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Sun Myung Moon
Korean Name
Revised Romanization	Mun Seon-Myeong
McCune-Reischauer
Hangul	문선명
Hanja	文鮮明

Sun Myung Moon (born January 6, 1920) is the founder of the Unification Church (established on May 1, 1954, in Seoul, South Korea). With his wife Hak Ja Han, he is co-leader of the Unification Movement.

Moon's followers see him as a new Messiah, the second coming of Christ, commissioned by Jesus to complete the divine mission of establishing the Kingdom of God on earth. Opponents regard him as a cult leader convicted of tax crimes.

In 2003, Rev. Moon announced that the representatives of the five major religions — as well as several dozen dead U.S. presidents communicating from the Spirit World — declared him to be "the savior and messiah of humanity".

In March 2004, at an awards banquet attended by US congressmen, a top Moon aide called Mr. and Mrs. Moon "the King and the Queen of Peace!" [1] http://www.rutherford.org/oldspeak/blog/articles/religion/oldspeak-mooning.html

Contents

1 Arrival in America 2 Biography 3 Family 4 Controversy 5 Name 6 Opposition 6.1 Imprisonment 6.2 US Tax case 7 Moon Crowned by US Congressmen 8 Quotes 9 Speeches

Arrival in America

When he first came to the United States, Rev. Moon was initially welcomed with a flood of proclamations of support from political leaders. This wellspring dried up as opposition mounted, not the least from a Congressional probe accusing him of ties to the 1976 "Koreagate" influence-peddling scandal. Unable to convict him of political malfeasance, the probe landed him in court on charges of tax fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Moon's defenders describe the ensuing 18 months in federal prison as an act of bigotry.

Biography

He was born Moon Yong-myung (文龍明) in Sangsa-ri (上思里), Deogun-myun (__), Jeongju-gun (定州郡), North P'yŏng'an Province, Korea (now in North Korea) to Moon Kyung-yoo (文慶裕) and Kim Kyung-gye (金__).

When he was 15, Moon says he had a vision or revelation of Jesus while praying atop a small mountain. According to Moon, in this vision, Jesus implored Moon to complete his mission of saving all of humankind.

Family

Moon had a son, Moon Sung-jin (文聖進) with Bak Choi Sun-kil, his wife since 1944, but she divorced him in 1957.

After his 1957 divorce from Bak Choi Sun-kil (崔先吉), Moon married Hak Ja Han Moon (韓鶴子) ("Mother Moon") in 1960. Hak Ja Han was 17 years old then. Together, they are the True Parents to UC members.

In February 2003, Moon and Han re-affirmed their wedding vows after 43 years of marriage in a ceremony named the Holy Marriage Blessing Ceremony of the Parents of Heaven and Earth.

Controversy

In the early 1970s, Rev. Moon was denounced as a "cult leader" who used "mind control" and "brainwashing" on his followers to extract money from them. The controversy over these charges had peaked by 1976 and gradually diminished as his youthful American followers settled down, got jobs or started businesses, and built links to local churches in their communities. The APA's pronouncement that there is no scientific merit behind the theory of mind control removed the legal basis for deprogramming in the US. By the early 1990s Moon and his church had largely rehabilitated its public image.

Some critics continue to describe Moon as a "billionaire businessman" and who uses his followers as "political footsoldiers". They accuse conservative figures like Jerry Falwell of "compromising their stated beliefs to take his millions" (Moon lent Falwell $3.5 million for his struggling Liberty University.) His followers love him in spite of the criticisms, which they have often portrayed as an organized smear campaign.

And while the movement is out of the public eye, it has risen as an influential force in American civic life. Shunned as a convicted felon by Japan and the European Union, Moon has come to be seen as a martyr by his followers and even by some outside conservatives. By 2003, Unificationist missionaries were working for their longtime goal of sex purity in New Jersey public schools, on a government Censored page grant.

After the end of the Japanese occupation of Korea, Moon personally suffered the brutal excesses of North Korean communism and he found a fellow opponent of Communism in Ronald Reagan. Moon spent a billion dollars of church funds to support the conservative, influential Washington Times, which in 2002 he called "the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world". And decades after Congressional scrutiny and a prison term for tax fraud, his generosity to the New Right (including opening an account for the "Contra" part of the Iran-Contra equation) has earned him a world of deference from his former enemies.

Name

The Hanja for "Moon" (文), the reverend's surname, means "word" or "truth" in Korean. The character "sun" contains Chinese character for fish. The character "myung" (明), part of his given name, means "bright" or "shining", and is composed of the Chinese characters for sun and moon.

Much wordplay has been made of the fact that Sun and Moon are parts of "Sun Myung Moon", although the Korean words carry no connotation similar to the English words they resemble. For example, Evangelical author Yamamoto entitled his theological critique on Unificationism The Moon is not the Son , thus asserting that Rev. Moon is no Christ, i.e., not the "son of God".

The U.S. press began using the term "Moonies" in the 1970s (short for "Moon children"), and the church wore the term as a badge of pride for nearly 20 years until publicly rejecting the term as a pejorative intended to tarnish their image.

Opposition

Rev. Moon, the most controversial religious leader of the 1970s, has been criticized by a wide range of opponents. Some civil libertarians consider his call for unity between religion and politics a violation of democracy's cherished separtion of church and state, and that he would crush "individualism".

Christians object to his unusual theological demands ("take down the cross" was the theme of a 2003 campaign for Easter).

Jews have objected to his doctrine that the Holocaust is a consequence for killing the first True Parent. See Unification Church and anti-Semitism.

Censored page groups resent his uncompromising calls for "sexual purity". Moon is implacably opposed to Censored page, calling gays "dung-eating dogs" who would have no place in a "peace kingdom".

And early Congressional opponents like Donald Fraser dogged Moon for alleged (but admittedly unproven) ties to the Koreagate influence-peddling scandal, as well as alleged financial fraud. In the 1990s, thousands of Japanese elderly claimed to have been defrauded of their life savings by Moon followers' "spiritual sales".

In the 1970s, Moon was accused of breaking up families by aggressively encouraging young college students to break off contact with the outside world, and sell trinkets to raise money for the church. Church sources counter that Moon urged members to "write a letter to your parents every ten days".

The Unification Church — as well as the ACLU, coming down on the side of freedom of religious association — has rejected foes' claims of coercive mind control. The church has had brushes with "deprogrammers" who kidnap family members out of the movement.

In Washington, however, Moon first found common ground with strongly anti-Communist leaders of the 1980s who appreciated Moon's fierce opposition to the USSR and support of Nixon in his hour of need. Today, Moon's followers are indirectly supporting George W. Bush's faith-based initiative at the grass-roots level, due to a common interest in increasing religious participation in government-funded social services, and in sexual abstinence over condom use.

Imprisonment

Sun Myung Moon has been imprisoned six times: twice in North Korea, three times in South Korea, and once in the United States. Members of the Unification Church generally consider these examples of religious persecution.

The first time, he was jailed by North Korea for preaching Christianity, forbidden by the communist government. The way the church tells it, the charges stemmed from the jealousy and resentment of other church pastors after parishioners stopped tithing to their old churches upon joining Rev. Moon's congregation. Police beat him and left him for dead, but teenaged disciple Won Pil Kim nursed him back to health.

The second time, Rev. Moon got a five-year sentence in Heung-Nam labor camp, where prisoners were routinely worked to death on short rations. After serving 34 months of his sentence, he was liberated when UN troops advanced on the camp and the guards fled. In South Korea, Rev. Moon was imprisoned three times, one of which was for using North Korean money during the civil war. He was released when one of his old schoolteachers vouched for him. He was also charged with draft evasion; these charges were eventually dropped.

The third time, he was jailed briefly on counterfeiting charges during the Korean War when shortly after escaping from North Korea he tried to spend some North Korean currency in South Korea. He was released after his former kindergarten teacher vouched for him.

The sixth time Rev. Moon was imprisoned was in the United States on charges of tax evasion and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Congressional investigators such as Robert Boettcher discovered what they described as breathtaking financial misdoing, including a scheme to raise money for a church PR fund that disguised itself as a fundraiser for sick children. Congressman Donald Fraser also investigated the church's aggressive recruitment practices.

US Tax case

Upon arriving in the United States in the early 1970s, Rev. Moon had established an account at Chase Manhattan Bank with approximately one million dollars in funds. Some of this money went to support his family, and was recorded as salary on his personal income tax returns. The funds were transferred to the Unification Church upon its incorporation.

Rev. Moon did not take a deduction for donating the hundreds of thousands of dollars remaining in the Chase account. Justice Department investigators considered this a sign that Moon and his church both clearly considered the money to have been church property all the time. They note that he would have saved considerable money if he had taken a deduction.

After an IRS team spent two years poring over all the church's financial records (they were provided an office in the church's New York headquarters), three Justice Department officials independently concluded that there was no wrongdoing. Moreover, they emphasized that the amount of possible tax liability was too small (less than $7,500 per year over a 3-year period) to merit prosecution.

Nonetheless, in 1982 U.S. federal prosecutors charged Rev. Sun Myung Moon with criminal tax fraud, and a federal Grand Jury brought forward an indictment. The charges stated that Moon failed to declare as income (and pay taxes on) $112,000 in earned interest on a Chase Manhattan bank account, $50,000 of corporate stock.

The judge forbade any mention of religion at the trial and denied Moon's request to have a bench trial.

The prosecution maintained that both the money and stock were his personal property, and that his non-payment of approximately $22,000 in taxes was deliberate and thus criminal.

Rev. Moon's defense was that as a minister he was holding the money and stock on behalf of his church — and, therefore, that neither the funds in question nor the income it generated was actually his.

One of the defenses used at trial was that the funds were not really his, but were held in trust for members of the Japanese Unification Church. The United States church had only about 300 members at the time and had not yet incorporated. Moon claimed that, after using a small portion of those funds for his family's living expenses (and declaring the portion used on his income tax returns), he transferred the balance to the Unification Church of America after its incorporation. Holding church funds in a minister's name is a fairly commonplace action, particularly in small churches, and many churches filed amicus curiae briefs in Moon's support.

There was quite a bit of sentiment against Moon and his church in the United States at that time. Moon and his supporters felt that they were being specifically targeted because of their religious beliefs and practices. The opposition claimed that Moon was a con artist and that his organization was a criminal enterprise.

The charge of criminal tax fraud carries a high legal requirement — the prosecution must prove to a jury, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant intended to evade paying taxes, not simply that the taxes were unpaid due to a mistake or failure to understand the law. And they did not accept the defense's contention that the funds in question were being held in trust for the church Rev. Moon was building. Indeed, the judge forbade any mention of religion at the trial.

Moon critics have often portrayed the jury verdict as a "failure to pay taxes" that was an "intentional evasion rather than a misunderstanding of the law". But a careful search of on-line sources and library materials finds no acknowledgement of the legal theory that Moon (a) was a reverend; (b) that his Japanese followers regarded him as holding the money in trust for them pending incorporation of the church in the US; (c) that disputes over tax liabilities ten or a hundred times as much, have been regarded as mere accounting oversights when the taxpayer was popular; or (d) that it doesn't make sense for someone to put his own money in the biggest bank in America and then give the money to a church without claiming that funds transfer as a non-taxable donation (it would have reduced Rev. Moon's adjusted income for that year to zero, and he wouldn't have had to pay ANY taxes on the money he spent on his family.

Moon was convicted of the charges, and given an 18 month sentence and a $15,000 fine. He served 13 months of the sentence at Danbury minimum-security prison and because of "good behavior" was released to a half-way house.

Moon Crowned by US Congressmen

As part of an Ambassadors for Peace ceremony, Rev. Moon was one of several dozen honorees at a ceremony at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on March 23, 2004. The media chose to ignore the event at the time, but a blogger, John Gorenfeld, spent the next three months interviewing congressmen who attended the event, inquiring as to the nature of the event's sponsorship. The story broke on June 24 with the New York Times claiming the "awards ceremony was not quite what was advertised".

In what the Times labelled "a coronation ceremony", the Rev. Sun Myung Moon was given a bejeweled crown by Rep. Danny K. Davis, D-IL and Moon announced that he would save everyone on Earth as he had saved the souls of even such murderous dictators as Hitler and Stalin — who had been born again through him. Moon said the reformed Hitler and Stalin vouched for him from the spirit world, calling him "none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent ".

The awards ceremony was the grand finale of the Family Federation 's coast-to-coast "take down the cross" tour, intended to remove Christian crosses from almost 300 churches — the idea being that the cross has been an obstacle to uniting religions. Wealthy churches largely have refused to participate in the tour, and nearly all the church's success has been in poor neighborhoods.

Critics claimed later that most of the congressmen in attendance didn't expect a coronation but thought the awards dinner was only to honor activists from their home states as "Ambassadors for Peace". A flier for the event http://www.gorenfeld.net/blog/2004/05/back-from-memory-hole.html claimed an impressive list of attendees, including Republicans Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland and Charlie Black , a top Republican strategist. Democrats were named, too, like Rep. Harold Ford of Tennessee.

Quotes

This address was given on August 28, 1991 at the founding of the Federation for World Peace in Seoul.

Since the Fall of Man, there has been a constant war going on within each of us. It is an inevitable consequence of the Fall of Man that there is continuous struggle and conflict going on within ourselves between mind and body, and between the desire for good and the desire for evil.

Originally mind and body were to be one. The human mind represents God's mind. The human body is to be a container to accommodate the mind, or a dwelling place for the mind. Separation came between these two when the Fall of Man occurred.

The Fall of Man resulted in the body coming under the domain of Satan or selfishness. Thus, tragically, the human body has become the servant of Satan.

On the other hand, the human conscience is the agent of God in the individual person. One's conscience does not exist for the benefit of oneself. The conscience is planted by God for the sake of righteousness. Yet the body rebels against this conscience. The body only seeks after comforts and tends to act selfishly, going after carnal desires. The conscience in turn is trying to chastise the body and direct it toward the mind. This is why there is always inevitable conflict and struggle within one's self.

This is the reason why the traditional religions of the world unanimously teach the principle of chastisement of the body through fasting, prayer, and other disciplines — doing things the body does not want to do. Religion is the training ground where the desire of the body is suppressed, thus bringing the body to the will of the mind. For this reason religion has been the instrument of God to bring men back into the original ideal.

However, no one is capable of dominating his body without uniting with God within himself. The only power that enables the mind to have dominion over the body is that generated by the unity of the mind with God's truth and love. Mind is subject and body is object. God's love and truth have the power to bring them together into one harmonious person. This is what religion defines as a man of perfection or a holy man.

God-centered men and women in perfection are called men and women of goodness. These good men and women may receive God's blessing of marriage and be united into a couple of husband and wife. This will be the beginning of one ideal family of men on the face of the earth. This model family is what God wanted to have as a building block of the society, nation and world.

The Family is the Foundation of Peace

There is an old saying in the Orient that "once peace is dwelling in the family, everything goes right". A happy and harmonious family is a family of peace and the foundation of the heavenly kingdom.

The dynamic of the family is true love. You must love God first, then love your husband or wife and your children with truly pure and sacrificial love. This is the manifestation of true love. God created love as the supreme force in the universe. He has created nothing greater in this universe. True love is supreme.

True love, of course, originates from God. God has invested everything, every ounce of His energy, for the creation of all things and mankind. Love is the only thing that when invested fully, returns fully; When you invest true love, no attrition occurs. It will multiply and prosper. Investing 100 percent of true love will yield or return 120 percent. One might think that those who practice true love would become poor and miserable, yet the end result is to the contrary. By practicing true love you will acquire prosperity and eternal life.

This kind of family of true love becomes the foundation for creating a society, nation and world. That society, nation and world shall be true love centered, and shall become ideal and peaceful. There you will find understanding instead of misunderstanding. You will find unity instead of division. You will find unselfishness instead of selfishness. This is the society, nation and world where sacrifices and good service become the dominant virtues. The realization of the ideal of God is the way to achieve the ideal of true peace in the world.

The Ideal of True Parents for True World Peace

When the Bible says that God sought to create human beings in "His own image", this means that the invisible God wanted to manifest Himself into a visible form. In other words, men and women would have become the personifications of God.

If the first man and woman had realized the ideal of God, they would have become the first visible form of God and created the first family of man. Then God-centered children and grandchildren would have formed an ideal society, nation and world. In this case the invisible God would become the vertical True Parents of man centering upon true love, and the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, would have become the horizontal True Parents of mankind centering upon that same true love. Centered upon these True Parents of man, humanity would have become one family eternally fulfilling true brotherhood.

However, the fall of Adam and Eve meant that humanity lost True Parents. That day we became orphans. Brothers turned into enemies. As a result, nations came to develop antagonistic relationships rather than friendly ones. Accusations abound on every level.

In the final fulfillment of human history, therefore, God's work of restoration is the restoration of True Parents first, liberating humanity from its orphan status. Today this is the central dispensational work of God — to bestow True Parents upon mankind, to create the original family of man centering on God and true love.

Ladies and gentlemen, today's creation of the Federation for World Peace must be different from that of the League of Nations and the United Nations. Most important is that we must found this organization upon the true ideal and philosophy of lasting peace as well as the ideal of True Parents. In the final analysis, peace in God and with God is the newest level of awakening. This is therefore a refreshing new beginning toward the attainment of peace. The exclusion of God from human efforts for peace is the core reason for their failure. Therefore we shall make God the center of this movement and the dynamics of this movement will be true love.

Historical Gathering

For men and women who are fervently longing for world peace, today's gathering is an historic gathering. There are many presidents and former presidents here today, as well as prominent religious leaders and leaders from every walk of life. This is truly a rare and extraordinary assembly. Furthermore, there are leaders from the East bloc and the West bloc. Until recently, those leaders were mired in the Cold War and locked in a chilling confrontation. In this auditorium, however, there is no East or West. Everyone is gathered together in one spirit of cooperation and reconciliation.

On November 9, 1989 the Berlin Wall finally came tumbling down. Ever since that event we have been living in a different world. The world is moving quickly toward reformation, change, mutual understanding and friendship. Everyone today feels acutely that the mood of the world is opening up to the blossoming opportunity of peace.

If you agree that the principles I have expounded are the fundamental criteria for peace, then true peace is reachable and achievable. The industrialized North must reach out to help liberate the South from pervasive impoverishment. The developed nations must reach out with a helping hand toward the developing countries and the new democracies. Each nation's attitude must be changed from a selfish one to an unselfish one. That in itself is a revolution. Nations can do this when leaders see from the position of parents. The most unselfish and sacrificial love of all is the love of parents. From that perspective one can see that all nations are brother and sister nations. Then a fresh new vision emerges and new opportunities will open up in front of us.

It has already been announced that in September North Korea and South Korea together will become member nations of the United Nations. This is another significant positive development toward the achievement of world peace. Then the number of member nations of the UN will reach 163. What should be the priority of those 163 countries in the days to come?

The time of colonialism is over, where the powerful nations exploited the weakest ones. The law of the jungle and Herbert Spencer's "survival of the fittest" do not apply in our world. The age of the superpower arms race that drove the world and humanity into fear and uncertainty has also passed; humanity ought to be liberated from the devastating threat of nuclear arms. What time is it in God's timetable? This is the time that the Holy Scriptures refer to as that of "beating our swords into plowshares".

This is the time for developing mutual trust based on a high moral standard. It is a time when all the member nations of the United Nations in a relationship of mutual respect and love, should jointly declare one final war against our common enemies — the scourges of hunger, ignorance, disease and crime.

This is in God's plan. From this time on, the definition of "my country" will expand. Although everyone has their home country where their family lives, in a larger sense, the world now becomes "my country" because it is where God, my Father, and my brothers and sisters — all the people of the world — live.

From this point of view, advanced nations should seek to share high technology with the developing nations and new democracies. To do otherwise would be a moral crime. Things which are good and beneficial must be shared among all nations. When a new discovery is made, it should benefit all nations. If something is good for humanity and the world, we must fulfill it, transcendent of national boundaries. For a long time, I have been fighting for equal opportunity in the use of high technology by all developing nations.

A Century of Peace

Ladies and gentlemen, your coming to this place is not an accident. Nothing happens by accident. I feel you are ordained to be here. You are chosen by God as champions of peace.

Within our lifetime we shall commemorate the year 2000. That year will be history's new turning point. A new era is unfolding. With the cooperation of God and man together the twenty-first century will be a century of peace. In order to make that happen we shall work tirelessly together for the next nine years. If we do, we shall be able to eliminate all obstacles which might hinder the attainment of peace.

The twenty-first century shall be a righteous century. In the twenty- first century, wealth will not be the dominating factor. Instead, the human spirit and human soul shall be dominant. The twenty-first century shall be the era of unity between God and man. It shall be the era where a new awakening will come to every man — a realization that he shall benefit himself more when he genuinely lives for the sake of others. In the twenty-first century, selfishness will decline. Life, honor, and glory based on unselfishness shall be triumphant. These are the characteristics of the coming twenty-first century.

The era for peace is approaching. Even the opportunity for the Kingdom of Heaven on earth is closer. The twenty first century shall be a hopeful and glorious century. To make this happen, the Federation for World Peace will provide the ideal and philosophy to educate the world's population. The Federation will assist spiritually, mentally and financially in the development of needy nations. The Federation will set a high moral standard and take a dynamic role in building a world of peace.

Ladies and gentlemen, you are the apostles of peace. A bright new hope as well as an exciting new future is awaiting us. Today we should fervently feel the desire to fulfill the great mission that is being bestowed upon us.

In order to achieve this sacred duty and the historic responsibility of building lasting peace, we should dedicate our lives. our fortunes and our sacred honor with total commitment. The very first item on our agenda shall be to invite God into our individual hearts, and those of our family, society, nation and world. When God is with us, who shall be against us?

Speeches

• Purity, Lineage and the Love Organ (of Life) http://www.unification.net/news/news20010218_2.html
• WHO WAS I? http://www.unification.net/1994/940213.html
• Father's words and Hoon Dok Hae http://www.unification.net/news/2003/news20030302_1.html This passage can not be found in Moon's speaches
• WHERE AND HOW DO YOU WANT TO LIVE YOUR LIFE? http://www.unification.net/1996/960609.html
• THE FAMILY FEDERATION FOR COSMIC PEACE AND UNIFICATION AND THE COSMIC ERA OF BLESSED FAMILY http://www.unification.net/1997/970504.html
• TRUE GOD'S DAY MIDNIGHT ADDRESS http://www.unification.net/1996/960101md.html
• IN SEARCH OF THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE http://www.unification.net/1996/960801.html
• Building a World of the Culture of Heart Based on True Love http://www.familyfed.org/board/uboard.aspid=tp_news&skin=board_urim_simple&color
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