The names of letter
writers were withheld for privacy reasons.
Another letter complained that "apparently Moon gave the Bush and Reagan campaigns millions of
dollars in support and helped fund the [Nicaraguan] contras as well as sponsoring rallys [sic] in 50
states to support the Persian Gulf war. No wonder the Justice Department turns a blind eye?"
"I feel it is necessary to find out who is financing the operation and why other countries are trying to
direct the policies of the United States," wrote another citizen. "If even one-half of the allegations are
true, Moon and his assistants belong in jail rather than being welcomed and supported at the highest
level of Washington."
The 'Green Card' Defense
As demands mounted for Moon and his front groups to register as foreign agents, the Justice
Department added a new argument to its reasons to say no. In an Aug. 19, 1992, letter, assistant
attorney general Robert S. Mueller dismissed a suggestion that the Moon-backed American Freedom
Council should register under FARA because Moon, a South Korean citizen, had obtained U.S.
resident-alien status – or a "green card."
"In the absence of a foreign principal, there is no requirement for registration," Mueller wrote. "The
Reverend Sun Myung Moon enjoys the status of permanent resident alien in the United States and
therefore does not fall within FARA's definition of foreign principal. It follows that the Act is not
applicable to the [American Freedom] Council because of its association with Reverend Moon."
The rote denials continued with little change into the Clinton years. But the legal situation with Moon
may be in flux. As immigration laws were being toughened in 1996 to permit easier deportation of
aliens convicted of past crimes, Moon – a felon from his tax-evasion conviction – relocated his base of
operation from New York to Uruguay.
Citing privacy laws, U.S. officials declined to tell me if Moon has renounced his "green card." Moon's
spokesmen also have not responded to questions about Moon's immigration status. A consular official
at Uruguay's embassy in Washington told me that Moon does not now have residency status in
Uruguay and still travels to Uruguay with a multiple-entry visa on his South Korean passport. But if
Moon does shift his permanent residency to Uruguay, that could eliminate some obstacles to
investigation of his political operations here.
Still, the Reagan-Bush administrations went beyond just blocking criminal investigations of Moon.
Despite evidence of Moon's collaboration with South Korean intelligence in the 1970s and his highprofile support of the Bolivian Cocaine Coup regime in 1980, the Republicans seem to have shut down
any significant intelligence collection about Moon's activities after taking power in 1981.
Responses to recent FOIA requests indicate that only scattered newspaper clips about Moon found
their way into U.S. intelligence files during the Reagan-Bush years. In a recent interview, a senior U.S.
official confirmed that there is little fresh intelligence about the secret sources of Moon's money or his
possible collaboration in the foreign penetration of U.S. institutions.
Spying on Americans
Perhaps even more remarkable, the Reagan administration showed greater respect for Moon's
constitutional rights than those of some U.S. citizens. Starting in 1981, the FBI cooperated with one of
Moon's front groups during a five-year nationwide investigation of the Committee in Solidarity with the
People of El Salvador (CISPES), a domestic organization critical of Reagan's policies in Central
America, according to FBI documents cited by The Boston Globe. [April 20, 1988]
In 1981, the FBI began collecting reports from Moon's Collegiate Association for the Research of
Principles (CARP) which was spying on CISPES supporters. Those reports came from CARP
members at 10 university campuses around the United States and included the purported political
beliefs of Reagan's critics. One CARP report called a CISPES supporter "well-educated in Marxism"
while other CARP reports attached "clippings culled from communist-inspired front groups."
The Globe reported that Frank Varelli, who worked for the FBI from 1981-84 coordinating the CISPES
probe, said an FBI agent paid members of the Moon organization at Southern Methodist University
while the Moon activists were raiding and disrupting CISPES rallies. "Every week, an agent I worked
with used to go to SMU to pay the Moonies," Varelli said in an interview. Because of the CARP
harassment, CISPES closed its SMU chapter.
Moon did not lose his inside track at the White House until Bill Clinton's election in 1992. But Moon
continues to ride high in Washington. Moon sustains The Washington Times despite a never-ending
hemorrhage of red ink and he keeps up close political ties with prominent Republicans. Moon's
Washington Times Foundation flashed the cash again recently, with a $1 million-plus donation to
George Bush's presidential library in Texas. [WP, Nov. 24, 1997]
'Cemetery-Gate'
Moon's news outlets also continue to pay dividends by keeping the Democrats on the defensive. In
late November, Insight magazine and The Washington Times trumpeted charges that the Clinton
administration had traded plots at Arlington National Cemetery for campaign donations. Though citing
no named sources, the explosive charge reverberated through the conservative talk-radio echo
chamber and bounced into the mainstream press.
The Clinton administration was forced to disclose the names of 69 people who had been granted
burial in Arlington but who didn't meet the strict criteria. Some turned out to be Republicans (such as
the wife of Chief Justice Warren Burger). Others were national luminaries (such as Justice Thurgood
Marshall). Another was an ex-Marine-turned-policeman who died in a shootout.
Still, Republicans in Congress kept digging until they found one major Democratic contributor – Larry
Lawrence – who was buried at Arlington after dying in office as U.S. ambassador to Switzerland. GOP
congressmen found records suggesting that Lawrence had fabricated a claim that he suffered a
wound aboard a World War II cargo ship.
Insight's managing editor Paul Rodriguez acknowledged that the cemetery-plots-for-cash story was
only "allegations and suggestions." But the story was justified, he said, by "this horrible perception,
rightly or wrongly, that this guy [Clinton] will sell anything." [WP, Nov. 25, 1997]
Inside Moon's church, however, other troubles have mounted. Hyo Jin, Moon's eldest son from his
current marriage, was treated for a cocaine addiction, saw his wife flee claiming physical abuse and
filed for bankruptcy to avoid court-ordered support payments. The Hyo Jin situation and other family
crises strained the faith of longtime followers who were taught that Moon and his family were
examples of human perfection. By most accounts, the number of U.S. church members has dropped
to around 3,000.
The dwindling church membership could raise another legal question, if it becomes apparent that
Moon's business-media-political empire is a giant tail wagging a smaller-smaller-and-smaller dog. In a
two-part investigative series on Nov. 23-24, The Washington Post reported that even Moon
acknowledges this disappearing church.
"Moon has declared that 'the period of religion is passing away' and his Unification Church must be
dissolved," one article stated. It quoted Moon as telling his followers to "cut down" their church and
work through the Moon-sponsored Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, a non-profit
corporation. But non-profits do not carry the First Amendment protections that churches do.
'Dung-Eating Dogs'
The Post also quoted some new anti-American declarations by Moon. "Satan created this kind of Hell
on Earth," Moon said about the United States. Moon also lambasted American women. They "have
inherited the line of prostitutes," he declared. "American women are even worse because they practice
free sex just because they enjoy it."
Lashing out again last May, Moon denounced America for tolerating homosexuals, whom he likened to
"dirty dung-eating dogs." For Americans who "truly love such dogs," Moon said, "they also become like
dung-eating dogs and produce that quality of life."
The Post series clearly touched a raw nerve. Dong Moon Joo, president of Moon's Washington Times,
took out a full-page ad in the Post on Nov. 28 complaining that the criticism was inappropriate during
"the Thanksgiving season." In a press release, the Unification Church said it was "exploring the
possibility of legal action against The Washington Post and its writers for malicious persecution of a
minority religion with intent to incite bodily injury."
But on Nov. 29, Moon's church weaknesses were on display again, with "Blessing '97" which Moon
had touted as a mass wedding where he would pair up 3.6 million followers worldwide. Yet, at the
main event at RFK Stadium in Washington only 1,300 brides and grooms could be rounded up for the
ceremony. Moon's organizers padded the numbers with already married couples and non-church
members who were lured to a music concert with free or discounted tickets.
The next day, The Washington Times led the paper with a glowing front-page story about the
ceremony. The article accepted the 3.6-million-couple figure as fact. The story also quoted one
participant declaring that the RFK event was "bigger than I thought it would be." Clearly, Moon still has
the bucks to make his employees spin the stories the way he likes.
Over the past quarter century, Moon has been the master at spending billions of dollars to make the
"respectability" equation work for him.
http://www.consortiumnews.com
The Bush-Kim-Moon Triangle of Money
By Robert Parry, March 10, 2001
At this past week’s summit, George W. Bush and South Korean President Kim Dae Jung disagreed
publicly on how to deal with communist North Korea – Bush advocated a harder line. But the two
leaders have a little-known bond in common: the political largesse of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
For more than three decades, Moon, the founder of the South Korea-based Unification Church, has
spun a worldwide spider's web of influence, connecting to hundreds of powerful leaders through the
silken threads of his mysterious money.
Moon’s beneficiaries include the Bush family and, according to U.S. intelligence reports, Kim Dae
Jung.
Though seldom discussed publicly, the Moon-Bush connection has been reported before – and
detailed in this publication. But Moon’s financial links to Kim Dae Jung – a longtime dissident who
opposed the authoritarian governments that ruled South Korea during the Cold War – have remained
secret.
U.S. intelligence stumbled onto the Moon-Kim connection while monitoring South Korean political
developments in 1987.
By that time, Moon’s Unification Church already had built close ties to the Reagan-Bush
administration, especially through Moon's funding of conservative causes and his $100-million-a-year
subsidy of the right-wing Washington Times, hailed by Ronald Reagan as his “favorite” newspaper.
Back in South Korea, however, Moon's longtime coziness with his home nation's autocratic rulers was
strained. Moon was on the outs with the ruling Democratic Justice Party (DJP), the U.S. Defense
Intelligence Agency noted in a cable dated Sept. 10, 1987.
“The UC (Unification Church) … has not been happy with the somewhat cold treatment it has received
under the current DJP government,” the DIA cable reported.
In response to this chilliness, Moon secretly began financing several opposition figures, the DIA
reported. One was a longtime Moon ally, Kim Jong Pil, not to be confused with North Korea's current
leader Kim Jong Il.
By the late 1980s, Kim Jong Pil had a long record of association with Moon. A 1978 U.S.
congressional investigation into the so-called “Koreagate” influence-buying scandal reported that Kim
Jong Pil founded the South Korean CIA in the 1960s and assisted Moon's Unification Church in
building its influence in Japan and the United States.
The congressional investigation concluded that Kim Jong Pil and the South Korean CIA helped Moon
expand his church into a well-financed international organization. They then used Moon's organization
to buy influence inside the U.S. government, the congressional investigation found.
Kim Jong Pil also had served as South Korean prime minister in the early 1970s. In 1987, however,
Kim Jong Pil was out of power and considering a run for the South Korean presidency.
The DIA Reports
According to the Defense Intelligence Agency, Kim Jong Pil was one of the candidates who benefited
from Moon’s estrangement from the ruling Democratic Justice Party.
“Kim Jong-Pil is reportedly receiving financial and organizational support for his KS (South Korean)
presidential bid from the controversial Unification Church,” the DIA reported in its Sept. 10, 1987,
cable.
But Moon’s organization did not stop with its old ally. The DIA discovered that Moon was hedging his
bets by putting money into the hands of Kim Dae Jung and other leaders of the Reunification
Democratic Party.
“Cult trying to win influence with the next KS government while defeating the current ruling party's
candidate,” read the title of another DIA report dated Sept. 22, 1987.
“The controversial Unification Church (UC) is actively funneling large amounts of political funds to
opposition Reunification Democratic Party (RDP) advisor Kim Dae-Jung, … RDP president Kim
Young-Sam, … and former KS prime minister Kim Jong-Pil for their campaigns for KS president,
leaving out only the ruling party candidate, Democratic Justice Party (DJP) president Roh Tae-Woo,”
the DIA report said.
“The UC wants to see Roh defeated and is funneling large amounts of political funds to Roh's three
opponents with the expectation that it will have influence with whomever of the three should end up as
the next president.” [I obtained these DIA reports under a Freedom of Information Act request.]
Eventually, the race boiled down to a contest between Roh Tae Woo, Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young
Sam. On Dec. 16, 1987, Roh won with 36 percent of the vote. Kim Young Sam got 28 percent and Kim
Dae Jung received 27 percent. Kim Jong Pil garnered only 8 percent. [For details on the election, see
The Two Koreas by Don Oberdorfer.]
Discreet Relationships
Though losing that round, Moon’s beneficiaries did better in the years that followed. Kim Jong Pil again
became prime minister, a post he held from 1998 to early 1999. Kim Dae Jung became president in
1998 and also won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Through the years, Kim Dae Jung did not advertise his ties to Moon. Kim's association with the
theocrat who considers himself the new Messiah has remained discreet, with the two men generally
avoiding contact in public.
One exception came on Feb. 1, 1999, when Moon and his wife – known to their followers as the “True
Parents” – were holding a celebration at the Lotte Hotel in Seoul. To the surprise of Moon’s followers,
Kim Dae Jung arrived and enthusiastically joined the couple in their ceremony.
According to the Unification News, the church's internal newsletter, the Lotte Hotel event was “the first
time President Kim appeared in public with our True Parents.”
Though less secret, Moon’s relationship with the Bush family also remains little known to most
Americans. Moon's organization has paid the Bush family directly – for speeches in the 1990s – but
the alliance appears to have grown primarily through Moon’s extravagant financial support for The
Washington Times, which has consistently backed the Bushes politically.
After its founding in 1982, The Washington Times staunchly supported some of the Reagan-Bush
administration’s most controversial policies, such as the contra war in Nicaragua.
When the contra operation was embarrassed by initial public disclosures of contra drug trafficking in
1985-86, The Washington Times led the counterattack, criticizing journalists and congressional
investigators who uncovered the first evidence of the problem.
Those attacks helped cement a conventional wisdom in the Washington political community that the
contra-drug allegations were bogus, a belief that persisted until 1998 when the CIA's inspector general
admitted that dozens of contra units were implicated in cocaine trafficking and that the Reagan-Bush
administration had hidden much of the evidence. [See Robert Parry’s Lost History.]
The Washington Times also led the charge against Iran-contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh in
the late 1980s and early 1990s. The newspaper's rear-guard defense of its allies proved important
when Walsh's investigation threatened to break through the long-running White House cover-up that
was protecting Bush’s assertion that he was “out of the loop” on the scandal. [For details on The
Washington Times' role, see Walsh’s book, Firewall.]
During national political campaigns, Moon’s Washington Times was especially influential, mounting
harsh – and often inaccurate – attacks on the Bush family's adversaries.
In 1988, when George H.W. Bush was running for president, The Washington Times publicized false
rumors about the mental health of Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis, an important first step in
raising doubts about the Massachusetts governor.
President George H.W. Bush grew so appreciative of The Washington Times that in 1991, he invited
its editor-in-chief, Wesley Pruden, to the White House for a private lunch. Bush explained that the
purpose of the lunch was “just to tell you how valuable the Times has become in Washington, where
we read it everyday.” [WT, May 17, 1992]
In Bush’s 1992 reelection campaign, The Washington Times was helping again, spreading new false
rumors that Bill Clinton might have betrayed his country during a college trip to Moscow, possibly
being recruited by the KGB as a spy.
Lining Pockets
After George H.W. Bush lost in 1992, The Washington Times shifted from defense to offense. The
newspaper became a leading conservative weapon in mounting attacks on the Clinton administration.
During the Bush family’s years out of power, Moon put money directly into their pockets, too. Moonaffiliated organizations paid for speeches by former President Bush in the United States, Asia and
South America. Sometimes, Barbara Bush joined her husband in these appearances.
The price tag for the speeches has been estimated at from hundreds of thousands of dollars to $10
million, a figure cited to me by a senior Unification Church official in the mid-1990s. The elder Bush
has refused to divulge how much money he received from Moon-affiliated organizations.
During one 1996 appearance in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the senior Bush went beyond a mere
speech to act as a kind of international lobbyist for the Moon organization.
At the time, Moon was planning to launch a new newspaper, Tiempos del Mundo, and his supporters
were upset over critical coverage in South American newspapers. The South American press was
pointing out Moon’s close association with right-wing “death-squad” governments of the 1970s and the
so-called “Cocaine Coup” regime in Bolivia in the early 1980s.
Moon's defenders were forced to issue public denials that Moon's mysterious source of wealth came
from drug trafficking and other organized-crime activities.
These allegations were threatening the Tiempos del Mundo launch, Moon's followers feared. But
Moon had a special weapon to prove his respectability: the endorsement of the 41st president of the
United States.
Bush arrived on Nov. 22, 1996, and stayed with Argentine President Carlos Menem at his official
residence. The next day, Bush gave the keynote address at the newspaper’s inaugural dinner.
“Mr. Bush’s presence as keynote speaker gave the event invaluable prestige,” wrote the Unification
News. “Father [Moon] and Mother [Mrs. Moon] sat with several of the True Children [Moon’s offspring]
just a few feet from the podium.”
Bush lavished praise on Moon and his journalistic enterprises. “I want to salute Reverend Moon,” Bush
said. “A lot of my friends in South America don’t know about The Washington Times, but it is an
independent voice. The editors of The Washington Times tell me that never once has the man with the
vision interfered with the running of the paper, a paper that in my view brings sanity to Washington,
D.C.”
Bush's endorsement wasn't exactly accurate. A stream of editors and correspondents have left The
Washington Times, complaining about the interference of Moon's operatives. But Moon's followers
believed Bush's intervention stanched the flow of negative press stories and saved the day.
'Satanic' America
In those eight years of the Bush family's hiatus from power, Moon also grew increasingly antiAmerican, often telling his followers that the United States was “Satanic.” He vowed to build a
movement powerful enough to absorb America and eliminate what Moon saw as America's destructive
tendencies toward individualism.
“Americans who continue to maintain their privacy and extreme individualism are foolish people,”
Moon told his followers during one speech on Aug. 4, 1996. He then said, “Once you have this great
power of love, which is big enough to swallow entire America, there may be some individuals who
complain inside your stomach. However, they will be digested.”
During the 2000 campaign, The Washington Times was back helping the Bush family achieve its
political restoration. Day after day, the newspaper published articles undercutting Democrat Al Gore –
even questioning his sanity – while boosting the candidacy of George W. Bush.
In late 1999, The New York Times and The Washington Post created a controversy by misquoting
Gore as claiming credit for starting the Love Canal toxic-waste cleanup. The two newspapers quoted
Gore as saying "I was the one that started it all" when in fact he was referring to a similar Tennessee
toxic-waste case and said, "that was the one that started it all."
Yet, with the bogus quote touching off a wave of media ridicule about Gore's supposed lack of
credibility, The Washington Times eagerly joined the pack and returned to its old game of questioning
the sanity of its political enemies.
A Washington Times editorial termed Gore “delusional” and stated, “The real question is how to react
to Mr. Gore’s increasingly bizarre utterings.” The editorial went on to call Gore “a politician who not
only manufactures gross, obvious lies about himself and his achievements but appears to actually
believe these confabulations.” [WT, Dec. 7, 1999]
Even after The New York Times and The Washington Post corrected their misquote, The Washington
Times continued to use the bogus quote.
On Dec. 31, 1999, Moon's newspaper published a column entitled "Liar, Liar; Gore's Pants on Fire."
The column repeated the false quote and concluded that "when Al Gore lies, it's without any apparent
reason."
The media drumbeat about Gore’s supposed lies – often built on similar press exaggerations and
outright errors – became a key element of the 2000 campaign. Many Republican strategists viewed
the widespread perception of Gore as untrustworthy as crucial in holding down Gore's vote and
clearing George W. Bush's route to the White House.
Payback
Now, with the Bush family back in charge, Moon’s organization appears in line for some financial
payback. George W. Bush’s plan to funnel government money into religious charities is expected to be
especially profitable for Moon's front groups that are organized as non-profit charities.
The Rev. Pat Robertson, the conservative televangelist, is among those who have raised the alarm
about how Bush’s "faith-based" initiative could line Moon's pockets.
On the "700 Club" television program, Robertson warned that Moon’s Unification Church could
become one of the financial “beneficiaries of the proposal to expand eligibility for government grants to
religious charities.” [Washington Post, Feb. 22, 2000]
Besides the possibility of collecting U.S. taxpayers’ money, Moon also continues to benefit from a
determined see-no-evil stance of the U.S. government toward Moon’s political-religious-business
organization.
Widespread evidence exists of money-laundering by Moon’s operation – including first-hand
statements by church insiders including his former daughter-in-law. But this evidence simply
disappears into a black hole of federal indifference.
Moon’s business dealings with communist North Korea, dating back to 1991 and the first Bush
administration, also have prompted no official U.S. reaction.
Based on what is known publicly, Moon would appear to be in violation of the long-standing U.S. trade
embargo against North Korea. That embargo covered Moon because he is a legal U.S. resident –
possessing a "green card" – and thus required to abide by U.S. sanction laws.
According to other DIA documentation that I obtained under FOIA, Moon delivered millions of dollars in
secret payments to North Korea’s top officials – including current communist leader Kim Il Song.
Those payments, in the early-to-mid 1990s, came at a time when the communist regime was
desperate for hard currency to support its development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.
Ironically, it is that arms buildup that George W. Bush now cites as a chief reason for postponing
further negotiations with North Korea – and for spending tens of billions of dollars to build a U.S.
nuclear "Star Wars" shield.
During this past week’s summit, South Korea’s president Kim Dae Jung disagreed with Bush over the
cessation of talks with North Korea. Bush attacked the North Koreans as untrustworthy.
Yet, behind the scenes – though perhaps not fully apparent to either man – was this odd connection
linking the Bush family, Kim Dae Jung and the communist leaders of North Korea.
It was the secret bond of Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s mysterious money.
Robert Parry is an investigative reporter who broke many of the Iran-contra stories in the 1980s for
The Associated Press and Newsweek.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Bush_Gang/Moon_NKorea_Bushes.html
Moon, North Korea, and the Bushes
by Robert Parry, October 11, 2000
Editor's Note: Given the nuclear crisis involving North Korea, we are republishing, with minor revisions,
this six-year-old article about millions of dollars allegedly funneled from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon –
The Washington Times founder and a Bush family financial backer – to leaders of North Korea's
communist dictatorship in the 1990s:
The Rev. Sun Myung Moon's business empire, which includes the right-wing Washington Times, paid
millions of dollars to North Korea's communist leaders in the early 1990s when the hard-line
government needed foreign currency to finance its weapons programs, according to U.S. Defense
Intelligence Agency documents.
The payments included a $3 million "birthday present" to current communist leader Kim Jong Il and
offshore payments amounting to "several tens of million dollars" to the previous communist dictator,
Kim Il Sung, the documents said.
Moon apparently was seeking a business foothold in North Korea, but the transactions also raised
potential legal questions for Moon, who appears to have defied U.S. embargos on trade and financial
relations with the Pyongyang government. Those legal questions were never pursued, however,
apparently because of Moon's powerful political connections within the Republican power structure of
Washington, including financial and political ties to the Bush family.
Besides making alleged payments to North Korea's communist leaders, the 86-year-old founder of the
South Korean-based Unification Church has funneled large sums of money, possibly millions of
dollars, to former President George H.W. Bush.
One well-placed former leader of Moon's Unification Church told me that the total earmarked for
former President Bush was $10 million. The father of the current U.S. President has declined to say
how much Moon's organization actually paid him for speeches and other services in Asia, the United
States and South America.
At one Moon-sponsored speech in Argentina in 1996, Bush declared, "I want to salute Reverend
Moon," whom Bush praised as "the man with the vision."
Bush made these speeches at a time when Moon was expressing intensely anti-American views. In
his own speeches, Moon termed the United States "Satan's harvest" and claimed that American
women descended from a "line of prostitutes."
During the pivotal presidential campaign in 2000, Moon's Washington Times alsoattacked the ClintonGore administration for failing to take more aggressive steps to block North Korea's military research
and development. The newspaper called the Clinton-Gore administration's decisions an "abdication of
responsibility for national security."
A Helping Hand
Yet, in the 1990s when North Korea was scrambling for the resources to develop missiles and nuclear
technology, Moon was among a small group of outside businessmen quietly investing in North Korea.
Moon's activities attracted the attention of the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is responsible for
monitoring potential military threats to the United States.
Though historically an ardent anticommunist, Moon negotiated a business deal in 1991 with Kim Il
Sung, the longtime communist leader, the DIA documents said.
The deal called for construction of a hotel complex in Pyongyang as well as a new Holy Land at the
site of Moon's birth in North Korea, one document said. The DIA said the deal sprang from face-toface negotiations between Moon and Kim Il Sung in North Korea from Nov. 30 to Dec. 8, 1991.
"These talks took place secretly, without the knowledge of the South Korean government," the DIA
wrote on Feb. 2, 1994. "In the original deal with Kim [Il Sung], Moon paid several tens of million dollars
as a down-payment into an overseas account," the DIA said in a cable dated Aug. 14, 1994.
The DIA said Moon's organization also delivered money to Kim Il Sung's son and successor, Kim Jong
Il.
"In 1993, the Unification Church sold a piece of property located in Pennsylvania," the DIA reported on
Sept. 9, 1994. "The profit on the sale, approximately $3 million was sent through a bank in China to
the Hong Kong branch of the KS [South Korean] company 'Samsung Group.' The money was later
presented to Kim Jung Il [Kim Jong Il] as a birthday present."
After Kim Il Sung's death in 1994 and his succession by his son, Kim Jong Il, Moon dispatched his
longtime aide, Bo Hi Pak, to ensure that the business deals were still on track with Kim Jong Il "and his
coterie," the DIA reported.
"If necessary, Moon authorized Pak to deposit a second payment for Kim Jong Il," the DIA wrote.
The DIA declined to elaborate on the documents that it released to me under a Freedom of
Information Act request in 2000. "As for the documents you have, you have to draw your own
conclusions," said DIA spokesman, U.S. Navy Capt. Michael Stainbrook.
Moon's Right-Hand Man
Contacted in Seoul, South Korea, in fall 2000, Bo Hi Pak, a former publisher of The Washington
Times, denied that payments were made to individual North Korean leaders and called "absolutely
untrue" the DIA's description of the $3 million land sale benefiting Kim Jong Il.
But Bo Hi Pak acknowledged that Moon met with North Korean officials and negotiated business deals
with them in the early 1990s. Pak said the North Korean business investments were structured
through South Korean entities.
"Rev. Moon is not doing this in his own name," said Pak.
Pak said he went to North Korea in 1994, after Kim Il Sung's death, only to express "condolences" to
Kim Jong Il on behalf of Moon and his wife. Pak denied that another purpose of the trip was to pass
money to Kim Jong Il or to his associates.
Asked about the seeming contradiction between Moon's avowed anti-communism and his friendship
with leaders of a communist state, Pak said, "This is time for reconciliation. We're not looking at
ideological differences. We are trying to help them out" with food and other humanitarian needs.
Samsung officials said they could find no information in their files about the alleged $3 million
payment.
North Korean officials clearly valued their relationship with Moon. In February of 2000, on Moon's 80th
birthday, Kim Jong Il sent Moon a gift of rare wild ginseng, an aromatic root used medicinally, Reuters
reported.
Legal Issues
Because of the long-term U.S. embargo against North Korea, Moon's alleged payments to the
communist leaders raised potential legal issues for Moon, a South Korean citizen who is a U.S.
permanent resident alien.
"Nobody in the United States was supposed to be providing funding to anybody in North Korea,
period, under the Treasury (Department's) sanction regime," said Jonathan Winer, former deputy
assistant secretary of state handling international crime.
The U.S. embargo of North Korea dates back to the Korean War. With a few exceptions for
humanitarian goods, the embargo barred trade and financial dealings between North Korea and "all
U.S. citizens and permanent residents wherever they are located, and all branches, subsidiaries and
controlled affiliates of U.S. organizations throughout the world."
Moon became a permanent resident of the United States in 1973, according to Justice Department
records. Bo Hi Pak said Moon has kept his "green card" status. Though often in South Korea and
South America, Moon maintained a residence near Tarrytown, north of New York City, and controls
dozens of affiliated U.S. companies.
Direct payments to foreign leaders in connection with business deals also could have prompted
questions about possible violations of the U.S. Corrupt Practices Act, a prohibition against overseas
bribery.
(But in the six years since we disclosed the Moon-North Korean payments, George W. Bush's
administration has taken no legal action against Moon. Meanwhile, Moon's Washington Times has
been one of Bush's most consistent and aggressive backers in the U.S. news media.)
Alleged Brainwashing
Moon's followers regard him as the second Messiah and grant him broad power over their lives, even
letting him pick their spouses. Critics, including ex-Unification Church members, have accused Moon
of brainwashing young recruits and living extravagantly while his followers have little.
Around the world, Moon's business relationships long have been cloaked in secrecy. His sources of
money have been mysteries, too, although witnesses – including his former daughter-in-law – have
come forward in recent years and alleged criminal money-laundering within the organization.
Moon "demonstrated contempt for U.S. law every time he accepted a paper bag full of untraceable,
undeclared cash collected from true believers" who carried the money in from overseas, wrote his exdaughter-in-law, Nansook Hong, in her 1998 book, In the Shadows of the Moons.
Since Moon stepped onto the international stage in the 1970s, he has used his fortune to build political
alliances and to finance media, academic and political institutions.
In 1978, Moon was identified by the congressional "Koreagate" investigation as an operative of the
South Korean CIA and part of an influence-buying scheme aimed at the U.S. government. Moon
denied the charges.
Though Moon later was convicted on federal tax evasion charges, his political influence continued to
grow when he founded The Washington Times in 1982. The unabashedly right-wing newspaper won
favor with presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush by backing their policies and hammering
their opponents.
In 1988, when then-Vice President Bush was trailing early in the presidential race, the Times spread a
baseless rumor that the Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis had undergone psychiatric
treatment. The Moon-affiliated American Freedom Coalition also distributed millions of pro-Bush flyers.
The elder George Bush personally expressed his gratitude. When Wesley Pruden was appointed The
Washington Times' editor-in-chief in 1991, Bush invited Pruden to a private White House lunch "just to
tell you how valuable the Times has become in Washington, where we read it every day." [Washington
Times, May 17, 1992].
Moon's Vatican
While Bush was hosting Pruden in the White House, Pruden's boss was opening his financial and
business channels to North Korea. According to the DIA, Moon's North Korean deal was ambitious
and expensive.
"There was an agreement regarding economic cooperation for the reconstruction of KN's [North
Korea's] economy which included establishment of a joint venture to develop tourism at Kimkangsan,
KN [North Korea]; investment in the Tumangang River Development; and investment to construct the
light industry base at Wonsan, KN. It is believed that during their meeting Mun [Moon] donated 450
billion yen to KN," one DIA report said.
In late 1991, the Japanese yen traded at about 130 yen to the U.S. dollar, meaning Moon's investment
would have been about $3.5 billion, if the DIA information is correct.
Moon's aide Pak denied that Moon's investments ever approached that size. Though Pak did not give
an overall figure, he said the initial phase of an automobile factory was in the range of $3 million to $6
million.
The DIA depicted Moon's business plans in North Korea as much grander. The DIA valued the
agreement for hotels in Pyongyang and the resort in Kumgang-san, alone, at $500 million. The plans
also called for creation of a kind of Vatican City covering Moon's birthplace.
"In consideration of Mun's [Moon's] economic cooperation, Kim [Il Sung] granted Mun a 99-year lease
on a 9 square kilometer parcel of land located in Chongchu, Pyonganpukto, KN. Chongchu is Mun's
birthplace and the property will be used as a center for the Unification Church. It is being referred to as
the Holy Land by Unification Church believers and Mun [h]as been granted extraterritoriality during the
life of the lease."
North Korea granted Moon some smaller favors, too. Four months after Moon's meeting with Kim Il
Sung, editors from The Washington Times were allowed to interview the reclusive North Korean
communist leader in what the Times called "the first interview he has granted to an American
newspaper in many years."
Later in 1992, the Times was again rallying to President George H.W. Bush's defense. The newspaper
stepped up attacks against Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh as his investigation homed
in on Bush and his inner circle. Walsh considered the Times' relentless criticism a distraction to the
criminal investigation, according to his book, Firewall.
That fall, in the 1992 campaign, the Times turned its editorial guns on Bush's new rival, Bill Clinton.
Some of the anti-Clinton articles raised questions about Clinton's patriotism, even suggesting that the
Rhodes scholar might have been recruited as a KGB agent during a collegiate trip to Moscow.
A Bush Salute
George H.W. Bush's loss of the White House did not end his relationship with Moon's organization.
Out of office, Bush agreed to give paid speeches to Moon-supported groups in the United States, Asia
and South America. In some cases, Barbara Bush joined in the events.
During this period, Moon grew increasingly hateful about the United States and many of its ideals.
In a speech to his followers on Aug. 4, 1996, Moon vowed to liquidate American individuality, declaring
that his movement would "swallow entire America." Moon said Americans who insisted on "their
privacy and extreme individualism will be digested."
Nevertheless, former President Bush continued to work for Moon's organization. In November 1996,
the former U.S. President spoke at a dinner in Buenos Aires, Argentina, launching Moon's South
American newspaper, Tiempos del Mundo.
"I want to salute Reverend Moon," Bush declared, according to a transcript of the speech published in
The Unification News, an internal church newsletter.
"A lot of my friends in South America don't know about The Washington Times, but it is an
independent voice," Bush said. "The editors of The Washington Times tell me that never once has the
man with the vision interfered with the running of the paper, a paper that in my view brings sanity to
Washington, D.C."
Contrary to Bush's claim, a number of senior editors and correspondents have resigned in protest of
editorial interference from Moon's operatives. Bush has refused to say how much he was paid for the
speech in Buenos Aires or others in Asia and the United States.
Going After Gore
During the 2000 election cycle, Moon's newspaper took up the cause of Bush's son and mounted
harsh attacks against his rival, Vice President Al Gore.
In 1999, the Times played a prominent role in promoting a bogus quote attributed to Gore about his
work on the toxic waste issue. In a speech in Concord, N.H., Gore had referred to a toxic waste case
in Toone, Tennessee, and said, "that was the one that started it all."
The New York Times and The Washington Post garbled the quote, claiming that Gore had said, "I was
the one that started it all."
The Washington Times took over from there, accusing Gore of being clinically "delusional." The Times
called the Vice President "a politician who not only manufactures gross, obvious lies about himself and
his achievements but appears to actually believe these confabulations." [Washington Times, Dec. 7,
1999]
Even after other papers corrected the false quote, The Washington Times continued to use it. The
notion of Gore as an exaggerator, often based on this and other mis-reported incidents, became a
powerful Republican "theme" as Texas Gov. Bush surged ahead of Gore in the presidential preference
polls.
'Abdication'
Republicans also made the North Korean threat an issue against the Clinton-Gore administration. In
1999, a report by a House Republican task force warned that during the 1990s, North Korea and its
missile program emerged as a nuclear threat to Japan and possibly the Pacific Northwest of the
United States.
"This threat has advanced considerably over the past five years, particularly with the enhancement of
North Korea's missile capabilities," the Republican task force said. "Unlike five years ago, North Korea
can now strike the United States with a missile that could deliver high explosive, chemical, biological,
or possibly nuclear weapons."
Moon's newspaper joined in excoriating the Clinton-Gore administration for postponing a U.S. missile
defense system to counter missiles from North Korea and other "rogue states." Gov. Bush favored
such a system.
"To its list of missed opportunities, the Clinton-Gore administration can now add the abdication of
responsibility for national security," a Times editorial said.
"By deciding not to begin construction of the Alaskan radar, Mr. Clinton has indisputably delayed
eventual deployment beyond 2005, when North Korea is estimated to be capable of launching an
intercontinental missile against the United States." [Washington Times, Sept. 5, 2000]
The Washington Times did not note that its founder – who has continued to subsidize the newspaper
with tens of millions of dollars a year – had defied a U.S. trade embargo aimed at containing the
military ambitions of North Korea.
By supplying money at a time when North Korea was desperate for hard currency, Moon helped
deliver the means for the communist state to advance exactly the strategic threat that Moon's
newspaper chastised the Clinton-Gore administration for failing to thwart.
That money bought Moon influence inside North Korea. The Korean theocrat also appears to have
secured crucial protection from George W. Bush's administration, after investing wisely for many years
in the President's family.
[For more details on the Moon-Bush connection, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege. To see two
of the DIA documents, click here.]
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and
Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq,
can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book,
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
http://www.alternet.org
Who Is Rev. Moon? 'Returning Lord,' 'Messiah,' Publisher of the Washington Times
By John Gorenfeld, PoliPoint Press, March 15, 2008
The following is an adapted excerpt from John Gorenfeld's "Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon
Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right, and Built an American Kingdom"
(Polipoint Press, 2008). The video at the right is from a 1997 Washington Times party where Moon
said he founded the newspaper to save the world. In it, he also demands that his employees rid the
world of "free sex," meaning sexual intercourse beyond the purifying influence of his mass weddings.
One chilly Tuesday evening, strange things were afoot on Capitol Hill. The U.S. Senate was hosting a
ceremony at the request of a wealthy, elderly newspaper publisher who wanted official recognition as
a majestic, divine visitor to Washington. The Dirksen Senate Office Building made for an unlikely
temple: a formidable seven-story block of white marble, looming on a street corner diagonally across
from the Capitol Dome, its marble pediment is inscribed, "THE SENATE IS THE LIVING SYMBOL OF
OUR UNION OF STATES."
On March 23, 2004, U.S. lawmakers were filmed here in a conference room, paying tribute to the
enigmatic Reverend Sun Myung Moon, then eighty-four, and his wife, Hak Ja, sixty-four.
As the cameras rolled, two congressmen presented the Koreans with matching royal costumes.
Wearing the burgundy robes and shining crowns, which crested into jagged golden pinnacles, the
married couple smiled and waved for the cameras.
Who was this self-proclaimed monarch? In the 1970s, the evening news had presented Moon, the
ranting, middle-aged business tycoon who wore flowing robes on special occasions, as Korea's
answer to L. Ron Hubbard, someone for college students to avoid, luring thousands of young
Americans into a cult in which they sold carnations on the street and married spouses he chose for
them. But the media had moved on to other nightmares, leaving Moon, forgotten, to reinvent himself.
Now time had wizened him into an elderly patriarch, wearing an ashen face for his coronation. An
orange Senate VIP name tag remained pinned to his gray suit, peeking out from between rows of curly
gold filigree, as he stood on stage at the head of a red carpet.
The King of Peace, the Lord of the Fourth Israel, the Messiah, they called him now – and the publisher
of the Washington Times. Though over a dozen congressmen attended his pageant, no one spoke a
word of it to the press, not at first. By the time the secret was out, and ABC News was broadcasting
the strange sights, it was three months later – summertime-and school was coming soon to the States.
Soon grand parade marshals would drive teen queens and their bouquets around football fields, and
the helmets of varsity teams would crash through banners. And homecoming would not be so
different, insisted the two hapless congressmen, from the Reverend Moon's rites, which had become a
scandal.
"People crown kings and queens at homecoming parades all the time," the liberal Chicago
representative Danny Davis (D-IL) said.
"I remember the king and queen thing," said Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD). "But we have the king and
queen of the prom, the king and queen of 4-H, the Mardi Gras and all sorts of other things. I had no
idea what he was king of."
Yes, they admitted, it was them on camera, walking in the procession with slow, worshipful steps,
bowing to the stage where the Moons stood. Those were Davis's hands, wearing white gloves to avoid
defiling the embroidered pillow he carried, a crown bobbing on it, to be lain on the brow of Mrs. Moon;
that was Bartlett carrying the burgundy cape for Mr. Moon's shoulders. Neither seemed embarrassed.
The "throne room" itself belonged to the U.S. Senate, whose Rules Committee, under Republican
senator Trent Lott (R-MS), had the final say in who booked rooms and whether visitors could be
anointed kings in them. And a senator had to sign off on that. The name of the senator, said one of the
evening's hosts, the defrocked Catholic priest George Stallings, was "shrouded in mystery."
"There are moments that best play straight," CNN anchor Aaron Brown said after I discovered the
pageant. "So here goes. Lawmakers welcome a guy to Congress – and the messiah shows up."
The coronation had been disguised as a Washington awards dinner, sponsored by a conservative,
pro-war senator who had modestly kept his name out of the picture. The party began normally enough,
serving portions of chicken and fish from the buffet and windy politicians' speeches from the podium.
But through a bait and switch – and a strange internal logic – room G-50 of the Senate office building,
all marble and eagle seals, changed during the course of the evening into a fantasy throne room,
complete with long red carpet, for the stern monarch of the Washington Times, the influential
conservative newspaper that warns of immigrants and threats to Christmas – and who also controls
United Press International (UPI), the formerly great news agency.
Moon walked from the chilly evening into the marble building dressed in a suit with bow tie and rose
corsage. When he got up to deliver his keynote address, it was in a gravelly northern dialect of
Korean, a farmer's accent. Gripping the podium, he gruffly admonished the crowd, which included
members of Congress, to accept him as "God's ambassador, sent to earth with His full authority."
With a printed copy of the speech before them – headlined Declaring the Era of the Peace Kingdom –
guests listened to an English translation in radio earpieces. "The time has come for you to open your
hearts," Moon said, "and receive the secrets that Heaven is disclosing in this age through me." To
prove his credentials, he spoke of testimonials on his behalf – from the lips of the dead, with whom he
claimed the power to converse. "The five great saints," he said – meaning Jesus, Confucius, Buddha,
Muhammad, and the Hindu prophet Shankara – "and many other leaders in the spirit world, including
even Communist leaders such as Marx and Lenin, who committed all manner of barbarity and murders
on earth, and dictators such as Hitler and Stalin, have found strength in my teachings, mended their
ways and been reborn as new persons."
His boasts were underscored with whoops and cheers from his followers, who had the good seats. To
their church, the moment was a shining vindication for years of hardship: for being treated in the press
as predators and for seeing their Christ-like hero, the Reverend Moon, forced onto the witness stand
by U.S. tax attorneys, Sen. Bob Dole, and others between 1975 and 1984. Behind the gavels of
government, these Pontius Pilates had pronounced Moon an enemy of the American family and the
advance man for a South Korean dictator. The Reagan Justice Department had even sent Moon to
prison. But now Moon was active in family values politics, and members of Congress were as
submissive as puppies. Moon prevailed.
Believing they were saving the world, Moon's men had faced desperate pressure to arrange the
awards dinner. The Senate event's emcee was Michael Jenkins, leader of the American Unification
Church, a white, middle-aged, blandly enthusiastic spokesman for the cause. In the autumn of 2003,
Jenkins recalls in a sermon found online, the Reverend Moon had instructed him three times, first in a
low voice, then louder, that unless the world enacted Moon's plan for world peace, millions would die
in a new Middle East Holocaust. "Not six million," Jenkins said, "but six hundred million." That fall the
Times publisher fished for hours on his boat, while his apostles begged him not to strain his health.
"You tell me to rest," Moon retorted, "but I'm determining the course of history." When Moon goes
reeling off the coast of Kodiak, Alaska – where the church-owned True World Foods cannery annually
ships out over twenty million pounds of salmon and other seafood – his followers believe his fishing
also mends the wounds of the Cosmos. One day, the elderly fisherman accused Jenkins's American
archdiocese of taking the mission lightly. Far from it, Jenkins proclaimed from the pulpit. "Our
American members are willing to die," he said. "They're willing to die. Once they understand God's
will, they'll die."
Had the Reverend Moon's crowning at the Dirksen Senate Office Building not been filmed and
photographed from seemingly every possible angle, and broadcast on ABC's World News Tonight and
Fox, and giggled at by The Daily Show's Jon Stewart, and compared in a New York Times op-ed with
an act of the Roman emperor who nominated his horse to the senate, it might have remained a mad
whisper among Senate aides.
"Moon can buy a newspaper," Chris Matthews (of MSNBC Hardball fame) said in 1982, when he was
spokesperson for Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Neill and Moon's editors had just printed their first
issue, "but I can't buy the idea he's a newspaperman."
Five years on, the skeptics persisted. "What I don't understand," said Washington Post editor Ben
Bradlee in 1987, alluding to a congressional report that said Moon's aides had been career South
Korean intelligence officers, "is how anyone can take seriously a newspaper that is controlled … by
the agents of a foreign government. No one would take them seriously if it was Bangladesh. No one
would take them seriously if it was France."
Today the peculiar newspaper has become an "extremely important paper for conservatives," National
Review editor John O'Sullivan has said, "because it's in Washington and has great influence within the
administration." Its reporting is incessantly quoted on Fox News Channel, on talk radio, and in the
Republican Web world, leaving a mark on public opinion. The Times originally rolled out in 1982 –
created by Moon – to counterbalance the critical Washington Post with a friendlier treatment of the
Reagan administration. The paper calls itself "America's Newspaper."
Or is it more than just a daily newspaper? Again and again, the reverend has described his paper's
role in surprising terms: as a vehicle for God's word; as "our media"; as a mighty ship at his disposal.
In 2005, frustrated by his lack of appreciation in the American press, Moon fumed, "How come our
media is silent? … You have to write correct articles, or maybe we should sell those newspapers … All
central nations should understand the Crown of Peace Ceremony."
Moon's messianic view of his paper has often led to strange collisions with its official image. In 1997,
the paper held a party for its fifteenth anniversary at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in D.C., and it was
broadcast on C-SPAN. After the tinkling of lounge piano, Bush Sr. appeared in a congratulatory video.
Sen. Orrin Hatch made a few pointed comments about the "liberal modus operandi" and the spirit of
capitalism, and mocked progressives for wanting to "help the poor, quote-and-quote." The Times's
chief editor, Wes Pruden, spoke briefly about the man who was about to take the stage. He told the
story of how that "young seeker" in Korea, a Sunday school teacher, survived torture, came to
America, and now fostered good journalism with his "commitment to objectivity." Then the grim-faced
Moon rose from his chair and spoke for about forty-five minutes.
"Free sex is centered on Sayy-tan!" he rasped – as Times associates shifted uncomfortably in their
seats. His tongue drooped lazily over his lips as he let this sink in. He continued. "World literature and
the media have often stimulated free sex," he said. "But from now on, you literary figures and
journalists should lead the way to prevent free sex. Free sex should completely disappear." During
that evening, he also directed Times staff to read a speech of his dozens of times for understanding;
he smiled to himself at a private joke about the number seven that the audience seemed to find hard
to follow; and he even told the crowd, "No one can oppose me."
Chris Matthews no longer badmouths Moon. For several years his syndicated column ran in the
Times. Seven years after his feisty dismissal of Moon, the fair-haired addressed a 1989 gathering with
the Messiah as headliner. It was the annual conference of the Moon-sponsored World Media
Association (WMA). The WMA is an allegedly serious panel that meets to think big thoughts on the
future of news, behind it the flags of the world's countries, as at a UN summit. Moon is a
newspaperman, after all.
With his seclusion, baronial palaces, and personal mystery, the Reverend Moon is a modern-day
Citizen Kane. Like Kane – and Kane's real-life inspiration, William Randolph Hearst-Moon oversees a
newspaper that whips up popular anger, in service to an agenda. Like Hearst's Castle (or Kane's
Xanadu), Moon's palaces (in Korea, North and South America, and reportedly Switzerland) are selfbuilt monuments to his greatness. "[W]hen the world was adrift on the stormy waves of the Cold War,"
he said at a Washington Times dinner televised on C-SPAN in 1997, "I established the Washington
Times to fulfill God's desperate desire to save this world." For years, in the late 1980s, reporters
wondered why anyone at all came to his extravagant dinner parties in Washington. Even though they
always ended the same, with Moon giving himself an award, they were reliably attended by Senator
Hatch and other politicians. Then the novelty of it faded, and Moon slipped from the headlines while
the rivers of cash rolled on.
Moon has never claimed to walk on water, but for decades, he has saved important Republican
activists from debt and funded their organizations with a purse that has sometimes seemed
inexhaustible. He has given millions to the Bush family and spent as much as $3 billion to push the
conservative message in the Washington Times, which has lost money since its start. During the
neoconservative Iran-Contra adventure of the 1980s, he even channeled money and support to
Central American death squads. "An unsung hero of freedom," writes Paul Gottfried, a conservative
scholar who has written a history of the right. "The continued refusal of Beltway conservatives publicly
to acknowledge their steadfast patron is, of course, scandalous."
Instead, they had long treated Moon like some creature locked in a mad scientist's laboratory. They
threw Moon a bone from time to time with private parties, but they never welcomed him into the
conservative hall of fame and never allowed the marriage to stumble into the light, where it would
upset the townspeople. If it hadn't been for the Internet, it would not have.
In the old days, the women's magazine McCall's had warned mothers about the dangers of the
Unification Church, named for its pledge to fuse all religions under one Father, calling it "by far the
most successful of the religious cults that have become so prominent and perplexing a feature of the
American '70s." A "nettle in the national consciousness," said People.
Evangelist Jerry Falwell, Founding Father of the Christian right, cursed Moon in a 1978 Esquire piece.
The article highlighted the preacher from Lynchburg, Virginia, as the crest of a new wave, a man who
might become "the first preacher to become a political leader." Falwell told the reporter, "Reverend
Sun Myung Moon is like the plague. He exploits boys and girls, and he should be exported. People
like Moon and the healer types, the Elmer Gantry types, are religious phonies who are raping America.
They will stand before God more accountable than any criminal on Earth."
Moon had come to build the American foundation, as he called it, for his kingdom. He came to
California amid a widespread panic at cults.
The media made Moon an icon of the craze. While the young slaved for him, Moon was reported to set
sail in a fifty-foot yacht, cruise Manhattan in a custom-built Lincoln Continental, and eat from dishes
etched in gold. (His church denied that he was rich and said these blessings were voluntary tokens of
appreciation from members.) When Moon gave pep talks to his young sales force, who were strung
out from hustling flowers, peanuts, and toys to pedestrians, he told them they were backing his
desperate fight to build God's kingdom on Earth, a living fortress against the devil.
The media didn't see it that way. Time attacked Moon as a "megalomaniacal 'messiah'" who
pretended to be a Christian minister but had privately confessed the pose to be a ruse, telling the
Moonies that "God is now throwing Christianity away." Moon was elsewhere assailed as a demagogue
who called the Nazi Holocaust an understandable punishment for the Jewish murder of Christ and who
asked for total obedience. "I am your brain," he'd said. "You can do everything in utter obedience to
me. Because what I am doing is not done at random, but what I am doing is under God's command."
Moon became such a phenomenon that, in 1977, Saturday Night Live cast comic duo John Belushi
and Dan Ackroyd as, respectively, Sun Myung Moon and a deprogrammer who succumbs to his
magic.
For all the paranoid fantasies of cult uprisings, the real revolution around the corner – the 1980 victory
of Ronald Reagan – celebrated ideas poles apart from the mass mind creeds of post-hippie California.
From its origins in the 1964 Goldwater campaign, the conservative insurgency glorified the rugged
American individual. It also promised answers for parents horrified by the radical new ways of life
chosen by their offspring. Reagan had vowed to "clean up the mess at Berkeley" and its "orgies" in
1966. The pledge resonated beyond just the student protests, taken as a promise that there would be
answer to attacks on tradition.
Eventually, the path blazed by Reagan-era activists would take America down the long road to the
Bush dynasty, and the sincere belief in many quarters that the George W. Bush White House houses
not only the commander in chief but the national preserver of old-time religion and family.
Moon had his feet in both worlds: change and backlash. On the one hand, it was his communes that
the older generation found frightful, numbering seven thousand American dropouts dwelling within by
the late 1970s, while tens of thousands of others followed Moon. On the other hand, his troops
marched in the name of reaction. Clean-cut and sexually regimented, they venerated Nixon, spoke of
banishing "free sex," and said they were starting the world's first perfect families.
It's well-known that Scientology leader L. Ron Hubbard went to Hollywood to become legit, but hardly
anyone has heard that the Reverend Sun Myung Moon has courted Washington for decades. In the
post-Watergate years, Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS), met growing pressure to stand up to the church and its
play for influence.
On January 9, 1976, twenty years before running for president, Dole asked the IRS to consider
repealing Moon's tax-exempt status. He wrote in a letter that Moon's empire "is based more on mind
control and indoctrination than on religious faith," operating "for political purposes" as much as for
God. Dole then held a televised town hall meeting on "destructive cults," attended by three hundred
parents from thirty states who fretted about the Moonies and other aggressive sects. Speakers said
people and families were being ruined; young people were being taught to lie for cash.
The hearings made some liberals uneasy, as calls for crackdowns bumped up against the First
Amendment's guarantee of the right to follow strange gods. A piece in the New Republic accused Dole
of jumping on national hysteria to jump-start his political fame, just as Richard Nixon had gotten his
start attacking accused Soviet spy Alger Hiss.
Meanwhile, former members of the Moon church testified that the movement had deprived them of
food and sleep to grease their willingness to swallow a terrifying agenda. A secret Unification Church
publication, Master Speaks, had been snuck out of the church by apostate Steve Hassan. It captured
what Moon said behind closed doors. Time headlined an excerpt: "The Secret Sayings of 'Master'
Moon." Moon had said:
"The whole world is in my hand, and I will conquer and subjugate the world."
"In restoring man from evil sovereignty, we must cheat."
"The time will come when, without my seeking it, that my words will almost serve as law."
"[W]e will be able to amend laws, articles of constitution, if we wish to do so."
"[T]elling a lie becomes a sin if you tell it to take advantage of a person, but if you tell a lie to do a good
thing … that is not a sin …. Even God tells lies very often."
"The present U.N. must be annihilated by our power …. We must make a new U.N."
"Many people will die, those who go against our movement."
"I have met many famous, so-called famous, Senators and Congressmen; but to my eyes they are
nothing. They are weak and helpless. We will win the battle. This is our dream, our project. But shut
your mouth tight."
(The church has often insisted these were mistranslations.)
The Moon Children took Dole's inquiry as a slap in the face. It came just as their new Father opened
his pocketbook to associate himself with apple-pie patriotism. The rallies and marches he staged
"would make … Lawrence Welk and John Wayne salute," author William Petersen observed in Those
Curious New Cults, a typical paperback priming Christians to confront the seventies explosion of
challenges to the Gospel.
For months, the Moonies – largely white and middle-class – had knocked on doors all over New York
City and plastered the Bronx with slick posters. They invited America lovers to a spectacle at Yankee
Stadium. Their Father smiled against a waving flag, his arm raised in a peculiar, vertical salute-to
whom was unclear. "If you look at the poster, he's mimicking Hitler," says Donna Collins, the daughter
of senior British church leaders. She was six in 1976, a child who still bounced on the lap of Moon, a
grandfatherly figure who, she says, had scarce sympathy for the meek or wretched. "He's not the Dalai
Lama, Mother Theresa type of leader," she says, "but a Mao, a Kim Jong-Il."
On the afternoon of June 1, 1976, wind blew red, white, and blue balloons over the ballpark. Moon's
apocalyptic, anti-Communist campus newsletter Rising Tide had warned of "Radical Marxist Leninists
Seeking to Co-opt Bicentennial." But to the relief of the Moon Children, tens of thousands of guests
streamed in. Relief overcame the exhausted disciples, and they brushed from their faces rainwater
and tears.
A summer thunderstorm whipped across the infield, crumpling a giant sign exalting Moon's
"Bicentennial God Bless America Festival." With a confident smile, Moon took the stage to fireworks
and a marching band that played "America the Beautiful." Above hung a banner in a gargantuan font
size: "REV SUN MYUNG MOON-Principal Speaker." Behind his pulpit encircled in red, white, and blue
bunting, he spoke in his usual style: striking the air with his hand, chopping and grasping and tilting his
body, warning of the nation's subversion by Satan, a personal nemesis. "There are critics who say,
'Why is Reverend Moon so involved in America's Bicentennial? It is none of his business,'" he said.
"Ladies and gentlemen, if there is an illness in your home, do you not need a doctor from outside?"
But to parents, the good doctor – despite the helpful image he made for himself by marching their sons
and daughters around the Washington Monument for the Bicentennial, dressed like Revolutionary War
heroes – had prescribed a pill with unconscionable side effects. The reasoning behind the titles of
True Parents was that Mr. and Mrs. Moon were a superior replacement for our own flawed, biological
parents. Their saintly portraits wobbled on the dashboards of Dodger-Chrysler sales vans on interstate
highways, as the recruits inside cursed themselves for not reaching their daily targets of $75 to $100meaning certain humiliation when they returned to HQ and were screamed at for betraying Father.
After the sun went down on the Washington Monument in 1976, according to a report in the
conservative magazine The American Spectator, the leaders set afire a nearby vat with blood samples
from 2,100 members to ensure "Father Moon's success in America." ("It worked!" joked writer Andrew
Ferguson, years later.) "A shameless blasphemer," National Review editor Richard Brookhiser wrote
at the time, "[Moon] says things about the United States that should not be said about any human
creation."
To the believers, the oppression of the Roman Empire had literally returned, and Bob Dole, at that first
hearing, was the voice putting Jesus out to death. "We got kicked in the gut on national TV," said Neil
Salonen, the American church's leader, who had the glib manner and good looks of a fraternity
president.
To congressional witness Ted Patrick, the swaggering Republican deprogrammer from the
Chattanooga streets who claimed to have freed hundreds from cults, Moon was running a timeworn
ghetto hustle on naive white youth. Patrick alleged that the group had wedded the totalitarian mind-set
of Communist China to the old tricks of Father Divine-the Harlem preacher who claimed to be God,
gave sermons in made-up words ("physicalize"), and convinced poor blacks to fund his life of luxury.
The church considered the renegade Moon foe a monster. "Man," Patrick jived to a Washington Post
reporter in 1979, "you get that Neil Salonen, he's the president of the whole Unification Church, and I'll
deprogram his ass in front of the whole FBI, if they want it that way."
That was when Dole had assailed the Unification Church for a second time, in 1979, in the wake of the
Jonestown Massacre. The first time, Moon supporters on the hill, wearing red carnations, shouted
"liar" at witnesses.
This time Salonen tried to leave a better impression, the church having been continually under
investigation by Washington since 1976. Outside the Russell Senate Office Building, Moon's squad of
musicians blew into tubas and French horns. They struck up the protest anthem "We Shall
Overcome." They called themselves Go World and played, they said, because their Father had
stressed the importance of music. Mrs. Moon had picked out the cream-and-red uniforms-the
reverend's color vision was not so good. Forrest Wright, a head of the band, had been humbled at a
leader's breakfast when the True Father looked his way and asked, "What American musician was
best?" "John Philip Sousa," Wright managed to say. "OK," Moon had said, "some kind of John Sousa
band." And Wright buzzed with it all along the Amtrak trip south to Manhattan.
After the mass weddings, newlyweds were commanded to remain apart for months or years in
preparation for their first sexual encounter. Moon believed that painstaking techniques were necessary
for the "blood exchange" that would prevent a repeat of the Garden of Eden. It's not in the Bible, but
Moon's revelation to believers is that Eve misused the love organ by fornicating with Lucifer.
What it means is that the Second Generation, the kids who grew up in the church, are fragile creations
who must not be fouled. "We have to drain this Satanic blood, and fill it with God's blood," Moon said
in 2002. Working up enough fury to harangue a stadium, he directed his words at an intimate
gathering of American teens in blue T-shirts. Sired under his plan, created by his pairings, they are
expected to live sinless lives. This is all on video: a scene of harsh adult-child relations that could have
been a scene in a Roald Dahl book. A pretty girl of about fifteen, her face uplifted as if hoping for
mercy, watches as this visitor to our shores stands cocky, collar splayed open across his jacket,
before a banner commending him, not them: "Congratulations, True Parents." Twice-married himself,
Moon demands chastity. "We still have this fallen blood running through our organs," he says through
a translator. "So we have to protect our love organ so that no more mistakes can be made there."
A furious command in Korean, then a waving of hands. The translation comes: "If you cannot make
your mind and body united, you are bound to Hell." Tears run down the girl's cheek. And the American
teens chant a familiar formula along with the newspaper publisher:
True love!
True life!
True lineage!
Another girl, fifteen, sits up front, angry. Moon has been talking like that as long as she could
remember: to make them feel unworthy, she thinks. She has drifted away from the church and only
attended because all her friends were in the "Blue Shirt Mafia." But this will be the last harangue she
comes to. Friends of hers have been shunned by the Family for having sex. Impure sex, according to
Moon, does worse than ruin people-it undoes God's work for generations.
A pang of disruption, a tearing in the fabric of society, runs through Moon's 1970s press. A Montreal
reporter rode along while family and friends plotted to restore a young, agnostic Jewish Canadian
convert, Benji Carroll, to his former life. The new Benji was frightful to them. Now he refused to see
them without a spiritual minder. His new family were the brothers and sisters of his sales force. On the
highway, they pounded on the van walls and he sobbed for God to erase his shameful weakness: "Get
out, get out, Satan. Get out of my body, get out of my mind, Satan, Satan."
They kidnapped him, drove him to a safehouse, and stuck him in a room with a cult buster: Aylsworth
Crawford "Ford" Greene III, whom the Moonies called the Servant of Satan. As if they needed another
sign he lived up to the title, he was the godson of their enemy, Sen. James Buckley (R-NY) from the
Dole hearings.
Like some hippie Bruce Wayne, the intense Ford Greene was born into privilege but wounded by past
tragedies, so that he fought like a man with nothing to lose. Greene's socialite mother, Daphne, wife of
a prominent San Francisco corporate attorney, kept boxes of files on the movement, which had
claimed two of her children. There were reams: internal church handbooks, press clippings, and
transcriptions from the Moon world of speeches given to his inner sanctum: "The world really is our
stage," reads one. "The money is there, and I will earn that money. I will reap that harvest. And you
will become soldiers, trained soldiers." And here the royal stenographer has appended, "[Applause]."
While his sister, Catherine Greene Ono, stayed in the movement, Greene walked out, his head
spinning. He spent months afterward, he says, waking up in a panic, afraid of being the twentiethcentury Judas. Then came what he calls his greatest failing. When the family kidnapped his sister in
hopes of deprogramming her, she smashed a juice bottle, cut herself with a shard, and had to be
hospitalized, giving her opportunity to rejoin the movement. Newspaper reports said church youth
were regularly trained in such tactics.
No Republican, Greene is known today in San Anselmo, California, for the marquee on the building
that is his law office, overlooking the main drag in this Marin County town, Sir Francis Drake
Boulevard, asking drivers to "defy evil Bushism." But his godfather, Buckley, was the older brother of
conservative lion William F. Buckley, whose nephew is conservative media watchdog Brent Bozell III,
who would one day sit on the board of a group funded by the Reverend Moon.
In 1978, supplementing his antique dealership, Greene, a commanding presence, charged a flat fee of
$750 per mind. Carroll's was his thirty-eighth and one of his toughest – maybe even too intelligent to
crack, he wondered. "Love me, Benji," Greene challenged him, forehead to forehead. "Love Satan."
He began a cross-examination:
"Your eyes are vacant, your veins are sticking out, your pupils are dilated and your skin is pale ….
How is selling flowers to a penniless old woman helping to save the world from selfishness? … You
think you're learning to love … but actually you're learning to hate! Hate sex, hate your family, hate
yourself … all in the name of loving. What kind of love is that?
Finally, the ice crumbled: Carroll's parents were no longer Satan's minions but returned to being his
loved ones. There were tears. "I feel … like my mind was wrapped in an elastic band," Carroll said.
That story became the 1981 movie Ticket to Heaven, with Sex and the City's Kim Cattrall as a perky
recruiter for a thinly disguised re-creation of the Moonies. She leads childlike group bonding activities"Choo-choo, choo-choo, POW!" the chant at Booneville went-breaking down Benji's resistance to the
sermons about saving the world through fund-raising.
In 1982, Moon was convicted of tax fraud. "Obedience to the law of diminishing returns may cost this
little king 18 months from his countinghouse," People wrote in the magazine's roundup of the year's
most intriguing people. He went to prison in 1984, and that was around the last time most people last
thought about him.
In footage taken in 2002 – apparently at the anniversary party for the Washington Times – the Rev.
Sun Myung Moon swung his arm in ax-handle blows while he demanded that all Christian churches
abandon the symbol of the cross. "Revolution!" he said. "Revolutionary movement! All the crosses
down. Take them down."
In his visions of the afterlife, even Jesus had been frustrated by mankind's inability to move past the
crucifixion and focus on Moon. And now God, according to the Unification Church, had told the
Reverend Moon to ensure the cross no longer hindered our appreciation of him. "On June 11, 2001,"
read the official account, "lightning struck down the cross decorating the front of the Unification
Theological Seminary"-an idyllic former Catholic monastery along the Hudson River in upstate New
York. "In view of this act of God, our True Father initiated the 'taking down the cross' movement.
Unificationist leaders and diverse theologians have presented many profound reasons for the taking
down of the cross."
It was left to Moon's American ministers to invent a palatable reason for a war on the symbol of
Christianity. It was decided that "Trade Your Cross for a Crown," a reference to a beloved American
Protestant hymn, would fit nicely into tradition.
I will cling to that old rugged cross
And trade it some day for a crown.
The bespectacled composer of "The Old Rugged Cross," a Methodist minister from an Ohio coalmining town, would probably have been surprised by what the Rev. Sun Myung Moon did with his
message. When George Bennard wrote the song in 1912, he meant no slight to the cross-in fact, his
life was memorialized in small-town Reed City, Michigan, by one three stories tall. The crown, he
meant to say, is your heavenly reward. But Moon openly jeers at the notion that "Jesus is coming in
the clouds" – his official description of Christian belief-on the basis that it doesn't jibe with the Old
Testament. Instead, he has claimed for some time that the kingdom has already arrived, here, in
swampy, corrupt Washington, D.C.
Which means the time to ditch the cross is now. It is his obstacle.
A funeral party was dispatched to Jerusalem. To bury the cross six feet deep, the original plan,
according to volume 22, number 6 of the church's Unification News, came from Moon's lips: "Bury the
cross in Golgotha where Jesus was crucified," he said. But they got there and a cathedral was in the
way. "[T]he floor is all made of marble," the report said.
So they settled for leaving a little cross there, hung with Moon's yellow and blue flag, and headed in
the predawn to a funeral a mile away in Potter's Field, on May 18, 2003-Easter in Jerusalem.
The pilgrims gathered around a shallow grave, cut into the clay earth of the two-thousand-year-old
burial ground traditionally believed to have been purchased with the silver Judas earned by betraying
Jesus.
At bottom lay a four-foot-long cross. While holy men looked on, undertakers draped it under the flag of
the Unification Church, before posting photos on the Web. "After the prayer," the report said, "the
participants put soil on the cross one by one, repenting for the false faith for 1700 years."
After breakfast, according to the Unification News, they held a 10 A.M. conference and heard that a
Palestinian suicide bomber struck Jerusalem right after sunrise – a sign, said the church journalist,
that "Satan attempted to stop this historical conference desperately." The travelers then discussed the
next command from the Reverend for reuniting the religions.
"Have Jewish people repent for the sin of killing Jesus," Moon had said.
After a difficult discussion, a rabbi, unnamed, agreed to apologize for the crime of the Jews, and the
guests raised a glass of Holy Wine.
John Gorenfeld writes for Radar magazine. He's the author of "Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend
Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right, and Built an American Kingdom"
(Polipoint Press, 2008).
http://www.alternet.org
The Money Behind Moon's Washington Times
By Rory O'Connor, December 2, 2009.
Where did all the money come from to keep the money-losing Moonie paper afloat all these years?
Editor’s note: This is part two of a series on the Washington Times. You can read Part One Here.
Of all the many questions swirling around the fate of Sun Myung Moon’s daily newspaper the
Washington Times, none is as puzzling as this: where did all the money come from to keep the paper
afloat all these years?
Like many American newspapers, Washington’s “other” daily is now hemorrhaging money. Unlike
most, however, red ink is nothing new for the Times, which has been a major money loser ever since
its inception in 1982. But money has never been a problem for the man behind the Times – convicted
felon and self-styled “Messiah” Sun Myung Moon. As I reported in my previous post, the Korean cult
leader spent well over a billion dollars in just the decade of 1982-92 – at a time when most of his
operations in America were losing substantial sums:
• more than $800 million on the Washington Times;
• hundreds of millions on national periodicals;
• tens of millions on electronic media;
• at least $40 million on New York newspapers;
• more than $10 million on a New York publishing house;
• millions on World Media Association junkets and conferences;
• millions more on New Right organizations, including the American Freedom Coalition;
• well over $100 million on real estate, including the New Yorker Hotel in midtown Manhattan;
• at least $40 million on commercial fishing operations;
• and at least $75 million on related projects…
Along the way, the Washington Times became the centerpiece of a successful effort by Moon to
influence American public opinion and promote a conservative political agenda in the United States.
His movement, once merely labeled a cult, is now most accurately described as a conglomerate. From
his extensive media operations in the nation’s capital… To substantial real estate holdings throughout
the United States… And from large commercial fishing operations… To advanced high-tech and
computer industries, a Fifth Avenue publishing house, and literally dozens of other businesses,
foundations, associations, institutes, and political and cultural groups… Moon and his money became
a force to be reckoned with – in large part because, as award-winning investigative reporter Robert
Parry has written, his daily mouthpiece the Times “targeted American politicians of the center and left
with journalistic attacks – sometimes questioning their sanity, as happened with Democratic
presidential nominees Michael Dukakis and Al Gore. Those themes then resonate through the broader
right-wing echo chamber and into the mainstream media.”
Exactly how much money the Washington Times itself loses annually is still a closely held secret – as
is the specific source of the funds. But it’s safe to assume that Moon’s American money comes from
overseas – as he himself told the Senate Judiciary Committee in June, 1984:
Moon: “Several hundred million dollars have been poured into America, because this nation will decide
the destiny of the world, these contributions are primarily coming from overseas.”
But where precisely does the money come from? As I first reported in my PBS Frontline documentary
The Resurrection of Reverend Moon, most of Moon’s money comes from Japan.
One early Moon patron was a man named Ryoichi Sasakawa, once one of the richest men and the
chief political brokers in Japan. Sasakawa’s money came from his monopoly on the motorboat racing
industry. (Legalized gambling on the sport is a multi-billion dollar a year industry in Japan.) According
to author Pat Choate, whose book Agents of Influence examined Japan’s effort to shape America’s
policy and politics, “When Reverend Moon expanded his operations inside Japan, he asked Sasakawa
to be one of the principal advisers to his Church inside Japan. Many of their operations – the
Sasakawa operations, the Moon operations – seem to parallel each other. They operate in many of
the same ways – giving away money, a great deal of attention to media and media organizations, the
establishment of think tanks and other policy organizations that operate across national borders, and
the maintenance of a very right wing conservative focus.”
In addition, Moon’s Japanese fund-raising machinery is another central source of his financial might in
the United States.
Substantial sums appear to be the result of so-called ‘spiritual sales” or swindles. The church
concentrates on attracting older people, particularly women, and then pressures them to turn over their
assets or take large loans against them, turning the money over to the church. Many are specifically
told to donate money so it may be used for the Washington Times.
With all that money coming into the US from abroad – much of it illegally – who controls what is done
with it? That same question was asked – and answered – decades ago by the U.S. Congress in the
so-called Fraser Report, the result of Minnesota Democratic Congressman Donald Fraser’s
“Koreagate” investigation, in part a probe into Moon’s relationship to the Korean CIA and the buying of
political influence on Capitol Hill:
“Moon provides considerably more than spiritual guidance to his worldwide organization. The
statements and testimony of former members and officials in Moon’s Organization, evidence gleaned
from internal UC publications, memos, other documents, and financial records all show that Moon
exercises substantial control over temporal matters. These include the transfer of funds from one
organization to another, personnel changes and allocations, the structure and operation of fundraising
teams, the timing and nature of political demonstrations, and the marketing of goods produced by the
organization’s businesses. As in any organization so large and complex, there are advisers,
lieutenants, and managers with varying degrees of influence and authority to speak and act on behalf
of the organization; however, there is every indication that regardless of the title he might or might not
hold in any one corporate structure, Moon can and often does make the final decision on a course of
action.”
The findings of the Fraser committee further describe the organization’s control this way:
(1)The UC and numerous other religious and secular organizations headed by Sun Myung Moon
constitute essentially one international organization. This organization depends heavily upon the
interchangeability of its components and upon its ability to move personnel and financial assets freely
across international boundaries and between businesses and nonprofit organizations.
(2) The Moon Organization attempts to achieve goals outlined by Sun Myung Moon, who has
substantial control over the economic, political, and spiritual activities undertaken by the organization
in pursuit of those goals.
The Fraser Committee’s final report said Moon was the “key figure” in an “international network of
organizations engaged in economic and political” activities. The Committee uncovered evidence that
the Moon Organization “had systematically violated U.S. tax, immigration, banking, currency, and
Foreign Agents Registration Act laws.” It also detailed how the Korean CIA paid Moon to stage
demonstrations at the United Nations and run a pro-South Korean propaganda effort.
“We determined that their primary interest, at least in the United States at that time, was not religious
at all, but was political,” said Michael Hershman, the Fraser Committee’s chief investigator. “It was an
attempt to gain power and influence and authority.”
The Fraser Committee recommended that the White House form a task force to continue to investigate
Moon – but that never happened.
Besides the money ‘invested’ in the Washington Times, Moon also invested in paid speaking fees to
political figures, such as former President George H.W. Bush, who appeared at Moon-organized
functions in the United States, Asia and South America. (At the 1996 launch of Moon’s South
American newspaper, Bush hailed Moon as “the man with the vision.”) In 2004, he was even given
space in the Senate’s Dirksen building for a coronation of himself as “savior, Messiah, Returning Lord
and True Parent.” (The Hill, June 22, 2004)
Now that the investments have paid off for him and his family is being split apart in a struggle to
succeed him, don’t be surprised to see Moon & Co. avoid a nasty succession battle at the Times, and
instead simply fold the money-sucking daily… But even if the Washington Times – Moon’s most
expensive political project was a newspaper – does soon become history, history will also “surely
record that Moon’s $3 billion-plus investment succeeded in buying a remarkable degree of Washington
influence – and legal protection – for his dubious political/business/religious empire.”
As former Washington Times editor and publisher James Whelan concluded, “Washington is the most
important single city in the world. If you can achieve influence, if you can achieve visibility, if you can
achieve a measure of respect in Washington, then you fairly automatically are going to achieve these
things in the rest of the world. There is no better agency, or entity or instrument that I know of for
achieving power here or almost anywhere else – than a newspaper.”
Filmmaker and journalist Rory O'Connor is the author of "Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio"
(AlterNet Books, 2008). O'Connor also writes the Media Is A Plural blog.
http://www.opednews.com
N. Korea from a Historical Perspective – Bush and Rev. Moon Revisited
By Robert Parry, Oct. 11, 2000
Editor’s Note: As the nuclear crisis with North Korea worsens, a little-known part of the story is how
one of America’s favorite right-wing financial benefactors, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, secretly funneled
money to the communist leadership in Pyongyang while also supporting the Bush Family in the United
States.
Though holding an American residency permit and boasting about the influence that his Washington
Times gives him in the U.S. capital, Moon breezily ignored U.S. legal embargoes against financial
dealings with North Korea’s dictatorship, as Consortiumnews.com reported on Oct. 11, 2000, less than
a month before the election that restored the Bush Family to power: (editors Note – Consortium News)
The Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s business empire, which includes the conservative Washington Times,
paid millions of dollars to North Korea’s communist leaders in the early 1990s when the hard-line
government needed foreign currency to finance its weapons programs, according to U.S. Defense
Intelligence Agency documents.
The payments included a $3 million “birthday present” to current communist leader Kim Jong Il and
offshore payments amounting to “several tens of million dollars” to the previous communist dictator,
Kim Il Sung, the partially declassified documents said.
Moon apparently was seeking a business foothold in North Korea. But the transactions also raise legal
questions for Moon and could cast a shadow on George W. Bush’s presidential campaign, given the
Bush family’s longstanding financial and political ties to Moon and his organization.
Besides making alleged payments to North Korea’s communist leaders, the 80-year-old founder of the
South Korean-based Unification Church has funneled large sums of money, possibly millions of dollars
as well, to former President George H.W. Bush.
One well-placed former leader of Moon’s Unification Church told me that the total earmarked for
former President Bush was $10 million. The father of the Republican nominee has declined to say how
much Moon’s organization actually paid him for speeches and other services in Asia, the United States
and South America.
At one Moon-sponsored speech in Argentina in 1996, Bush declared, “I want to salute Reverend
Moon,” whom Bush praised as “the man with the vision.”
Bush made these speeches at a time when Moon was expressing intensely anti-American views. In
his own speeches, Moon termed the United States “Satan’s harvest” and claimed that American
women descended from a “line of prostitutes.”
During this year’s presidential campaign, Moon’s Washington Times has attacked the Clinton-Gore
administration for failing to take more aggressive steps to defend against North Korea’s missile
program. The newspaper called the administration’s decisions an “abdication of responsibility for
national security.”
A Helping Hand
Yet, in the 1990s when North Korea was scrambling for the resources to develop missiles and other
advanced weaponry, Moon was among a small group of outside businessmen quietly investing in
North Korea.
Moon’s activities attracted the attention of the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is responsible for
monitoring potential military threats to the United States.
Though historically an ardent anticommunist, Moon negotiated a business deal in 1991 with Kim Il
Sung, the longtime communist leader, the DIA documents said.
The deal called for construction of a hotel complex in Pyongyang as well as a new Holy Land at the
site of Moon’s birth in North Korea, one document said. The DIA said the deal sprang from a face-toface meeting between Moon and Kim Il Sung in North Korea from Nov. 30 to Dec. 8, 1991.
“These talks took place secretly, without the knowledge of the South Korean government,” the DIA
wrote on Feb. 2, 1994. “In the original deal with Kim [Il Sung], Moon paid several tens of million dollars
as a down-payment into an overseas account,” the DIA said in a cable dated Aug. 14, 1994.
The DIA said Moon’s organization also delivered money to Kim Il Sung’s son and successor, Kim Jong
Il.
“In 1993, the Unification Church sold a piece of property located in Pennsylvania,” the DIA reported on
Sept. 9, 1994. “The profit on the sale, approximately $3 million was sent through a bank in China to
the Hong Kong branch of the KS [South Korean] company ‘Samsung Group.’ The money was later
presented to Kim Jung Il [Kim Jong Il] as a birthday present.”
After Kim Il Sung’s death in 1994 and his succession by his son, Kim Jong Il, Moon dispatched his
longtime aide, Bo Hi Pak, to ensure that the business deals were still on track with Kim Jong Il “and his
coterie,” the DIA reported.
“If necessary, Moon authorized Pak to deposit a second payment for Kim Jong Il,” the DIA wrote.
The DIA declined to elaborate on the documents that it released to me under a Freedom of
Information Act request. “As for the documents you have, you have to draw your own conclusions,”
said DIA spokesman, U.S. Navy Capt. Michael Stainbrook.
Moon’s Right-Hand Man
Contacted in Seoul, South Korea, Bo Hi Pak, a former publisher of The Washington Times, denied that
payments were made to individual North Korean leaders and called “absolutely untrue” the DIA’s
description of the $3 million land sale benefiting Kim Jong Il.
But Bo Hi Pak acknowledged that Moon met with North Korean officials and negotiated business deals
with them in the early 1990s. Pak said the North Korean business investments were structured
through South Korean entities.
“Rev. Moon is not doing this in his own name,” said Pak.
Pak said he went to North Korea in 1994, after Kim Il Sung’s death, only to express “condolences” to
Kim Jong Il on behalf of Moon and his wife. Pak denied that another purpose of the trip was to pass
money to Kim Jong Il or to his associates.
Asked about the seeming contradiction between Moon’s avowed anti-communism and his friendship
with leaders of a communist state, Pak said, “This is time for reconciliation. We’re not looking at
ideological differences. We are trying to help them out” with food and other humanitarian needs.
Samsung officials said they could find no information in their files about the alleged $3 million
payment.
North Korean officials clearly valued their relationship with Moon. In February of this year [2000], on
Moon’s 80th birthday, Kim Jong Il sent Moon a gift of rare wild ginseng, an aromatic root used
medicinally, Reuters reported.
Because of the long-term U.S. embargo against North Korea – eased only within the past several
months – Moon’s alleged payments to the communist leaders raise potential legal issues for Moon, a
South Korean citizen who is a U.S. permanent resident alien.
“Nobody in the United States was supposed to be providing funding to anybody in North Korea,
period, under the Treasury (Department’s) sanction regime,” said Jonathan Winer, former deputy
assistant secretary of state handling international crime.
The U.S. embargo of North Korea dates back to the Korean War. With a few exceptions for
humanitarian goods, the embargo barred trade and financial dealings between North Korea and “all
U.S. citizens and permanent residents wherever they are located, … and all branches, subsidiaries
and controlled affiliates of U.S. organizations throughout the world.”
Moon became a permanent resident of the United States in 1973, according to Justice Department
records. Bo Hi Pak said Moon has kept his “green card” status. Though often in South Korea and
South America, Moon maintains a residence near Tarrytown, north of New York City, and controls
dozens of affiliated U.S. companies.
Direct payments to foreign leaders in connection with business deals also could prompt questions
about possible violations of the U.S. Corrupt Practices Act, a prohibition against overseas bribery.
Alleged Brainwashing
Moon’s followers regard him as the second Messiah and grant him broad power over their lives, even
letting him pick their spouses. Critics, including ex-Unification Church members, have accused Moon
of brainwashing young recruits and living extravagantly while his followers have little.
Around the world, Moon’s business relationships long have been cloaked in secrecy. His sources of
money have been mysteries, too, although witnesses – including his former daughter-in-law – have
come forward in recent years and alleged widespread money-laundering within the organization.
Moon “demonstrated contempt for U.S. law every time he accepted a paper bag full of untraceable,
undeclared cash collected from true believers” who carried the money in from overseas, wrote his exdaughter-in-law, Nansook Hong, in her 1998 book, In the Shadows of the Moons.
Since Moon stepped onto the international stage in the 1970s, he has used his fortune to build political
alliances and to finance media, academic and political institutions.
In 1978, Moon was identified by the congressional “Koreagate” investigation as an operative of the
South Korean CIA and part of an influence-buying scheme aimed at the U.S. government. Moon
denied the charges.
Though Moon later was convicted on federal tax evasion charges, his political influence continued to
grow when he founded The Washington Times in 1982. The unabashedly conservative newspaper
won favor with presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush by backing their policies and
hammering their opponents.
In 1988, when Bush was trailing early in the presidential race, the Times spread a baseless rumor that
the Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis had undergone psychiatric treatment. The
Moon-affiliated American Freedom Coalition also distributed millions of pro-Bush flyers.
Bush personally expressed his gratitude. When Wesley Pruden was appointed The Washington
Times’ editor-in-chief in 1991, Bush invited Pruden to a private White House lunch “just to tell you how
valuable the Times has become in Washington, where we read it every day.” [Washington Times, May
17, 1992].
Moon’s Vatican
While Bush was hosting Pruden in the White House, Pruden’s boss was opening his financial and
business channels to North Korea. According to the DIA, Moon’s North Korean deal was ambitious
and expensive.
“There was an agreement regarding economic cooperation for the reconstruction of KN’s [North
Korea's] economy which included establishment of a joint venture to develop tourism at Kimkangsan,
KN [North Korea]; investment in the Tumangang River Development; and investment to construct the
light industry base at Wonsan, KN. It is believed that during their meeting Mun [Moon] donated 450
billion yen to KN,” one DIA report said.
In late 1991, the Japanese yen traded at about 130 yen to the U.S. dollar, meaning Moon’s investment
would have been about $3.5 billion, if the DIA information is correct.
Moon’s aide Pak denied that Moon’s investments ever approached that size. Though Pak did not give
an overall figure, he said the initial phase of an automobile factory was in the range of $3 million to $6
million.
The DIA depicted Moon’s business plans in North Korea as much grander. The DIA valued the
agreement for hotels in Pyongyang and the resort in Kumgang-san, alone, at $500 million. The plans
also called for creation of a kind of Vatican City covering Moon’s birthplace.
“In consideration of Mun’s [Moon's] economic cooperation, Kim [Il Sung] granted Mun a 99-year lease
on a 9 square kilometer parcel of land located in Chongchu, Pyonganpukto, KN. Chongchu is Mun’s
birthplace and the property will be used as a center for the Unification Church. It is being referred to as
the Holy Land by Unification Church believers and Mun [h]as been granted extraterritoriality during the
life of the lease.”
North Korea granted Moon some smaller favors, too. Four months after Moon’s meeting with Kim Il
Sung, editors from The Washington Times were allowed to interview the reclusive North Korean
communist in what the Times called “the first interview he has granted to an American newspaper in
many years.”
Later in 1992, the Times was again rallying to President George H.W. Bush’s defense. The newspaper
stepped up attacks against Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh as his investigation homed
in on Bush and his inner circle. Walsh considered the Times’ relentless criticism a distraction to the
criminal investigation, according to his book, Firewall.
That fall, in the 1992 campaign, the Times turned its editorial guns on Bush’s new rival, Bill Clinton.
Some of the anti-Clinton articles raised questions about Clinton’s patriotism, even suggesting that the
Rhodes scholar might have been recruited as a KGB agent during a collegiate trip to Moscow.
A Bush Salute
Bush’s loss of the White House did not end his relationship with Moon’s organization. Out of office,
Bush agreed to give paid speeches to Moon-supported groups in the United States, Asia and South
America. In some cases, Barbara Bush joined in the events.
During this period, Moon grew increasingly hateful about the United States and many of its ideals.
In a speech to his followers on Aug. 4, 1996, Moon vowed to liquidate American individuality, declaring
that his movement would “swallow entire America.” Moon said Americans who insisted on “their
privacy and extreme individualism … will be digested.”
Nevertheless, former President Bush continued to work for Moon’s organization. In November 1996,
the former U.S. president spoke at a dinner in Buenos Aires, Argentina, launching Moon’s South
American newspaper, Tiempos del Mundo.
“I want to salute Reverend Moon,” Bush declared, according to a transcript of the speech published in
The Unification News, an internal church newsletter.
“A lot of my friends in South America don’t know about The Washington Times, but it is an
independent voice,” Bush said. “The editors of The Washington Times tell me that never once has the
man with the vision interfered with the running of the paper, a paper that in my view brings sanity to
Washington, D.C.”
Contrary to Bush’s claim, a number of senior editors and correspondents have resigned in protest of
editorial interference from Moon’s operatives. Bush has refused to say how much he was paid for the
speech in Buenos Aires or others in Asia and the United States.
Going After Gore
During the 2000 election cycle, Moon’s newspaper has taken up the cause of Bush’s son and
mounted harsh attacks against his rival, Vice President Al Gore.
In 1999, the Times played a prominent role in promoting a bogus quote attributed to Gore about his
work on the toxic waste issue. In a speech in Concord, New Hampshire, Gore had referred to a toxic
waste case in Toone, Tennessee, and said, “that was the one that started it all.”
The New York Times and The Washington Post garbled the quote, claiming that Gore had said, “I was
the one that started it all.”
The Washington Times took over from there, accusing Gore of being clinically “delusional.” The Times
called the vice president “a politician who not only manufactures gross, obvious lies about himself and
his achievements but appears to actually believe these confabulations.” [Washington Times, Dec. 7,
1999]
Even after other papers corrected the false quote, The Washington Times continued to use it. The
notion of Gore as an exaggerator, often based on this and other mis-reported incidents, became a
powerful Republican “theme” as Gov. Bush surged ahead of Gore in the presidential preference polls.
Republicans also have made the North Korean threat an issue against the Clinton-Gore
administration. Last year, a report by a House Republican task force warned that during the 1990s,
North Korea and its missile program emerged as a nuclear threat to Japan and possibly the Pacific
Northwest of the United States.
“This threat has advanced considerably over the past five years, particularly with the enhancement of
North Korea’s missile capabilities,” the Republican task force said. “Unlike five years ago, North Korea
can now strike the United States with a missile that could deliver high explosive, chemical, biological,
or possibly nuclear weapons.”
Moon’s newspaper has joined in excoriating the Clinton-Gore administration for postponing a U.S.
missile defense system to counter missiles from North Korea and other “rogue states.” Gov. George
W. Bush favors such a system.
“To its list of missed opportunities, the Clinton-Gore administration can now add the abdication of
responsibility for national security,” a Times editorial said.
“By deciding not to begin construction of the Alaskan radar, Mr. Clinton has indisputably delayed
eventual deployment beyond 2005, when North Korea is estimated to be capable of launching an
intercontinental missile against the United States.” [Washington Times, Sept. 5, 2000]
The Washington Times did not note that its founder – who continues to subsidize the newspaper with
tens of millions of dollars a year – had defied a U.S. trade embargo aimed at containing the military
ambitions of North Korea.
By supplying money at a time when North Korea was desperate for hard currency, Moon helped
deliver the means for the communist state to advance exactly the strategic threat that Moon’s
newspaper now says will require billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to thwart.
That money bought Moon influence inside North Korea. It is less clear how much influence Moon and
his associates will have inside a George W. Bush White House, given Moon’s longstanding – though
little known – support for the Bush family.
To see two of the DIA documents, click here.
http://www.counterpunch.org
January 14, 2003
Moon Shadow: The Rev, Bush & North Korea
by WAYNE MADSEN
When President Bush added North Korea to his list of "Axis of Evil" nations, the influence of the selfdeclared reincarnation of Jesus Christ, the "Reverend" Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church,
loomed largely over the White House decision-making process. The decision by Bush to throw into the
trash heap of history eight years of a joint American-South Korean-Japanese dialogue with the
reclusive Communist regime would ultimately result in Pyongyang returning to using the rhetoric of
bygone years. Just as the Bush administration reintroduced to regular use the terms "segregation,"
"civil rights," and "ban on abortions," the terms "demilitarized zone," "Panmunjom," and "38th parallel"
would also re-enter the American political lexicon.
Bush, a self-described "born again Christian" who has maintained close links to Moon, hired David
Frum as one of his speechwriters. Frum apparently came up with the term "axis of evil" for Bush's
2002 State of the Union address but it seems likely that Bush, heavily influenced by the propagandists
of the rabidly anti-Pyongyang Washington Times, decided North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il
was Satan reincarnate. Years before North Korea announced it was restarting its nuclear enrichment
facility at Yongbyon, The Washington Times splashed front page headlines about North Korea being a
threat while other major newspapers and wire services treated the sensationalistic reports as a nonstory or more probably, plain disinformation masked as "intelligence reports" and "leaked" by antiClinton Pentagon officials.
For twenty years, Moon's main policy laundering enterprise for his incessant influence-peddling has
been The Washington Times, the money-losing newspaper he owns outright through New World
Communications, Inc., the paper's parent publishing company. New World also owns Insight
Magazine, The Middle East Times (based in Cairo), Zambezi Times (based in Lusaka, Zambia),
newspapers in Uruguay and Canada, a textbook publishing company in Russia, and United Press
International, the formerly well-respected wire service that fell on hard financial times and was bailed
out by Moon's seemingly unlimited cash flows.
Next year, an Insight magazine reporter is poised to take over as President of the venerable National
Press Club in Washington. Thus, in a presidential election year, a Moon employee will have influence
on what politicians and candidates are selected for televised luncheon speeches carried by C-SPAN
and other cable news networks. Democrats and Greens should be very wary. Some former
Washington Times officials claim The Washington Times and its affiliates are so tied in with Moon's
agenda, its reporters and staff should register with the Justice Department as foreign lobbyists under
the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Moon launched The Washington Times in 1982, just a few years after one of Moon's associates,
Tongsun Park, was indicted for paying bribes to a number of U.S. politicians. The paper, which has a
dearth of advertising revenue, has lost more than $1 billion dollars since its inception. Nevertheless, it
has become a powerful conservative voice throughout Republican ranks in both the White House and
Congress. In 1996, former President Bush, who has taken millions of dollars in speaking fees from
Moon, spoke before a Moon audience in Argentina and declared Moon to be a "man of vision." Bush
41, who could never really grasp the "vision thing," decided Moon had it.
Moon's own background, which reportedly includes links to both the Korean CIA and its American
counterpart, parallels that of other ethically-tainted individuals who have once again found sanctuary in
a Bush administration: Elliott Abrams, John Poindexter, Otto Reich, and John Negroponte, all of Irancontra infamy. The Washington Times was a leading supporter of the Nicaraguan contras and a chief
apologist for the perpetrators of the arms-for-hostages scandal. Violating one of the main canons of
journalism – that newspapers should not become part of or create their own stories – the Washington
Times established the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to the
contras circumventing the Boland Amendment that prohibited Federal money for the rightist guerrillas.
Moon was also one of the few influential people who continued to defend Richard Nixon even as the
President was resigning over the Watergate scandal.
In addition to his media empire, Moon also owns a Jonestown-type compound in Brazil called New
Hope. He has also invested in the sparsely-populated and impoverished Marshall Islands. He has
infiltrated one of the secessionist movements fighting for independence for the Angolan enclave of
Cabinda. Moon's favorites in Africa included some of the CIA's most reliable clients: UNITA in Angola
and RENAMO in Mozambique. Moon's fronts even maintained a dialogue with Pol Pot's murderous
Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge murdered 3 million Cambodians. More surprisingly,
Moon reportedly partly owns a hotel in Pyongyang and a North Korean Fiat automobile plant. His
flirtation with mind control techniques is legendary. Parents have spent millions trying to deprogram
their children from the effects of Moon's Pavlovian brain bending methods. Moon's mass marriages of
unwitting American males to Korean wives, while humorous on the surface, nevertheless managed to
trap Zambian Roman Catholic Bishop Emmanuel Milingo. At least one pre-eminent Washington Times
reporter is said to have been enticed into one of his boss's mass marriage ceremonies.
At the 20th anniversary celebration of The Washington Times held last year in Washington, Moon
seemingly endlessly spoke in Korean at the alcohol-free affair. He said The Washington Times would
"spread the truth about God to the world." But in Moon's world, he is God. President Bush sent a
message to the banquet stating, "Since 1982, people across America and throughout the world have
relied on The Washington Times as a distinguished source of information and opinion."
Bush seems to value Moon's commitment to family values. Bush named David Caprara, the head of
Moon's American Family Coalition, as the director of VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America).
Moon's commitment to family values was exemplified at his 20th anniversary celebration of The
Washington Times. The keynote speaker was Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the holier-than-thou radio talk
show host who is the psychiatric part of the daily ration of right wing AM radio venom that is
complemented by the political indoctrination of Rush Limbaugh and his clones. Schlessinger's own
commitment to family values was highlighted recently when she claimed the body of her 77-year-old
mother from the Los Angeles County morgue after it had remained there for ten days after her
unattended death in her condominium. Schlessinger, who lectures callers on how to keep their families
together and wholesome, had not seen her own mother since 1984.
To Moon, however, disowning one's parents is a hallmark of his brainwashing techniques. In 1973,
while a college student in Mississippi, I was once lured into a Moon recruiting function. I met a young
Jewish girl from New Jersey who was traveling around the country in a van with her fellow Moon
adherents. As a native of New Jersey myself, I asked the young woman what her parents thought
about her roaming about the country. She replied, "Parents, I have no parents. Reverend Moon is my
family." I wanted to call the nearest rabbi to help the poor girl get home to her parents who must have
been worried sick. Nevertheless, Bush believes that Moon's family value system is credible enough to
appoint one of his adherents to head VISTA.
But Moon is not only a danger to young people. While Bush accuses Kim Jong Il of all kinds of evil
affronts he seems to ignore some of Moon's more bellicose and threatening comments. According to a
1978 House of Representatives investigation of Moon some of the more outrageous comments
include:
– -Unification Church members are to regard Korea with great reverence and look forward to the day
when the Korean language will be spoken throughout the world.
– -Members are to maintain a view to establishing a "unified civilization" of the whole world, to be
centered in Korea and "corresponding to that of the Roman Empire."
– -God was helping Moon to set up a final battle involving the United States, Russia, China, North
Korea, South Korea, and Japan.
– -Moon's plans are to manipulate seven nations at least, to get hold of the whole world: the United
States, England, France, Germany, Russia, and maybe Korea and Japan. "On God's side, Korea,
Japan, America, England, France, Germany, and Italy, are the nations I count on in order to gain the
whole world," Moon stated.
The House of Representatives report on the activities of the Korean CIA in the United States found
evidence that the Moon organization had violated a number of Federal and state laws. In 1984, Moon
was convicted of income tax violations and spent 13 months in prison. But remember, in 1996, Bush
pere referred to Moon as a "man of vision." It should be noted that while Bush was head of the CIA,
Moon was organizing a number of pro-American and anti-communist rallies and front organizations
around the world. Moon was a convenient agent of influence for the CIA and Mr. Bush.
According to intelligence insiders, North Korean intelligence has quite a dossier on Reverend Moon
and his payments to politicians in the United States and abroad. Some of the intelligence may prove
embarrassing for some politicians, including the Bush family. So, here we are again. Noriega of
Panama had the goods on the Bushes. He is now in a U.S. Federal prison; Sadaam knows what the
Reagan-Bush administration sold him in the way of components for weapons of mass destruction. We
are about ready to go to war against him. And Kim Jong Il has the juicy bits on Moon's financial links to
Bush pere and dauphin. Kim is now a member of the "axis of evil," a man who George W. Bush hates
because he "starves his own people."
Congress investigated Moon's operations in the late 1970s. It was at a time when Moon was involved
with smaller scale influence peddling and brainwashing young college students into joining his cultist
Unification Church, popularly known as the "Moonies."
Now, at a time when Moon may be influencing United States foreign policy vis a vis North Korea, a
known nuclear power, and risking a nuclear war in northeast Asia and hundreds of thousands and
possibly millions of deaths, it may be time for Congress to once again launch an investigation of a man
whose sole purpose is to unify the world under his direction. It has been over 60 years since the world
heard a man talk like that: his name was Adolf Hitler.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He wrote the
introduction to Forbidden Truth.
http://www.spiegel.de
16.10.1989
Sekten: Letztes Gefecht
Unter Tarnnamen ist die Mun-Sekte auch in der Bundesrepublik auf antikommunistischem Kreuzzug.
Ein illustrer Kreis mit klangvollen Namen fand sich in diesem Mai im Bonner Bristol-Hotel zum
International Security Council (ISC) ein: Christdemokrat Hans Stercken, Vorsitzender des Auswärtigen
Ausschusses im Bundestag, und sein Parteifreund, der Verteidigungsfachmann Karl Fell, die ExBotschafter Günther van Well und Per Fischer sowie hohe Offiziere außer Dienst parlierten mit dem
ehemaligen Nato-Generalsekretär Joseph Luns über die Ostpolitik des Westens.
Zur Strategiediskussion hatten Strategen besonderer Art geladen – der ISC ist eine Zweigstelle des
Koreaners San Myung Mun, und der ist Chef der weltweit organisierten und weltweit aufgefallenen
Mun-Sekte.
Die Aktivitäten dieser "Gemeinschaft vom Heiligen Geist für die Vereinigung der Weltchristenheit",
kurz: Vereinigungskirche, waren bisher vor allem in Amerika registriert worden, kurz auch in der
Bundesrepublik, als die Bonner Regierung dem – nach eigener Ansicht – "Sieger des Universums und
Herrn der Schöpfung" 1982 die Einreise verweigerte, weil Mun nicht gewillt sei, sich "an
demokratische Spielregeln zu halten".
Erst hinterher waren manche der von Mun Eingeladenen klüger. "Keiner hat doch gewußt, daß Mun
hinter der Veranstaltung steckt", rechtfertigt Spitzendiplomat van Well sein Engagement.
Selbstverständlich wolle er mit der Vereinigungskirche "nichts zu tun haben".
Auch Lothar Rühl, vor zwei Jahren – damals war er noch Staatssekretär im Verteidigungsministerium
– Mun-Gast, wußte "überhaupt nicht, wer das war", der ihn zu einem International Security Council
einlud – mit dem CSU-Europa-Abgeordneten Franz Ludwig Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg, dem Kieler
Politologen Werner Kaltefleiter und FAZ-Autor Günther Gillessen.
Rühl brachte das Thema ins Kabinett: "Da war man erstaunt, daß die sich hinter solchen Fassaden
verstecken." Ein Beschluß wurde gefaßt: den ISC "auf eine Art Warnliste zu setzen, daß die MunSekte dahintersteht".
Die Liste wurde nie verfaßt. Unbehelligt, weil unerkannt, versucht Mun hier über Tarnorganisationen
Fuß zu fassen – mit Erfolg. Mun wolle, so der Sektenbeauftragte der evangelischen Kirche in Bayern,
Friedrich-Wilhelm Haack, "Deutschland zur Hauptfestung seines Imperiums außerhalb von Korea
machen" – früher durch Kontaktaufnahmen "auf der Straße", nun auf "internationalen Konferenzen mit
Top-Leuten".
Theologen werden von einer "Neuen Ökumenischen Forschungsgemeinschaft" zu "New Era"Konferenzen geladen. Natur- und Sozialwissenschaftler, Historiker und Philosophen dürfen sich auf
Muns Kosten in Seoul, Genf oder Manila in der "Professors World Peace Academy" (PWPA)
austauschen. Der wichtigste politische Arm des selbsternannten Jesus-Nachfolgers San Myung Mun,
die "Organisation Causa", veranstaltet mehrfach pro Jahr ein "Forum für geistige Führung".
Besonders in konservativen Kreisen verfängt Muns Masche. Abgehalfterte Politiker, ausrangierte
Generäle, aber auch Spitzenbeamte fühlen sich geehrt, wenn sie zu Gastmählern auf Spesen in
Luxushotels geladen werden – von wem auch immer.
Im Mun-Seminar weilte der frühere FDP-Sicherheitsexperte im Bundestag, Wolfram Dorn, in
Sektenschriften publiziert der CSU-Euro-Parlamentarier Otto von Habsburg. Dessen Parteifreund
Hans Graf Huyn war ebenso auf Mun-Trip wie der General a. D. Günter Kießling.
Heinz Maier-Leibnitz und Eduard Pestel kamen billig nach Seoul, der allgegenwärtige Horst-Eberhard
Richter nach Miami, und Karl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, der Bruder des Bundespräsidenten, durfte
sich gratis in Washington fortbilden.
Auch der Mainzer Sozialwissenschaftler Hans Mathias Kepplinger läßt sich gern bitten: "Die Hotels
sind super, oft die besten der Welt, die Veranstaltungen glänzend organisiert", und man treffe "die
führenden Köpfe" einer Disziplin.
Kepplingers Kollegin, die Meinungsforscherin Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, denkt genauso. Sie
übernahm für ein Honorar von 1500 Dollar plus Spesen die Leitung einer Arbeitsgruppe bei einem
Mun-Kongreß Ende August in London. Und sie fand gut, daß man bei Muns nicht "nur in der Wolle
gefärbte Marxisten" trifft.
Diese Gefahr besteht in der Tat nicht: Die Sektenideologie beruht auf militantem Antikommunismus.
Jene "gottverleugnende und materialistische Ideologie" sei "die größte Bedrohung unseres
Wertesystems". Der dritte Weltkrieg sei "unvermeidlich": "Gottes Wille wird zu einem letzten Gefecht
mit dem Sowjetkommunismus führen" und erst danach "das Himmelreich auf Erden" schaffen können.
Zu Muns irdischem Reich, aus dessen Erträgen er seine Einladungen finanziert, zählen schon jetzt
Hotels in Frankreich und Uruguay, Zeitungen, etwa die Washington Times, Industriebetriebe und
Banken rund um die Welt. Herz des Munschen Firmenkartells ist der Maschinenbau- und
Rüstungsbetrieb "Tong II" im Stammland Korea.
Auch Muns deutscher Besitz ist zum größten Teil Tong II zugeordnet. Neben Immobilien hat Mun vor
Jahren begonnen, mittelständische Maschinenbauer aufzukaufen, die in Schwierigkeiten geraten
waren: die Wanderer Maschinen GmbH in Haar bei München, den Gießener Drehmaschinenhersteller
Heyligenstaedt, den Remscheider Werkzeugbauer Gebrüder Honsberg.
Den meisten der – durchaus unfreiwilligen – Mun-Anhänger, die sich auf Muns Kosten mehrere
schöne Tage machen, ist der ideologische Überbau des Gastgebers egal. "Ich habe mich für den
Konzern nicht weiter interessiert", berichtete Noelle-Neumann. Schließlich könne man nicht bei jeder
Offerte "stundenlang fragen, was für böse Absichten da hinterm Busch lauern".
Aber kundig machen könnte man sich ja. Der Bonner Mun-Sicherheitskongreß im Mai wurde mit
Grüßen und Wünschen von Helmut Schmidt, Oskar Lafontaine (beide SPD) und Walter Wallmann
(CDU) eröffnet.