Rev. Moon's Lasting Legacy in D.C.: the Washington Times

Robert Devaney
September 6, 2012

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, Korean religious leader, businessman and founder of the Unification Church died Sept. 3 in South Korea. He was 92. Moon considered himself the second coming of Jesus Christ, an idea directly heretical to mainstream Christianity.

In the popular mind, his Unification Church provoked images of mass marriages performed by Moon and his wife -- the "True Parents" -- and of young promoters who sold flowers at the airport or on the streets. And his Moonies, a word church members do not like, have been accused of being part of a religious cult.

His attendant business interests ranged widely from media and automobiles to supplying fresh fish to local restaurants, namely, sushi.

But the powerful ambitions and personality of Moon sought more: he wanted influence throughout the world, East to West. Where was the best place to set up his own version of a heaven-on-earth lobbying firm? In America. And the best place there? Of course, the nation's capital, Washington, D.C.

Beside his religious activities, the fiercely anti-communist Moon become known in the United States for strongly supporting then-enbattled President Richard Nixon, who later resigned. He led a huge rally at the National Mall, complete with fireworks, in the late 1970s. People here took notice, even as a few young Unification Church missionaries spoke casually with Georgetown University students in the lobby of Lauinger Library. (A new religion which unites the peoples and churches of Christianity can sound fresh, pure and worthy to a young mind.)

Moon's church and businesses continued to grow, and he was ready to stake his claim as a major Washington influencer by establishing the Washington Times in 1982. While it was during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, it came along before many other popular media outlets which trumpeted conservative issues.

I got the opportunity to work as an editor at the Washington Times during the 1990s -- the Bill Clinton years -- working in special sections. We wrote and edited varied features, anything from travel, history, dining, real estate, jobs to specials on inaugurations, Martin Luther King, Jr., Apollo XI and World War II. Our bailiwick did not involve any ideological comments, specifically speaking, although we were aware of the preferences of the editor at the time, Wesley Pruden. Just being in the newsroom, it was instructive for a centrist Democrat like myself to learn a bit of the thinking from the conservative -- and increasingly Republican -- playbook.

Now, the Washington Times newsroom is off the beaten path, as far as media offices go. While the Washington Post -- and the Washington Star (many staffers went to the Times when it folded) in its heyday -- chose downtown D.C., the Times is in Northeast D.C. on New York Avenue between the National Arboretum and the train tracks.

There was that one day in the mid-90s when Rev. Moon, who would visit occasionally and go straight to the executive offices, walked around the voluminous newsroom meeting each editor and writer individually at his or her desk. One veteran writer, surprised at this never-before greeting, said that it was either really bad or really good. (The Times could wait for about another 15 years before things might go really bad.) Moon smiled as he joked about a top investigative reporter's weight and poked him in the belly, saying he liked to eat as much fish as Moon liked to. At least, that's what what the translator told the reporter who was not used to being messed with and who, I imagined, had to restrain himself as I also imagined steam coming out of his ears.

Like most newsroom creatures, Times employees were skeptical of authority and would make a quip as easily as those on 15th Street. They called their paper "little scrappy," which did more with less and whose editors encouraged new hires to take chances. One said he was glad people believed in God, because he knew along with others that companies affiliated with the Unification Church had worked with News World Communications to spend more $1 billion over the years on the newspaper, which was one of the first to report regularly on religion, spirituality and, yes, God.

Of course, that other newspaper on 15th Street -- "the OP" as Times editors said -- looked down at Moon's creation as Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee vowed never to visit -- until a birthday party for Arnaud de Borchgrave, a former editor-in-chief of the Times. Bradlee had worked with de Borchgrave at Newsweek in Europe and was happy to go to the New York Avenue newsroom as the Times printing presses produced a Times parody version for de Borchgrave's party in the Arbor Ballroom; the banner headline aptly read: "A legend in his own mind."

The Washington Times persevered in its quest to bring an alternative voice to the Washington and national scene, even as it sometimes beat the Post on local news stories. It was not afraid to make mistakes and offered many reporters who went on to bigger media groups a great start. Allow me to mention a few (mostly former) staffers who made the newspaper shine and had an impact for me, professionally and personally: Patrick Butters, Peter VanDevanter, Kevin Chaffee, Ann Geracimos, Tracy Woodward, Jim Brantley, John McCaslin, Lorraine Woellert, Tony Blankley, Adrienne Washington, Cathryn Donohoe, Thom Loverro, Susan Ferrechio and Jerry Seper.

After the Times fell victim to squabbles within the Moon family, its staff and sections were cut a few years ago -- and it looked like the end was near. But Moon did not want to lose face, as it were, and intervened two years ago and took the newspaper away from one of his sons who had controlled it. Today, the Times remains a strong conservative and journalistic voice amid the newer ones, such as the Washington Examiner, adding to a more dynamic media landscape. It is trying for a comeback. Whatever your opinion of its ideological bent, you know the Times kept D.C. from being a one-newspaper town. And you can thank its writers, editors, photographers, artists and pressmen -- and a self-proclaimed messiah -- for that bit of journalistic luck

Highlights in the Life of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon

Compiled by Cheryl Wetzstein
September 5, 2012
The Washington Times

1920

Jan. 6 — Born as Yong Myung, one of 13 children, to Kyung-yoo Moon and Kyung-gye Kim in Sangsa Ri village in Pyongan province, now part of North Korea. His family had been wealthy, educated farmers, but had fallen on hard times. Japan had annexed the country in 1910, and Moon elders participated in independence efforts.

1930

Joined the Presbyterian Church with his family and became increasingly devout. While mourning the death of two siblings, he perceived that God was “the grieving parent of a lost mankind.”

1935

April 17 — After praying near Mount Myodu, he said Jesus Christ appeared to him on Easter morning and asked him to “take on a special mission on Earth having to do with Heaven’s work.” Overwhelmed, the 15-year-old initially declined, but eventually pledged to do so at the cost of his life. For the next nine years, searched for answers through intense prayer, fasting and Bible studies.

1941

March — Traveled to Tokyo to attend a technical school at Waseda University. Became involved with Korean independence activities, even though this meant arrests and beatings by Japanese police.

1943

Sept. 30 — After graduation, booked passage to Korea on the Konron Maru ferry. However, felt strange leadenness in his feet and a strong premonition not to board the ferry, and went instead on a trip with friends. The Konron Maru was sunk by a U.S. submarine, with more than 500 people aboard.

1944

May 4 —Married Seon-Gil Choi, daughter of a prominent Christian family, in a match arranged with an aunt. Knowing his mission, he asked Miss Choi several times if she could bear a life with a man with a difficult mission, and she insisted she could.

October — Arrested by Japanese police, who demanded he reveal the names of his friends in Japan. When he refused, police officers tortured and beat him, even hanging him from the ceiling “like a slab of meat in a butcher shop.”

1945

Aug. 15 — Japan’s surrender frees Korea, but the country was divided at the 38th parallel, with North Korea led by atheistic communists.

1946

June 5 — Acting on what he called “God’s demand,” left behind his wife and son to “find the people of God who are in the North.”

Aug. 11 — Arrested by North Korean police for spying for South Korea, was held and beaten for months.

Oct. 31 — After a severe beating, tossed out of the prison into the snow and left for dead. Nursed back to health by followers. Resumed preaching in North Korea, but was viewed as a heretic and threat to Christians, who themselves were suffering communist harassment.

1948

February — Arrested on complaints of “disruption of the social order” and sentenced to five years imprisonment.

May 20 — Entered Hungnam Special Labor camp, where teams of men had to fill 700 bags a day with ammonium sulfate or be punished. Food was so scarce prisoners would take rice out of the mouths of dead men.

1950

Oct. 14 — Released from Hungnam as guards fled advancing U.N. troops. Walked more than 100 miles to Pyongyang to find his followers.

Dec. 4 — As Chinese troops advanced to Pyongyang, began journey south with two followers, one of whom had a broken leg and had to be carried or pushed on a bike. Arrived in Busan refugee camp two months later.

1951

September — Built first Unification Church out of stones, wood and discarded U.S. military ration cartons. Began writing “Divine Principle” in this hut.

1952

November — Was reunited with wife, but she did not understand his long absence or his religious mission, and in 1958 she divorced him.

1953

March — Formally changed name from Yong-Myung (“dragon”) to Sun-Myung. Moon means “truth,” Sun means “to reveal itself clearly,” and Myung “combines characters for sun and moon,” he once explained. 1954 May 1 — Founded Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity.

1955

March — After months of denouncing Rev. Moon’s church, Christian-led Ehwa Women’s University fires or expels 19 faculty and students who refuse to leave the church. Other Christian-led universities urged President Syngman Rhee’s administration to disband the church.

July 4 — Arrested and held for avoiding military draft. Found “not guilty” 93 days later. 1960

April 11 — Held marriage blessing ceremony with 17-year-old Hak Ja Han as “True Father” and “True Mother.” Five days later, they blessed three more couples.

1961

May — Gave the marriage blessing to 33 couples. Over the next decades and up to March 2012, the Moons held dozens of mass weddings, many with tens of thousands of couples, and even hundreds of thousands who participated either at the main ceremony or via satellite in ceremonies around the world.

1965

Feb. 12 — Made first visit to United States and created 120 “holy grounds,” as part of first of many world tours.

1971

Dec. 18 — Arrived in United States and established World Mission Headquarters. Through the early 1970s, held many national speaking tours on “Christianity in Crisis” and “Day of Hope.”

1973

Nov. 30 — Placed ads in major newspapers urging Americans to fast, pray and “forgive, love, unite” regarding the Watergate scandal.

1974

Feb. 1 — Met President Richard M. Nixon.

Sept. 18 — Held rally at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan with 25,000 attending. Purchased the Christian Brothers Seminary in Barrytown, N.Y., which became Unification Theological Seminary; in the next two years, purchased New Yorker Hotel; Manhattan Center and Hammerstein Ballroom; Tiffany Building and Columbia Club in New York, and the Belvedere Estate in Tarrytown, N.Y.

1976

June 1 — Held rally in Yankee Stadium in New York

Sept. 18 — Held rally at Washington Monument with 300,000 in attendance.

Dec. 31 — Launched News World newspaper as a conservative voice in New York.

1978

Accused of being an agent of South Korean government in hearings held by Rep. Donald M. Fraser, Minnesota Democrat. Although Mr. Fraser lost his bid for U.S. Senate in September, his commission issued a report recommending full government investigation into the Unification Church.

1980

Was subject of a N.Y. grand jury investigation over tax issues.

Created “Ocean Church,” a ministry to build personal character and revive and strengthen boating and fishing industries. This led to maritime activities in Korea, South America, and U.S. locations such as Gloucester, Mass., Hawaii; Alaska; Norfolk, Va., and, in 2012, Lake Mead in Nevada.

Created CAUSA International, which conducted hundreds of “Victory Over Communism” conferences worldwide until 1991.

Nov. 4 — Predicted on News World’s front page that Ronald Reagan would win election in a “landslide”; Reagan was photographed with the paper at a victory party later that night.

1981

Oct. 15 — Notified while in South Korea that he and a church leader were indicted on 13 counts of tax fraud, including not paying $7,300 taxes on $160,000 of church funds kept in a bank account under his name. Returned to the U.S. on the next flight.

Oct. 22 — At a rally with clergy and members in New York’s Foley Square, said, “I am innocent. I have committed no crime I am here today only because my skin is yellow and my religion is Unification Church.

1982

April 1 — Went to court for tax trial.

May 17 — Launched The Washington Times in Washington, D.C.

May 18 — Found guilty of tax fraud by a jury. On July 16, Judge Gerard Goettel sentenced him to 18 months in prison and a fine of $25,000.

1984

May 14 — Despite outcry from religious groups over the legal implications of the verdict, the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal.

July 20 — Entered federal prison in Danbury, Conn., with Takeru Kamiyama, who was also convicted. Became famous as a model prisoner, good Ping-Pong player and praying nightly in the prison chapel from 3 to 5 a.m.

1985

Received honorary doctorate from Shaw University, which his wife accepted for him.

Aug. 20 — Freed from Danbury prison; attended a welcome-home banquet in Washington, D.C., with 1,700 clergy including the Rev. Joseph Lowery and the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

1990

April 10-11 — Spoke in Moscow at World Media Conference, and met with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

1991

Nov. 30 — Dec. 1 — Traveled to North Korea and met with President Kim Il-Sung. 2000 Inaugurated the Ambassadors for Peace program. Gave marriage blessing to Roman Catholic Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo and Maria Sung. The Catholic prelate was later excommunicated and started an advocacy group to promote marriage for Catholic priests and nuns.

2002

April 27 — Held Blessing ceremony for 144,000 clergy couples in Washington, D.C.

May 20 — Addressed 20th anniversary gala of The Washington Times.

June 12 — Hosted inauguration ceremony for the Sun Moon Peace Cup in Korea, with soccer star Pele.

Dec. 15 — Began the process of bequeathing his physical belongings to Unification Church members.

2003

Feb. 5 — Held dedication ceremony for Cheongshim Hospital at Chung Pyung in Korea. Also holds a ceremony to renew vows with Mrs. Moon.

May 12 — Held the first Middle East Peace Initiative, in which clergy of different faiths visit Rome and the Holy Land to discuss peace.

2004

March 23 — Held Crown of Peace ceremony at Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C.

2005

July 13 — Held rally for unity of North and South Korea with 6,000 Koreans.

September — Embarked on a four-month, 100-country speaking tour. A ban on his travel into several European countries is finally lifted, and he visits them as part of this tour.

Sept. 12 — Founded the Universal Peace Federation and spoke on “God’s Ideal Family, The Model for World Peace.”

2006

March-April — Attended nine rallies in Korea for the restoration of the homeland.

Aug. 31 — Began a 40-day world speaking tour with members of his family.

2008

April 18 — Appointed youngest son, Hyung Jin, as international president of the Unification Church.

June 19 — Survived a helicopter crash in Korea; he and 15 others, including his wife, grandchildren and others, all escaped with minor injuries before it ignited into flames.

July 29 — Appointed daughter In Jin as head of Unification Church in North America.

2009

March 9 — Published his autobiography in Korea and held yearlong celebration of 50th wedding anniversary with Mrs. Moon.

2011

April-June — Held speaking tour in Asia, Europe and Africa. Unveiled personally designed “Won Mo” boat in Las Vegas.

2012

Sept. 2 — Died of complications of pneumonia at the church complex at Chung Pyung, South Korea.

Sources: Today’s World magazine; “Sun Myung Moon, The Early Years: 1920-53,” by Michael Breen; “As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen,” the autobiography of Rev. Moon; “Messiah: My Testimony to Rev. Sun Myung Moon,” Volumes I and II, by Bo Hi Pak; HSA-UWC.

Unification Church Succession Plan Announced

Cheryl Wetzstein
September 3, 2012
The Washington Times

The succession plan for the Unification movement has been spelled out for several years, with leadership moving to the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s 69-year-old widow and his youngest son, church leaders said Monday.

In January 2009, Rev. Moon and wife Hak Ja Han Moon indicated that their youngest son, Hyung Jin, would be “the international leader of our church and all our related organizations,” the Rev. Michael Jenkins, chairman of the American Clergy Leadership Conference (ACLC), said in an open letter posted Monday.

“Father Moon will guide us in spirit, Mother Moon will lead us on earth, and centering on Rev. Hyung Jin Moon, we will organize to bring about God’s kingdom,” wrote Mr. Jenkins, a longtime Unification Church official in America.

Unification Church leaders have yet to announce what changes might be made concerning church activities and its hundreds of church-related nonprofits and businesses.

Rev. Moon died of complications due to pneumonia on Sept. 2.

In recent speeches in the United States during her father’s illness, Rev. In Jin Moon, head of the Unification Church in North America and founder of the Lovin’ Life Ministries, told members that having her mother, Hak Ja Han Moon, at the helm of a religious movement will be a big change in style.

During the early years of the Unification Church, “We had the dynamic, masculine leadership of our True Father,” she said, according to a transcript of her Aug. 29 Chicago speech. “Very masculine, very charismatic, very powerful. He was the generalissimo of our movement,” she said.

But now it’s time for “the era of settlement,” where the work is “of building ideal family, of building ideal relationships, of building a wonderful community and a society, nation and world.” That will require a slightly different kind of leadership, one that is “more nourishing” and “more feminine,” said Mrs. Moon, adding that her mother is well-prepared for the task, given the dynamics of her large family and 50 years of accompanying Rev. Moon in his mission.

Supporters of an elder son, Hyun Jin Moon, have disputed these arrangements.

In Korean social culture, the eldest son inherits, and with the death of his two older brothers, Hyun Jin Moon, who has an MBA from Harvard Business School and was once appointed to high positions in the church by his parents, became the eldest. His supporters believe he is being disenfranchised, and have gone to court in several countries over the future of several properties. One dispute involved The Washington Times; a settlement was reached in 2010, in which church entities bought the newspaper back from Hyun Jin Moon’s business interests.

Hyung Jin Moon, who is 10 years younger than brother Hyun Jin, has degrees from Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School, and has studied Asian religions as well. He and his wife, Yeon-Ah Moon, have been leading the Korean-based church for several years.

Mrs. Moon “will now stand strong to lead us on with her youngest son, Rev. Hyung Jin Moon,” Archbishop George Augustus Stallings Jr., founder of the African American Catholic Congregation and co-president of the ACLC, said Monday. “We are confident that the Unification Movement will flourish,” he added.

Succession in religious leadership has long attracted interest.

The legendary ministry of Billy Graham, for instance, was passed to his son, William Franklin Graham III, in 2000.

For years, it was not clear that the hard-living son would want to take the helm of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. The younger Graham spent considerable amounts of his life smoking, drinking and carousing. But he turned his life around, and told his story in his 1995 autobiography, “Rebel With a Cause.” He now stands “for nothing but this,” he told USA Today in 2006, holding his Bible. “That’s just how I’m wired.”

Mr. Graham, 93, recovered in August from bronchitis.

Sun Myung Moon Dies at 92; Washington Times Owner Led the Unification Church

Emma Brown
September 2, 2012
The Washington Post

Sun Myung Moon, a self-professed messiah who claimed millions of religious followers in his Unification Church and sought to become a powerful voice in the American conservative movement through business interests that included the Washington Times, has died. He was 92.

The Washington Times reported that Mr. Moon died in South Korea early Monday morning (Sunday afternoon in Washington). Unification Church spokesman Ahn Ho-yeul told the Associated Press that Mr. Moon died at a church-owned hospital near his home in Gapyeong, northeast of Seoul. He had been under treatment for pneumonia.

Officials say the religious leader who founded the Unification Church and built it into a multibilliondollar business empire has died in South Korea at age 92.

Mr. Moon, the son of Korean farmers, created a sprawling empire at the intersection of religion and business and became one of the world’s most enigmatic and polarizing public figures.

His stated ambition was to rule the world and replace Christianity with his own faith, which blended elements of Christianity, Confucianism and Korean folk religions. A leading symbol of the 1970s cult wars in America, he attracted a great deal of attention and ridicule for holding mass weddings for Unificationist couples whom he had paired, often without the prospective partners ever having met.

But his success in business and involvement in American politics “demanded that people who could care less about his peculiar doctrinal views pay attention to him,” said James Beverley, a professor at Tyndale University College and Seminary in Toronto who has studied Mr. Moon’s church since the late 1970s.

As a young man, Mr. Moon was twice jailed in the 1940s when his sermonizing attracted the attention of authorities in what is now North Korea. Emerging as a staunch anti-communist, he built the foundations of what became a global business network with labor provided by his devotees.

He made his most strident inroads into American culture in the 1970s. The Vietnam War-era counterculture was beginning to fade, but college students were still looking for an alternative to the conventional lives of their parents. Drawn by the promise of salvation through clean-living self-discipline, they flocked to the Unification Church despite the fact that Mr. Moon was known more for his sermons’ longwindedness than for public displays of charisma.

His critics described him as a frustrated megalomaniac who donated millions of dollars to political causes in exchange for the mainstream recognition and acceptance that he never enjoyed as a spiritual leader. Meanwhile, his supporters saw Mr. Moon as a prophet unfairly persecuted by xenophobic journalists and politicians.

To much of the outside world, Mr. Moon undercut his credibility with grandiose statements. “God is living in me and I am the incarnation of himself,” he said, according to sermon excerpts printed in Time magazine in 1976. “The whole world is in my hand, and I will conquer and subjugate the world.”

Such comments helped spur a panic among parents of young Unificationists, who accused Mr. Moon of running a cult and brainwashing their children. Unificationists often lived communally and were forced to sever ties with their families, trading biological mothers and fathers for their “True Parents,” Mr. Moon and his wife. They staked out street corners and airports and worked long hours selling flowers, peanuts and candles to raise money for the church. Alarmed parents hired professional deprogrammers to bring their children home.

In 1982, Mr. Moon was convicted of tax evasion and later sentenced to 18 months in federal prison in Danbury, Conn. In addition, his $46 million foray into movie production — “Inchon,” a 1981 film about the Korean War featuring Laurence Olivier as Gen. Douglas MacArthur — was unanimously deemed an epic failure.

By the mid-1980s, Mr. Moon’s recruitment efforts in America had begun to flag. The National Council of Churches had rejected Unificationism, calling it “incompatible with Christian teaching and belief.” Congress had investigated Mr. Moon’s connections with the South Korean CIA and issued a report damning his businesses as a global network designed to further the growth of a religious cult.

Officials say the religious leader who founded the Unification Church and built it into a multibilliondollar business empire has died in South Korea at age 92.

Despite those setbacks, Mr. Moon remained at the helm of a dizzying web of hundreds of businesses and nonprofit organizations that reached into the lives of millions of people around the world and exerted a powerful influence on American politics.

In addition to South Korean businesses that ran the gamut from ginseng tea to machine guns, his sprawling empire included an automobile plant and hotel in North Korea and banks and vast tracts of real estate in South America. In Japan, an army of salespeople sold ornamental pagodas and other religious trinkets.

In the Washington area, the church and its affiliates owned more than $300 million in commercial, political and cultural enterprises, including the Kirov Academy of Ballet in the District, an Alexandria video production firm called Atlantic Video and the mall jewelry store chain Christian Bernard.

Mr. Moon’s groups owned a university in Bridgeport, Conn., a recording studio and travel agency in Manhattan, a horse farm in Texas and a golf course in California.

The preacher also built a vast seafood enterprise that includes fishing boats, processors and distributors from Alaska to Gloucester, Mass. According to a 2006 Chicago Tribune investigation, Mr. Moon’s True World Foods provided most of the raw fish consumed at sushi restaurants in the United States.

Starting the Times

His most prominent investment was the Washington Times, founded in 1982 as a conservative counterbalance to what Mr. Moon perceived as The Washington Post’s liberal bias.

The broadsheet, whose circulation reached 100,000 at its peak, was a financial drain — it never climbed out of the red and soaked up about $1.7 billion in church subsidies during its first 20 years in business. But it quickly became an important national voice for the conservative right. President Ronald Reagan reportedly read it daily, and its reporters earned respect for scooping other media outlets, including The Post.

“Many comfortable Washington political bureaucrats who have had their beautiful offices inside big marble buildings considered Reverend Moon and the Unification Church as insignificant as peanuts,” Mr. Moon reportedly said soon after launching the paper. “However, now they have found themselves having to respond to the Washington Times. They are reading it and trembling at some of the stories.”

The Times earned praise and attention from conservative political leaders but battled a public perception that it was a mouthpiece for the Unification Church, particularly when top editors resigned, citing church interference with editorial decisions.

Mr. Moon and other church leaders were unabashed about their ambitions for the newspaper. “We are going to make it so that no one can run for office in the United States without our permission,” Col. Bo Hi Pak, Mr. Moon’s top aide and the founding president of the Times, reportedly told conservative activist David Finzer in 1988.

Officials say the religious leader who founded the Unification Church and built it into a multibilliondollar business empire has died in South Korea at age 92.

Mr. Moon’s long involvement with American politics began in the 1970s during the administration of President Richard Nixon, when the church leader said God had proclaimed that “Americans must love Nixon.” Unificationists prayed and fasted outside the U.S. Capitol during the Watergate hearings, earning the fallen president’s gratitude and a White House invitation for Mr. Moon.

He spent liberally to fight communism and champion traditional family values. In the 1980s, he and his followers founded Causa, an anti-communist group that promoted “Godism” as an alternative to Marxism and was active in more than 20 countries, including Uruguay, where it bought a newspaper, banks and a luxury hotel.

During the height of the Nicaraguan civil war in the 1980s, the Washington Times led a fundraising drive on behalf of the contras, a rebel group that sought to overthrow the country’s leftist government. Another church-linked organization, the American Freedom Coalition, paid for a direct mailing to 25 million households that criticized 1988 Democratic presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis.

Mr. Moon cultivated often-uneasy relationships with American political, cultural and religious leaders, who undoubtedly appreciated his largess but were often hesitant to publicly embrace the controversial preacher.

Former president George H.W. Bush spoke frequently at Moon events. He received an undisclosed amount from the church in speaking fees and a $1 million donation from the Times foundation to build a library for his papers. In Tokyo, before an audience of 50,000, he and wife Barbara appeared alongside Mr. Moon’s wife as she credited Mr. Moon with bringing about the fall of communism.

Comedian Bill Cosby tried to back out of a contract to perform at a 1996 convention in Washington when he learned that it had been organized by Mr. Moon’s Family Federation for World Peace; Moon’s lawyers convinced Cosby otherwise, and he appeared on a slate including former president Gerald R. Ford, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and the civil rights activist Coretta Scott King.

Christian evangelist Jerry Falwell, who once likened Mr. Moon to “the plague,” appeared at Unificationist events as a supporter after a Moon-sponsored organization donated $3.5 million to rescue Falwell’s Liberty University from the brink of bankruptcy.

Some luminaries who agreed to appear at Moon-sponsored events said they had been duped. When President George W. Bush was sworn into office in 2001, the Washington Times Foundation hosted an interfaith prayer luncheon for 1,700 political and religious leaders, among them soon-to-be U.S. attorney general John D. Ashcroft and Southern Baptist Convention President James Merritt. Mr. Moon was honored at the event. “We had no idea the luncheon was hosted by Moonies,” Merritt told a reporter at the time.

Critics said Mr. Moon used such events to engineer photo opportunities that he later used to establish legitimacy with potential church recruits. He secured photographs of himself with Nixon, Gorbachev and North Korean leader Kim Il Sung.

In 2004, he was photographed in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, wearing regal robes and a gold crown and flanked by members of Congress. The picture was taken after a ceremony in which Mr. Moon proclaimed before U.S. senators and representatives that he was “none other than humanity’s savior, messiah, returning lord and true parent.” That was a truth, he told the gathered crowd, that Stalin and Hitler had recognized in conversations from beyond the grave.

Officials say the religious leader who founded the Unification Church and built it into a multibilliondollar business empire has died in South Korea at age 92.

In fact, according to Mr. Moon’s sermons, Jesus also had spoken from the spirit realm and recognized Mr. Moon as the savior of humankind. So had Buddha, Muhammad and Satan, among others. Mr. Moon claimed he had found a wife for Jesus and blessed the couple’s marriage.

Mr. Moon’s supporters saw him as the victor in a long fight against injustice. He was jailed six times in four countries. His 1982 arrest for tax evasion in the United States elicited a cry of support from mainstream preachers, who said the government was meddling dangerously with religious affairs. Others said he was the victim of a racist witch hunt by the press and public. The tax bill he had failed to pay was less than $8,000.

Carlton Sherwood, a CNN reporter who took a job at the Washington Times to write an expose about Mr. Moon, instead wrote a 1991 book saying that nothing was amiss in the church.

“Congress, the courts, law enforcement agencies, the press, even the U.S. Constitution itself,” Sherwood wrote, were “prostituted in a malicious, oftentimes brutal manner, as part of a determined effort to wipe out this small but expanding religious movement.”

A Young Preacher

Sun Myung Moon was born in 1920 — Jan. 6, according to an official biography — in a rural part of what is now North Korea. When he was young, his parents converted to Presbyterianism, and Mr. Moon grew up as a Christian believer.

On Easter Sunday in 1935, according to Unification Church lore, he had a vision of Jesus, who asked Mr. Moon to create God’s Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. Mr. Moon agreed.

He wrote a 411-page gospel, the Divine Principle, in which he said he could save the world from Satanic forces by creating a sinless family. Unificationist followers could be saved by creating their own perfect marriages in ceremonies blessed by Mr. Moon.

In the early 1940s, Mr. Moon studied electrical engineering at Japan’s Waseda University. He returned to Korea in 1943, married Sang Il Choi and began his public ministry in what became North Korea after the country was partitioned in the aftermath of World War II. He was jailed twice there, the second time in a Soviet-style gulag, where he remained until advancing U.N. and U.S. troops freed him and his fellow prisoners in 1950, the first year of the Korean War.

He built his first church out of discarded cardboard boxes in the South Korean port city of Pusan. In 1954, he officially established his church, the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, in Seoul. Three years later, Mr. Moon’s young South Korean businesses were taking off and he had spread his message about creating a peaceful new world to 30 Korean cities. Meanwhile, his first marriage ended in divorce. A relationship with another woman resulted in a child but no wedding. In 1960, he married Hak Ja Han, who bore 14 of Mr. Moon’s children and came to be known as True Mother.

Declaring that he was urged by God to spread his gospel to America, he moved to an estate in Tarrytown, N.Y., in the early 1970s. On multi-city speaking tours, he preached that the United States was a great nation that had lost its way and had descended into a crime-ridden godlessness. He could restore God’s presence, he said in hours-long sermons delivered in Korean and translated by an interpreter. Officials say the religious leader who founded the Unification Church and built it into a multibilliondollar business empire has died in South Korea at age 92.

Mr. Moon made national headlines in 1974 when he drew an overflow crowd for a sermon at New York’s Madison Square Garden. In September 1976, two months after the United States celebrated its bicentennial, he sponsored a “God Bless America” rally at the Washington Monument that drew 50,000 people, most of whom, the New York Times reported, “seemed to be there for the music and fireworks display.”

“This is a time for awakening,” Mr. Moon said. “America must accept her global responsibility. Armed with Godism, she must free the Communist world and, at last, build the Kingdom of God on Earth.” He railed against communism until the Soviet Union fell, then refocused his attention on moral decay. America, where he had become a permanent resident, was rife with it, he said. It was full of free sex, extreme individuality and homosexuals, which he condemned as “dung-eating dogs.”

An Empire Struggles

In 1998, a steady drip of stories about the dysfunctionality of the supposedly perfect Moon family reached a climax when Nansook Hong, the ex-wife of Mr. Moon’s son Hyo Jin Moon, published a tell-all memoir. “In the Shadow of the Moons” accused Hyo Jin of cocaine addiction and domestic abuse and alleged that Mr. Moon was himself guilty of adultery and money laundering.

In 1999, another son, Young Jin Moon, fell from the 17th floor of a Reno, Nev., hotel. His death was ruled a suicide by the local coroner. A third son, Heung Jin Moon, was killed in a 1984 car crash; four years later, Mr. Moon announced that Heung Jin had been reincarnated in the body of a Zimbabwean church member.

Survivors include his wife; one child from his first marriage; and 10 children from his second marriage, including daughter In Jin Moon, who is trying to reinvigorate the American branch of the Unification movement, and three U.S.-educated sons who have led the Moon organization’s day-to-day operations since late 2009: Kook Jin “Justin” Moon, who founded a gun-manufacturing business in New York and now is chairman of Tong-il, the Moon family’s Korean business conglomerate; Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, who once honored his parents with 21,000 bows and now leads the church’s international ministry; and Hyun Jin “Preston” Moon, whose estrangement from his family has contributed to upheaval and nearinsolvency at the Washington Times.

Preston Moon took over the newspaper around 2006. But he feuded with his brothers and drew criticism from church insiders for his perceived lack of commitment to the Times’ conservative bent. The Moon family cut off the Times’ $35 million subsidy, sending the newspaper into a tailspin.

Its circulation dwindled and more than half its newsroom was laid off. The metro and sports sections were discontinued and top executives were fired, sparking questions about whether the paper would survive.

Mr. Moon and a team of former Times executives paid $1 to buy the paper back in November 2010, assuming its millions of dollars in debt.

Other parts of the Moon empire, always shrouded in secrecy, also seemed to teeter as Mr. Moon aged. In the 1980s, the church settled hundreds of lawsuits in Japan alleging that Unificationists persuaded people to buy religious icons by promising them spiritual powers; the lawsuits gutted what many believed to be the revenue engine of the global Moon network, which had brought in more than $400 million a year.

A church-related automobile manufacturing enterprise in China failed in the 1990s, and the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s ravaged Mr. Moon’s South Korean businesses, forcing five of 17 into receivership.

Some Moon-related businesses, such as True World Foods, have remained profitable, according to news reports. But the organization’s financial troubles have rippled into the Washington area, where the Christian Bernard jewelry chain filed for bankruptcy in 2008. Church subsidies for the District’s Kirov ballet academy dropped by half in 2009.

The Unification Church itself has reportedly struggled as well. In an effort to boost membership, it loosened stringent rules about marriage, allowing biological parents to choose their children’s spouses and inviting nonbelievers to participate in mass weddings.

Church leaders claim millions of followers worldwide, but a 2009 Washington Times article reported that the church had 110,000 “adherents” worldwide. Scholars’ estimates of U.S. church membership range from fewer than 6,000 people to as many as 50,000, according to the 2009 edition of the Encyclopedia of American Religious History.

Frederick Sontag, a professor of religion who studied Unificationism for decades, once asked Mr. Moon whether his kingdom — so dependent on his own vision and force of personality — would crumble after his death.

“I will continue to lead the church,” Mr. Moon answered, “from the spirit world.”

Rev. Sun Myung Moon, Times Founder, Dies at 92 - Led Religious Movement To Help Promote World Peace

Cheryl Wetzstein
September 2, 2012
The Washington Times

“I am a controversial person. The mere mention of my name causes trouble in the world,” Rev. Moon wrote in his 2009 autobiography, “As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen.”

The world “has associated many different phrases with my name, rejected me, and thrown stones at me. Many are not interested in knowing what I say or what I do. They only oppose me,” he wrote.

“Today, though, not even the slightest wound remains in my heart. … True love is a love that forgets it already gave love, and gives love again.”

Rev. Moon became widely known to Americans in the 1970s during his evangelistic rallies across the country, and major rallies at Yankee Stadium and the Washington Monument in 1976. America was in “moral decline,” Rev. Moon wrote in his autobiography, “and [I] played the role of a fireman responding to a call in an effort to reawaken its Puritan spirit.”

But accusations that his church “brainwashed” members helped make Rev. Moon the target of repeated investigations. In 1982, Rev. Moon was convicted of income-tax evasion and eventually served 13 months in federal prison.

Prolific Founder

Despite such hostility, Rev. Moon established and helped fund nonprofit organizations, including the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification and the Universal Peace Federation.

He also launched business interests in industries such as shipbuilding, industrial machinery, stoneware, fishing and seafood products, computer software, ginseng tea and other health products, soft drinks, arts and cultural schools, newspapers in several countries and car factories in China and North Korea. In 1992, the church rescued the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut from bankruptcy with a loan reported at $60 million.

A passionate fisherman, Rev. Moon inspired “Ocean Challenge” programs for youths and fishing tournaments in places such as Gloucester, Mass.; Alaska; and Hawaii. In 2011, he launched a marine company in Las Vegas to make a new kind of leisure craft.

Rev. Moon also founded numerous international, interfaith service groups, such as the International Relief Friendship Foundation, Religious Youth Service and Service for Peace, and sponsored thousands of conferences on world peace, family and interfaith issues. National leaders including former Presidents Gerald R. Ford and George H.W. Bush addressed some of these conferences.

“My peace plan starts from the level of the individual,” Rev. Moon once said. “First we must find peace with God, then peace with our fellow man, and finally we can secure world peace.”

His belief in the divine significance of marriage was the rationale behind the Unification Church’s most famous events — the mass public “blessings” for both newlyweds (including church members whom Rev. Moon matched together) and married couples of all religions renewing their vows.

“What is the blessing? It is to possess God’s love, God’s son or daughter, and then all the universe,” Rev. Moon explained at a 1975 matching ceremony.

Early Years

Rev. Moon was born Jan. 6, 1920, in Sangsa Ri village in Pyongan province, now part of North Korea. His family members were poor farmers who joined the Presbyterian Church when he was 10. Rev. Moon embraced his conversion deeply and often lamented about the world of perpetual suffering he saw in Japanese-occupied Korea.

On Easter Sunday 1935, when he was 15, Rev. Moon would later say, he was praying on a Korean mountaintop when Jesus Christ appeared to him and asked him to fulfill his life’s work. Rev. Moon refused twice, but when Jesus asked him a third time to accept the mission, the teenager promised, “I will do it.”

For nine years, he studied, prayed and fasted to understand his mission. In 1943, he married his first wife, Seon-Gil Choi, and worked as an electrical engineer to support their son. But in 1946, he suddenly left his home to go to Pyongyang, North Korea, where Christianity and communism were colliding. He later said he was heeding God’s call.

There, he established himself as a spiritual leader, but was arrested after Christian clergy complained to police and accused him of being a spy from the South. During one arrest, he was tortured and left for dead outside the prison. His followers nursed him back to health.

In 1948, the same year he was expelled by the Presbyterians, Rev. Moon was arrested again by North Korean communists and imprisoned in the Heungnam labor camp.

Life expectancy in the camp was only a few months, but Rev. Moon persevered until 1950, when United Nations forces, under Gen. Douglas MacArthur, liberated the camp in October, on the eve of his scheduled execution. In the early 1980s, Rev. Moon financed the feature film “Inchon” to honor the U.S. war hero, who was played by Laurence Olivier.

In December 1950, Rev. Moon walked 500 miles south to Pusan, South Korea, where he and a small group of followers built a church from discarded U.S. military supply crates.

‘Divine Principle’

It was in Pusan where Rev. Moon committed his theology to writing, in a volume called “Wolli Wonbon,” or the “Divine Principle.” In that volume, based on years of intense biblical study, he explains that God, as the Original Parent of all mankind, has been grieving for His lost children since the Fall of Man.

The Divine Principle further explains the events of the Fall, the existence of evil, and how God has been working through human history to reclaim heaven and earth through a formula called the providence of restoration. God’s followers are called to live lives of true love, public service and work to bring peace among religions.

In 1953, Rev. Moon moved to Seoul where, the next year, he registered his church as the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity — generally known as the Unification Church. By 1957, Unification churches were established in 30 Korean cities and towns. In 1958, the church’s first missionary went to Japan; in 1959, the first Unificationist missionaries arrived in America. He later sent missionaries to every country in the world.

Rev. Moon’s marriage to Seon-Gil Choi ended in 1958 after she filed for divorce.

In 1960, Rev. Moon married Hak Ja Han. The couple eventually had 14 children, and are revered by church members as the “True Parents.”

Beginning in 1960, Rev. Moon matched and married his earliest followers with their consent. The ceremonies, which the faithful believe release them from the bondage of original sin, grew to include 2,075 couples in Madison Square Garden in 1982. Over the years, these “blessing ceremonies,” the most recent occurring in March, have involved millions of couples either in stadiums or via satellite.

Rev. Moon first traveled to the United States in 1965 for a five-month visit, during which he toured the country and spent three months in the Washington home of Bo Hi Pak, a South Korean diplomat and Unification Church member. Rev. Moon returned to the U.S. in 1969 and, in 1971, moved the missionary headquarters of his church to Westchester County, N.Y.

In 1972, Rev. Moon began a seven-city U.S. evangelical tour with a “Day of Hope Rally” at New York City’s Lincoln Center. He continued his public appearances over the next two years, speaking on the theme of “Christianity in Crisis,” including a Sept. 18, 1974, event at Madison Square Garden in New York.

In November 1973, Rev. Moon had taken out newspaper ads urging Americans to “forgive, love and unite” in the face of the crisis created by the Watergate scandal. That led to a Feb. 1, 1974, Oval Office meeting between President Richard M. Nixon and Rev. Moon.

‘Brainwashing’ Charges

After Rev. Moon associated himself with Nixon, his religious movement began to be regarded as politically controversial. Critics began charging the Unification Church with “brainwashing” its members.

“Liberals in America, especially those who sympathized with international communism, felt particularly threatened by Rev. Moon’s appearance on the national scene,” Mr. Pak later wrote. “They feared that Rev. Moon could become a major threat, and so they came together to form an anti-Rev. Moon movement.”

During the 1970s, the Unification Church in America attracted many young adults. These converts often lived communally, witnessing, lecturing or raising money for the church’s projects. This attracted the attention of established religious organizations. Some parents of new members complained that the church prohibited contact between young converts and their families. In some cases, parents arranged to have young people abducted from Unification training centers and “deprogrammed.”

“I have never divided families or broken homes,” and the accusations of brainwashing are “nonsense,” Rev. Moon told theologian Frederick Sontag in a 1977 book about the church.

In 1977, a House subcommittee on international organizations began investigating the Unification Church. Rep. Donald Fraser, Minnesota Democrat, charged that the church was a lobbying organization for the South Korean government.

Although the congressional investigation failed to find any wrongdoing by Rev. Moon or the church, the Internal Revenue Service in 1981 obtained an indictment against Rev. Moon for income-tax evasion. The IRS charged that Rev. Moon failed to declare $112,000 in interest and $50,000 in corporate stock. Rev. Moon’s defense asserted that the assets were not Rev. Moon‘s, but were held in trust for the Japanese Unification Church.

A jury found Rev. Moon guilty of not paying about $7,500 of tax on interest income, and he was sentenced to 18 months in Danbury Federal Correctional Institution, a sentence he began serving in July 1984. With time off for good behavior, he was formally released Aug. 2, 1985, after serving 13 months. More than 2,000 clergymen welcomed Rev. Moon at a banquet in Washington that night.

‘Landslide’ Predicted

Even as he faced investigations and imprisonment, Rev. Moon embarked on a new aspect of his public career. He had declared that “only the United States can protect the democratic world against the threat of communism,” and warned that President Jimmy Carter’s “naivete” about that threat would soon lead to “world communization.”

His aide, Mr. Pak, later recalled that Rev. Moon prayed for an American president who would “stop the marching tide of communism,” and that Rev. Moon one day told him: “The next president of the United States will hold the fate of the world in his hands, and Heaven has chosen Ronald Reagan.”

Unification Church members actively supported the Reagan campaign in 1980 and, at Rev. Moon’s direction, Mr. Pak arranged a meeting with Reagan in Toledo, Ohio. Greeting the candidate as “President Reagan,” Mr. Pak recalled, he told the Republican challenger: “God has already decided on you as the next president.”

Reagan, according to Mr. Pak, was “taken aback” by the statement and asked him: “What did you say? Who on earth told you that?”

After he explained Rev. Moon’s prophecy, Mr. Pak said, Reagan responded with his characteristic humor: “I wish I had as much confidence in myself as Rev. Moon does.”

Opinion polls predicted a close election, but Rev. Moon’s confidence was reflected by the News World, a New York newspaper that he founded in 1976. On Election Day 1980, the News World rolled off the press with a giant headline predicting “Reagan Landslide.”

At a news conference that morning, Mr. Reagan held up the News World’s front page, an image carried across the country by television reports. When the votes were counted, the Republican had won 489 of 538 Electoral College votes, more than matching the bold prediction.

Going to Print

The News World, renamed the New York City Tribune in 1983, was Rev. Moon’s first venture into the American press, and in 1978, he established the World Media Association dedicated to promoting freedom of the press. When The Washington Star went bankrupt in 1981, Rev. Moon thought it was important to ensure that the nation’s capital remained a two-newspaper city.

Mr. Pak, who was then publisher of the News World, recalled that on Jan. 1, 1982, Rev. Moon ordered him to establish a daily to be named The Washington Times — to begin publication by March 1.

This seemed “an impossible mission,” Mr. Pak remembered.

Recruiting veteran editor James Whelan and purchasing a warehouse on New York Avenue that is still the newspaper’s headquarters, Mr. Pak was able to get a debut issue of The Times printed by Rev. Moon’s deadline of March 1. A little more than two months later, on May 17, 1982, The Times published its second issue and began regular daily publication.

One analyst predicted that the new daily would not “last more than six months,” but according to Mr. Pak, Rev. Moon invested more than $1 billion in The Times during its first 10 years of publication, and Unification Church members — including many with no previous newspaper experience — worked tirelessly with seasoned professional journalists to make it a success.

During its first 10 years of publication, The Times won more than 650 awards, including top honors from the Society of Newspaper Design in 1988 and 1992, and an editorial writing award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1989.

A favorite of Republican leaders (Reagan insisted on reading The Washington Times first thing in the morning at the White House), the newspaper scored scoops with its award-winning coverage of congressional scandals and the Whitewater scandal in the 1990s.

The Washington Times is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.

Over the years, Rev. Moon was associated with a number of other publications, including the Segye Ilbo in Korea, Sekai Nippo in Japan, the Spanish-language weekly Tiempos del Mundo in Argentina, the Middle East Times in Cairo, Ultimas Noticias in Uruguay, and Washington Golf Monthly.

In 2000, News World Communications purchased the United Press International wire service. A weekly newsmagazine, Insight on the News, and a monthly magazine, The World and I, ceased publication in 2004, but continued as online publications.

‘Victory Over Communism’

Throughout the 1980s, Rev. Moon actively promoted opposition to communism, a struggle he saw in religious terms.

“The only way to defeat communism is to clearly prove the existence of God,” he said. He developed an anti-communist strategy he called Victory Over Communism (VOC), which critiqued the fallacies of Marxist theory while seeking to “demonstrate in detail how God guides human history.” VOC was the philosophical underpinning of CAUSA (Confederation of Associations for the Unification of the Societies of the Americas), an organization that Rev. Moon established in 1980 to combat the spread of communism in Latin America. CAUSA seminars trained anti-communist leaders through South and Central America, and even sought to convert communist sympathizers.

Rev. Moon also advocated national security policies for free nations threatened by communism. In 1986, he established the International Security Council, which convened conferences of prominent geopolitical experts and senior officials from the United States, the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China and other nations.

The collapse of the Soviet empire gave Rev. Moon cause to celebrate what he called “an end to the most pernicious worldwide dictatorship in history.” He described the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union as “the results of God’s providence.”

He conveyed that message, but in a spirit of reconciliation, when he met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in April 1990 and with North Korean founder Kim Il-sung in December 1991.

Culture Warrior

Even as he celebrated the end of the Cold War, Rev. Moon focused on new struggles, calling for “a revival of spiritual culture.”

“The societies of free countries today are exhibiting a phenomenon that is every bit as evil as communism … the philosophy of materialistic humanism and … the extreme individualism and selfishness that are the offshoots of this philosophy,” he declared in 1992.

“The young people, whom we normally expect to become the future leaders, are losing touch with their consciences in a flood of immorality, drugs and crime, to such an extent that it is difficult for us to have hope in them as the leaders of the 21st century.”

To turn back that “flood,” Rev. Moon inspired a number of organizations for youths and for adults, including the Women’s Federation for World Peace, the American Family Coalition, the World Culture and Sports Festival, the Little Angels Performing Arts Center, the Il Hwa Chonma Soccer Team in Korea and the Kirov Academy of Ballet in Washington.

In a 1997 speech, Rev. Moon called for “a true youth culture centering on true love” for the “supreme task” of combating “the social trends of moral degradation, including moral decadence and selfindulgence.” The struggle against those forces would, he said, “determine whether humanity will survive or be destroyed.”

He brought his efforts for international peace into academia and science. Beginning with the International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences in 1972, the Professors World Peace Academy in 1973 and the Summit Council for World Peace in 1987, and through the Universal Peace Federation, founded in 2005, Rev. Moon underwrote thousands of conferences and forums as a way for scholars, activists and community leaders to resolve human problems.

He announced his idea of an International Peace Highway connecting Tokyo and London in 1981. In 2005, he proposed a bridge-and-tunnel project from Alaska to Russia.

Rev. Moon received numerous honorary doctorates, including a doctorate of divinity in 1985 from Shaw University.

His interfaith work in America, launched in the 1970s, has grown under the American Clergy Leadership Conference. Thousands of clergy from different religions, known as “ambassadors for peace,” have visited the Middle East to pray together and create a foundation for peace.

In 2007, Rev. Moon held a conference with delegates from 194 countries to pledge to create a “peace U.N.” to emphasize “living for the sake of others,” and in 2011 underwent another international speaking tour, mostly in Europe. He also worked to promote peace between North and South Korea.

“Since [the meeting with Kim Il-sung“] and continuing to this day,” Rev. Moon said in his autobiography, “we have maintained a special relationship with North Korea. … That is the importance of trust.”

Rev. Moon, who was 93 by Korean age calculations, is survived by Mrs. Moon, 11 children, and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Several children preceded him in death.

Rev. In Jin Moon, the Moons’ third daughter and senior pastor of the Unification Church of North America, had been touring the country to speak about her father’s illness when he died.

“Before I left my father’s side, I held his hand as I normally do during the visits, and in my mind, I said, ‘Father, I’m going to take your love and your handshake back to all of the brothers and sisters who are praying for you.’ And it is really the heart of our True Mother as our mother to really thank you individually. I’m sure if she could be with you here today, that is exactly what she would do,” she told members at a Chicago service Aug. 29.

• Former Washington Times staff member Robert Stacy McCain contributed to this report.

Editorial: Rev. Moon, Rest in Peace - His Sense of Mission Remains the Guiding Light of The Washington Times

September 2, 2012
The Washington Times

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon died in Korea on Sunday at the age of 92. He founded The Washington Times in 1982, and through it maintained a strong voice at the highest levels of national and international affairs. Over 30 years, the preeminent challenges of the day have changed, from the Communist threat during the Cold War to the contemporary dangers posed by suffocating debt. Throughout it all, The Washington Times has remained constant in articulating the importance of the values of faith, family, freedom and service to serve as guiding lights to help the country and world navigate the rough waters. These were the guiding lights ignited by Rev. Moon.

Rev. Moon put not only his treasure – but his heart – into this newspaper. Reflecting on this commitment and the central role The Washington Times plays in the nation’s capital, many curious observers asked and some critics speculated on his motivation. All the while, the simple answer was standing there for everyone to see in those four guiding principles. As the summer of 2012 turns into autumn, the newspaper founded by Rev. Moon sits on the cusp of its fourth decade. Its raison d’etre is relevant now more than ever, and this institution stands as a monumental legacy to its founder. Because of the timelessness of this message to the future, and to honor the man responsible for it, this is an opportune time to review the mission and how it developed over the passing days.

The most direct, recent public statement of the paper’s mission is the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s May 21, 2002 speech, “Freedom, Family and Faith: The Role of the Media in the 21st Century.” Rev. Moon said he founded The Washington Times in 1982 “as an expression of [his] love for America and to fulfill the Will of God, who seeks to establish America in His Providence.” At that time, the Post was the only major newspaper in town, which meant that “the capital of the Free World had a limited perspective on news, issues and policy, which ignored the danger of communism and its threat to the entire world at that time.” Rev. Moon believed that “there needed to be a newspaper that had the philosophical and ideological foundation to encourage and enlighten the people and leaders of America.” Thus from the beginning, the paper was intended to be a beacon of enlightenment, not merely a source of information. It was this commitment to the greater calling of freedom – and the shared belief that America is a shining city on a hill – that made The Washington Times President Ronald Reagan’s favorite newspaper.

In its first decade, the mission of The Washington Times was to “provide leadership through thoughtful commentary and objective news and information to make clear the harsh reality of communist tyranny.” At the time, at the dawn of the Reagan era, few analysts expected the Soviet Union to collapse any time soon. Moscow was at the height of its imperial power, with the communist ethic taking over in countries around the world from Eastern Europe and Africa to Asia and Latin America. The conventional wisdom still sought accommodation with the Soviets, and the liberal establishment howled in 1983 when President Reagan described America’s most dangerous adversary as the “evil empire.” Like Reagan, Rev. Moon drew attention to what many in Washington would rather ignore: that the Cold War was at base a moral struggle between two competing, mutually exclusive values systems. The conflict could not be won without acknowledging and reaffirming this fact. This war between two opposing values systems couldn’t be settled through accommodation but had to be won through an all-out showdown. President Reagan drew the line in the sand; The Washington Times helped to deliver the message of freedom.

In 1992, with the collapse of global communism, this first mission to defeat the exponential growth of tyranny was accomplished. Rev. Moon then defined a new mission, in the context of the challenges of the “Culture War,” to “promote ethics and moral values in our society.” In this way, he was acknowledging the most important function of the conservative movement: to combat and counter the most dangerous threats of the day. Society isn’t saved by continuing to fight yesterday’s wars after they are over. A movement must move on and adapt to continue to be relevant and to serve the needs of the times. The 1990s saw a breakdown of family values, the rise of accepted levels of sexual content, profanity and violence in the media, and a general breakdown in public morality. Sexual promiscuity became the norm at alarmingly earlier ages, unborn babies were aborted by the millions and divorce was no longer taboo. If America was to survive, Americans had to decide if they still believed in anything anymore. Thus, the Cold War gave way to the Culture War. As the external threat receded, the enemy within came to the fore. The Washington Times became “a newspaper that helped people understand the importance of strong moral, family values.” As we look around at the collapse of the family today and the onslaught of attacks on traditional morals that come from statehouses across the country and even from the U.S. Capitol itself, it is painfully obvious that this is still a fight that needs to be waged with more intensity than ever.

In the paper’s third and current decade, its mission has been “to emphasize and support spiritual values that are based on the faith of each individual.” After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, discussion of the role of faith in public life took center stage. A misguided belief arose that the Judeo-Christian world had to bow to the sensitivities of fringe fanatics in order to combat radicalism. This was aided by the increasing secularization of American culture and hostility to religion in politics. As recent legislative battles have revealed, the federal government is now actively forcing religious institutions to go against the dictates of their faith or face severe consequences. This includes forcing religious medical facilities to provide abortion, contraceptive and other services against their will. As a recent editorial in this newspaper explained, “This is the latest salvo in an ongoing battle over religious issues such as the banning of cultural manifestations of belief like the 10 Commandments in courtrooms or manger scenes in front of firehouses. What ties the tussles together is [the government’s] mission to force faith out of the public realm.” This is another call to arms. As Rev. Moon stated, “The media must stand at the very forefront in the defense of human dignity and freedom and the crusade against all forms of injustice.”

Facing such a danger against America’s “first freedom” – the freedom of religion and the freedom of individual conscience – the third mission of The Washington Times to defend spiritual values was a natural successor to those of the previous two decades: “Freedom at the world level, moral and ethical values at the family level, and faith at the individual level.” Rev. Moon called these “the three great imperatives for our lives and for the media as well.” He said that “freedom, family values and faith are America’s most fundamental spiritual virtues,” and that “the reason The Washington Times is called ‘America’s newspaper’ is that it leads the way in putting America’s philosophical tradition into practice.” This profound responsibility continues as attacks on religious freedom escalate and threaten to force belief underground. It is more important than ever not to give up the fight. Polls show what those behind this newspaper have always believed: There is hope for the future when there is hope in God, a foundation of faith that has always bolstered Americans during times of crisis. According to Pew, 67 percent of adults, “say it is important for the president to have strong religious beliefs.” That’s just one indication of how deep America’s spiritual roots run.

As a newspaper, what has been going on in “The Fourth Estate” has served as a backdrop to these ongoing ideological, philosophical and existential showdowns. When locking horns over the meaning of life and the purpose of humanity in the world, how a message is communicated is as important as what that statement is. The news media has undergone a revolution of change in recent years, with each period of adaptation raising new questions about the efficacy of the industry. No doubt, in some ways, the medium can become the message. Many of our competitors are fascinated with all the emerging technology of news dissemination, placing primary value on the latest, most fashionable means for distributing content and focusing less on the content itself. But as Rev. Moon said in 2002, “in the midst of this quantity, there needs to be responsibility for the quality of people’s lives.” He said that “while the media can provide all the facts, they also have the responsibility to provide values to prevent confusion and to provide leadership and direction, especially today when the entire world is flooded with news and information.” Technology is only a means to an end, not an end itself. It is important to be at the cutting edge of new technologies, but regardless of how we reach people, if we lose sight of the mission it will be a meaningless exercise. This gets to the ultimate question about why Rev. Moon concentrated so much effort on The Washington Times. “The electronic and print media are the most powerful and influential means of communication the world has ever known,” he explained at the 10th World Media Conference in 1989. “I founded this important organization to promote the spirit of truth.”

Faith. Family. Freedom. Service. The conservative values that have guided The Washington Times also serve as a poignant memorial to the wisdom of the man whose foresight and courage sounded the charge to fight the battles of the day. As Neil Bush, chairman of Points of Light and son of President George H.W. Bush, told The Washington Times, “I got to know [Rev. Moon] as a man whose heart was focused on bringing together people of different faiths to bridge divides. His call on people of faith to serve others is an important legacy.” Rev. Moon may have passed from this Earth, but his values, his legacy, his sense of mission are alive and strong. It is his vision that continues to provide the motivating force for this newspaper, and The Washington Times is committed to continuing the fight for what is right that he laid out. There is plenty of work yet to be done to make the world a better, more humane, more peaceful place for all of God’s sons and daughters. It is with reverence and respect that these pages offer a profound thank you for the support, direction and sense of purpose provided by Rev. Moon. May he rest in peace.

The Washington Times

Moon Was ‘Unifier On The World Stage’

Jennifer Harper
September 2, 2012
The Washington Times

Peace was his focus, peace the lifelong theme of his preaching. Beyond a devotion to love and family, the third persistent theme in the teachings and ministry of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon was the search for ways to promote peace in the world, articulated in often surprising ways by a man who approached the theme through both lofty concept and down-to-earth practical application.

“Rev. Moon has emerged as a great peacemaker and unifier on the world stage,” former Secretary of State Alexander Haig once said. “He is a leading force for interreligious dialogue and understanding between people of all backgrounds, and for global peace and security.”

The commitment was not just rhetorical, as his efforts helped spawn dozens of institutions and programs in his native Korea and around the globe, all charged with a mission of promoting peace in ways big and small, theoretical and practical.

Rev. Moon, who died early Monday in South Korea, got started at a young age.

“Love completely even those who hate you,” he wrote when he was 16. In later years, Rev. Moon described himself as a “peace-loving global citizen,” which became the title of his 2009 autobiography, leaving him with this conclusion:

“My prayer is that every person on earth will be reborn as a peace-loving global citizen, transcending barriers of religion, ideology and race,” Rev. Moon wrote in the last line of his book.

Associates say he was single-minded and strategic about the quest for peace, and went about realizing his vision of peace with methodical precision, founding a spectrum of organizations aimed at specific audiences.

Putting Peace Into Practice

Launched in 2001, the Ambassadors for Peace program was a mainstay of Rev. Moon’s outreach, built around core principles that include “living for the sake of others in service to God and humanity” and a spirit of harmony and cooperation among races, religions, nationalities and cultures. The group now has chapters in more than 160 countries ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

The Universal Peace Federation was also a primary focus of his efforts. Founded seven years ago, it began with a 100-city international tour that took Rev. Moon and his wife, Hak Ja Han, on a search for like-minded folk who believed that authentic peacemaking started on a family level. The federation also stressed a “new future” for the United Nations, complete with a widening of the world body’s peacemaking mission beyond the traditional elite-based realm of politicians, diplomats and generals.

“Peace is not simply the absence of war or a term that applies only to the relationships among nations. Peace is an essential quality that should characterize all relationships,” the group notes in its mission statement.

Many Spinoffs

The effort spawned many spinoffs, often targeting specific groups or regions torn by conflict and division. Among the many organizations that fall under the Universal Peace Federation umbrella: the Marriage and Family Peace Initiative, the Middle East Peace Initiative, the Balkans Peace Initiative, the South Asia Peace Initiative, the Global Peace Council, the Office of Peace and Security, and the Women’s Federation for World Peace International.

The theme continues. Rev. Moon also established the Peace Cup, an international professional soccer competition; the more casual Play Football, Make Peace program; and a Professors World Peace Academy for college-level academics.

Among other entities are a Global Peace Festival, a Global Peace Convention, a World Interfaith Harmony Week, iPeace TV, Universal Peace TV, the Universal Artists Association for World Peace and the International Peace Highway.

Rev. Moon envisioned a roadway linking multiple countries via asphalt, bridges, tunnels — framing the project as a modern-day Silk Road that would require the cooperation of many nations and thus generate cross-border understanding in difficult times.

“There will be no roadblocks. The entire world will be interconnected,” he reasoned.

The theme of peace and peacemaking remained a central theme of his work and thought to the end of his life.

Family As The Foundation

In 2011, the reverend linked his themes of peace and family explicitly in a conference in Abuja, Nigeria, as part of the Universal Peace Federation “Founder’s Peace Tour,” which attracted some 3,000 people to a country facing economic woes and religious tensions between its Muslim and Christian populations.

“The tradition of peace that God wants to see in Africa must be firmly established in the family,” Rev. Moon told the gathering. “Every family must establish a pure tradition. Then, even if the family’s fortunes go up and down, even as far as the sun falling below the horizon, eventually the light will return.”

In July, just weeks before he fell ill, Rev. Moon established a leadership organization for women meant to reintroduce a feminine perspective in peacemaking at the United Nations. It would signal “dramatic change,” Thomas G. Walsh, president of the Universal Peace Federation, told a crowd of 12,000 who gathered in Korea to celebrate the idea.

“The leaders who disregard or can’t look straight to the new global reality will be swept away by the changes surging like a tsunami,” Rev. Moon told his enthusiastic audience. “I believe that it is time now to go forward, daring to receive new opportunities and values.”

Sun Myung Moon Motivated To Bring End To Communism

Ben Wolfgang
September 2, 2012
The Washington Times

The legacy of the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon will forever be tied to the fight to defeat communism, a cause to which he devoted much of his life’s work and, in the process, earned a place in history as a contributor to the end of the Cold War.

The fall of the Soviet Union was to Rev. Moon, who passed away early Monday in South Korea, much more than a changing of the guard in international politics. To him, it represented a landmark victory in a struggle between good and evil.

“Finally, in 1989, the Berlin Wall was torn down and on Christmas Eve 1991, the Soviet empire collapsed after having held the world in fear for 74 years. I thank God that the free world prevailed in this historic struggle, which truly was an ideological battle over acknowledging God or not,” he said in 2002, speaking at a banquet celebrating the 20th anniversary of The Washington Times, which he founded.

“It is the principle that God works his will on Earth through human beings. I do not have the slightest doubt that God used The Washington Times to help bring an end to the most pernicious worldwide dictatorship in history and gave freedom to tens of millions of people,” he said.

But Rev. Moon’s efforts went far beyond decrying the Soviet Union and its communist ideology. While he never wavered in his vehement opposition to communism’s disregard for religion, Rev. Moon met with communist leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev in an attempt to build relationships with people with whom he disagreed.

His approach “sought peace and reconciliation and was respectful of the many accomplishments of the Soviet Union,” author Thomas J. Ward wrote in a 2008 essay. Mr. Ward also penned the book “March to Moscow: The Role of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon in the Collapse of Communism.”

“Rev. Moon’s constructive outreach to the communist world bore fruit in 1990 when he met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and began to develop projects in collaboration with the Soviet government,” Mr. Ward wrote. “This included bringing hundreds of legislators to the United States to dialogue with their political peers. … It also brought thousands of Soviet young people to the United States to learn about American culture and its underpinnings.”

During his trip to the Soviet Union, he told the Moscow News that his ultimate goal was to end tensions dividing humanity by promoting “dialogue between Muslims and Jews, between blacks and whites in South Africa and between Marxists and Christians,” The Washington Times reported at the time.

Government leaders who stood firm against the Soviet empire recognized the contributions made by Rev. Moon.

As president, Ronald Reagan often praised Rev. Moon’s work and that of The Times, which, especially in the 1980s, focused extensively on communism and its attempted expansion around the globe.

Reagan’s counterpart in the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, also has extolled Rev. Moon’s efforts to speed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“It was not easy for Dr. Moon when he started The Washington Times,” she said in 2007 as the paper celebrated its 25th anniversary. “I mean the firm standing of the newspaper against Soviet communism and the support he gave to President Reagan and me for ending the Cold War.”

In 1991, Rev. Moon returned to North Korea, the land of his birthplace before the division of Korea, for a meeting with the nation’s communist leader, Kim Il-sung.

The fact that the North Korean government had imprisoned Rev. Moon for disturbing society in 1948 didn’t dissuade his return, and North Korea’s state media reported that the two men exchanged “warm conversation overflowing with the love of compatriots.”

Rev. Moon used the opportunity to express his unwavering desire to see the Korean Peninsula reunited.

“I am ready to lay down my life for national reunification,” he said during the trip, according to accounts by The Times.

Mr. Kim also recognized the growing influence Rev. Moon wielded in the U.S.

During the meeting, Mr. Kim asked Rev. Moon to arrange a meeting with President George H.W. Bush, though the desired meeting never took place.

Peace Cup Founder Sun Myung Moon Was Avid Sports Fan, Soccer Lover

John Haydon
September 2, 2012
The Washington Times

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who passed away early Monday in South Korea, was an avid sports fan who sponsored fishing tournaments, founded South Korea’s most successful soccer club and created an international soccer event that attracted such famous clubs as Spain’s Real Madrid, Tottenham Hotspur of England, and the Los Angeles Galaxy.

Rev. Moon loved to fish, and spent countless hours fishing for salmon in Alaska, for tuna in Gloucester, Mass., and recently for bass in Lake Mead, Nev.

But his greatest sports passion was soccer, a sport that he played as a young man, and one in which he later invested substantial resources, working with Brazilian star Pele to create the Peace Cup, which has featured some of the world’s biggest and most prestigious clubs.

In fact, Rev. Moon’s last public appearance was in July at the Peace Cup in Suwon, South Korea, where he awarded the championship trophy to German club Hamburg, a former European champion.

In 1989, Rev. Moon founded Ilhwa Chunma FC soccer team in Seoul, which was sponsored by the Ilhwa Ginseng Tea company, and nicknamed Chunma — the Unicorns. The club was based in a number of cities and ultimately settled in 2001 in Seongnam, a town one hour south of Seoul.

At first, the mayor of Seongnam wanted to expel the team because of the club’s affiliation with Rev. Moon's Unification Church. The mayor was running for re-election in the heavily Protestant town and used the attack on the team as part of his platform.

“It was a mixture of bigotry and political opportunism,” said Eoghan Sweeney, soccer writer for the Korea Times.

Fans demonstrated against the mayor by lying down in front of his car. The mayor relented, and Seongnam Ilhwa went on to win four Korean league titles, the Korean Cup knockout tournament and the Asian Champions League title in 2010, making it Korea’s most successful team.

It is not unusual for religious groups to run soccer teams in Korea. One of the league’s founding clubs was the Christian team Hallelujah FC.

Rev. Moon also established two soccer teams in Brazil: Atletico Sorocaba and CENE.

In 2003, Rev. Moon met with Pele in New York and founded the Peace Cup, which became a sought-after preseason tournament on the soccer calendar.

Pele called soccer “the beautiful game.” Rev. Moon preferred to call it the “game of peace” and said, “Through soccer, you can unite all peoples.”

In 2009, Real Madrid, along with its prized new asset Cristiano Ronaldo, competed in the fourth edition of the tournament in Spain, which featured four teams that have been European champions. That tournament also involved Italy’s Juventus, FC Porto of Portugal, Spanish side Sevilla FC and French club Olympique Lyon, but the $2.4 million prize went to English club Aston Villa.

“When you mention the word ‘peace,’ when you are trying to bring peace in the world, I will always be there,” Pele said in 2003 on why he worked with Rev. Moon.

At the conclusion of the 2005 tournament, Rev. Moon donated $1 million to promote youth soccer in the developing world. His Play Soccer, Make Peace youth program held events in 35 countries, including the troubled Gaza Strip.

After the success of the men’s Peace Cup, Rev. Moon in 2006 founded the Peace Queen Cup, which was won by the world-renowned U.S. women’s team starring Abby Wambach and Kristine Lilly.

A North Korean women’s team was invited, but declined because of political circumstances. The North Koreans sent a rare letter to Rev. Moon, whose birthplace is in North Korea and who had met with the country’s founder, Kim Il-sung. In the letter, the North Koreans expressed regret about the tournament but commended the efforts of the program to bring peace on the divided peninsula

Report: Rev. Moon's Health Condition Worsens

Cheryl Wetzstein
August 31, 2012
The Washington Times

Unification Church head and Washington Times founder the Rev. Sun Myung Moon has been moved to a private complex in Korea where he can be surrounded by family as his health has taken a turn for the worse, a Unification Church leader said. The 92-year-old evangelist has been in intensive-care treatment for pneumonia at Seoul St. Mary's Hospital since Aug. 13.

"For a while, it appeared that [Rev. Moon's] condition was improving; however, during the last few days, the doctors reported that he has entered an irreversible stage of his condition," Joon Ho Seuk, international vice president of the Unification Church, said in an Aug. 28 memo to members that was made public Friday in Seoul.

"In reality, he is currently sustaining his life with the assistance of various machines" and "we have reached the point at which this stark reality cannot be reversed," Mr. Seuk wrote.

The religious leader's illness has led to loss of kidney function and deterioration in the liver function, Mr. Seuk wrote. "He can no longer sustain his life without the supply of oxygen artificially produced by a machine."

This week, Rev. Moon's wife, Hak Ja Han Moon, and several of the couple's children and church elders made the decision to transfer Rev. Moon to Cheongshim International Medical Center, a hospital in the Chung Pyung church complex, according to church officials.

Rev. Moon's primary doctors, a respiratory specialist and veteran nurses will be on hand to care for him around the clock, as well as Mrs. Moon and other members of his family, the statement said, and specialist has been brought in from Japan to assist in the treatment.

Rev. Moon, one of the most recognized Koreans in the world, founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, commonly known as the Unification Church, in 1954, and founded The Washington Times in 1982.

Church officials say the Unification Church now has a presence in over 200 countries and millions of followers worldwide. Among the church's other interests are hospitals, schools and universities, a newspaper in South Korea, Manhattan's New Yorker Hotel, and properties in North Korea, where the Reverend Moon was born.

Rev. Moon's last public appearance came in July, when he participated in the ceremonies opening and closing the Peace Cup soccer tournament in South Korea sponsored by the Unification Church.