30,000 Japanese Invited to Unification Church’s Sun Myung Moon’s Funeral

Radhika Seth
September 4, 2012

According to Sun Myung Moon’s close aide Bo Hi Pak, around 30,000 people from Japan have been invited to attend the funeral of their beloved ‘messiah’ and Unification Church leader. Merely hours after his death was announced, the Unification Church went into full gear with preparations for a massive funeral. Sun Myung Moon’s funeral will be held on 15th September at the mountain-ringed headquarters in Gapyeong, South Korea, east of Seoul.

Workers have been moved into action for paving a one-kilometer, two-lane road leading to the complex. With expectations of a huge turnout, the organizers wish to ensure complete competence. They are preparing a special altar inside a large gymnasium at the centre of the complex and general public will be allowed to offer their prayers and respects from Thursday onwards.

The Unification Church has around three million followers from across the globe however recent numbers put them at 70,000 at the most. Mourners at the movement’s main church in Seoul have quite a number of followers praying and reading a special edition of the church-affiliated newspaper regarding their leader’s death. Stories like the following have emerged after the leader’s death: Japanese follower Yamanaka Katsuyo married a South Korean man at a mass wedding in Seoul in 1988, after Moon chose her groom for her. She claims that the marriage has been bliss and outlasted many love marriages.

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.”

Unification Church Founder Sun Myung Moon in Critical Condition

Stoyan Zaimov
August 31, 2012
Christian Post Reporter

South Korean evangelist Reverend Moon Sun-myung and his wife Han Hak-ja (R) bless newlyweds during a mass wedding ceremony at Sun Moon University in Asan, south of Seoul October 14, 2009.

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon of South Korea's Unification Church has been moved to a private hospital near his home after officials revealed his condition has grown worse.

Moon previously had been visiting a specialist in Japan to treat his pneumonia, but the 92-year-old multibillion-dollar media and self-professed messiah will need further care back in South Korea.

"Our prayers will hopefully work better in Gapyeong," commented church spokesman Ahn Ho-yeol as reported by The Associated Press. Ahn noted that Moon had developed further complications involving his kidney and liver.

"Seoul St. Mary's Hospital notified us that, as Rev. Moon's hospitalization period prolongs, complications arise and there is no way to improve his condition with modern medical technology," a statement from the church added.

The Washington Times, which Moon founded, notes that for a while, Moon's condition seemed to be improving, and it was only during the last few days that doctors said that the controversial church leader had entered "an irreversible stage of his condition."

Joon Ho Seuk, international vice president of the Unification Church wrote: "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."

The Unification Church is considered controversial in mainstream Christian circles because Moon declares himself to be a messiah called by Jesus at the age of 15 to fulfill the Son of God's unfinished work on earth.

A Christian Post report on religious cults details the ways in which Moon's denomination differs from mainstream Christianity, such as his belief that people need to be married in order to enter heaven.

Moon's last public appearance in South Korea came in July, when he attended the opening and closing ceremonies of the Peace Cup soccer tournament, which was won by German club Hamburger SV and sponsored by the Unification Church.

The church was founded in 1954 by Moon, but has grown to attract between five to seven million members worldwide and has a presence in over 200 countries.

Illness of Unification Church's Founder Sun Myung Moon 'Irreversible'

Agence France-Presse
August 31, 2012

The illness of Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon is "irreversible", the church said Friday, after he was hospitalised with complications from pneumonia more than two weeks ago.

Moon, 92, has critical organ failure and is on life support, it said in a statement.

Spokesman Ahn Ho-Yeol told AFP that Moon would be transferred from Seoul's St Mary's Hospital later Friday to a medical centre at the church's estate east of the capital.

Treating him on "holy ground" would have "greater providential significance", the church's International Vice-President Joon Ho Seuk said in a statement.

Seuk said that Moon's condition had appeared to be improving for a while, but in the past few days his doctors reported he had entered "an irreversible stage of his condition".

Moon's "kidneys have ceased to function, and the function of his liver is deteriorating rapidly", he said. "He can no longer sustain his life without the supply of oxygen artificially produced by a machine.

"In these circumstances, the officials at Seoul St. Mary's Hospital informed us that 'there is no longer any way to improve True Father's condition through modern medical technology'," said Seuk.

The phrase "True Father" refers to Moon, who the church says is "the one and only messiah in human history".

"The seven billion people of this world should stay up all night in prayer wishing for the recovery of True Father, who is so precious and dear to all of us, as he fights against his illness," Seuk said.

The Unification Church, set up by Moon in Seoul in 1954, is one of the world's most controversial religious organisations, and its devotees are often dubbed "Moonies" after the founder.

It is widely known for conducting mass weddings among followers involving thousands of couples. It says it evangelises in some 200 countries and according to another spokesman has some three million followers worldwide.

The church has a vast business empire, including The Washington Times newspaper, Manhattan's New Yorker Hotel and interests in North Korea, where Moon was born. He visited the country in 1991 to meet then-president Kim Il-Sung.

Unification Church Founder Sun Myung Moon's Condition Worsens

The Associated Press
August 30, 2012

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - The Unification Church says the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's condition has worsened and he will be moved to a church-owned hospital near his home.

Moon is a self-proclaimed messiah whose church runs a worldwide multibillion-dollar religious and business empire that includes the hospital.

Officials said Friday that the church founder has developed new complications since being hospitalized for pneumonia at Seoul St. Mary's Hospital earlier this month. Officials say doctors in Seoul say they cannot cure him. The complications involve Moon's kidney and liver but officials didn't elaborate further.

The church plans to move the unconscious Moon later Friday to Cheongshim Hospital in a town northeast of Seoul.

The church says followers will pray over Moon and he'll be given expert medical treatment.

Moon is 92.

True Father’s Providential Course of Fighting His Illness

To : Regional Presidents, National Messiahs, National Leaders
From : Unification Church World Mission Headquarters
Date : 7.13 by the Heavenly Calendar (August 30, 2012)
Re. : Message from the International Vice-President

May God and True Parents’ blessings and love be with all regions, mission nations and providential organizations.

Below is a message from Dr. Joon Ho Seuk, the International Vice-President. Please share this with your members in the regions and mission nations.

True Father’s providential course of fighting his illness

Beloved members throughout the world! Let us eternally praise and congratulate Heaven’s glory and True Parents’ victory. True Parents appeared for the first and last time in human history and governs as the True Parents for eternity. They are our messiah, savior and king of peace.

Brothers and sisters,
True Father has been in an intense fight with an illness since August 3, 2012. After returning from the United States on July 16, he had a persistent cough stemming from a serious cold. Yet without concerning himself with his ailment, True Father visited the mission field, personally leading and directing providence beginning with early morning hoondokhae each day. In the course of pushing himself beyond his limits without attending to his physical body, True Father fell ill with pneumonia.

True Father is in his advanced years, and is 93 years old by Korean counting. Despite his aging body, True Father drove his body hard without evening resting for a single day. How could his physical body that reached its limits not be vulnerable to such illness? True Father is unwavering with his principles of living life in a way so that he would never need to make use of the services of a hospital. This has been his guiding principle, thus he was not overly eager to go to the hospital this time. However, he finally resolved to go after True Mother’s fervent appeal. Beginning with a house call by Dr. Hoo Geun Chun, the Director of the Cancer Institute of Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital, whom True Father trusted and requested treatment since his time in the United States, True Father was finally admitted into the Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital.

In this way True Father was admitted into the St. Mary’s Hospital on August 3. For the next ten days he received all the necessary inspections including X-rays, MRI and other examinations. In the end, it was determined that he had pneumonia. His condition was quite serious, and it was discovered that there was water in his lungs due to blood poisoning and respiratory failure. The doctor warned that True Father had to be kept ‘absolutely at rest.’ However, True Father strongly instructed that he had to go to Cheon Jeong Gung and so on August 12, he returned to Cheon Jeong Gung. After returning, he went around each and every place of Cheon Jeong Gung, caressing the things there as if he were saying goodbye. True Father also gave a serious prayer with True Mother as if it were his last prayer. True Father was seen putting things in their place and saying “I have completed everything!” four times during the day. During this time True Father was saying “thank you” to True Mother whenever he had the chance while clasping her hand.

In this way, True Father spent the entire night without any sleep at Cheon Jeong Gung at times in prayer and at times giving guidance. On August 13 the next day, he said that he wanted to take a car to go around the Cheongpyeong complex. The staff drove him to the front of the Cheongshim Middle and High School. Yet, his condition remained serious; an ordinary person in his state would not have even been able to stand up. The mental strength he showed that day was beyond imagination. However, in the afternoon, True Father’s strength started to decline rapidly. True Mother was the first to sense this change. In tears, True Mother begged Father to go to the hospital with her. In ordinary times, Father would have flatly refused but on this day he willingly accepted True Mother’s advice saying “Yes, mother. Thank you” and headed for the Cheongshim International Medical Center.

During the few hours that True Father stayed at the Cheongshim International Medical Center while undergoing treatment, his conditioned worsened. Seeing True Father cough severely and struggling in pain, True Mother immediately obtained True Father’s approval and instructed to have him transferred to the Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital, a general hospital in Seoul. Given the urgency of the circumstances, they seated True Father in the SUV that he usually rode, and with two nurses from the Cheongshim Hospital at his side and two tanks of oxygen, they continued to supply True Father with oxygen on the way. What usually was an hour’s drive, must have felt like a thousand years in a dreadful and desperate battle. With twenty minutes left to the Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital, True Father’s respiration became extremely rough and it seemed that he could not hold out anymore. At that point, everybody in the car, from the driver and to the nurses, felt that the world was about to end. Overcome with emotion, they sped with their life and were able to safely bring True Father to the hospital.

True Father was admitted into room 207 at the Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital, and immediately began receiving emergency treatment. Though it was nighttime, there were five to six doctors and seven to eight nurses who were paged at short notice, and all types of equipment for emergency treatment were brought in.

It was an hour-long battle reminiscent of a war field. We were praying and beseeching to heaven; we were trembling in fear and anxiety, unable to shed tears or even breathe easily even when we closed our eyes. Finally, the emergency measures came to an end, and it was only after midnight that True Father could be moved to the intensive care unit on the fifth floor. It was the longest day of my life. It was way past one in the morning when Dr. Chun emerged from the intensive care unit after completing the setup. He said “If you were even thirty minutes later in bringing Father from the Cheongshim Hospital to this hospital, something serious might have happened today,” expressing his amazement in True Mother’s wise and prompt decision and action.

This is how True Father began his fight against his illness in the intensive care unit. Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital is one of the five largest hospitals in the Republic of Korea. The medical technology of Korea is not in any way inferior to that of any other nation of the world. The top medical team and most advanced medical care in the world were mobilized and they are investing themselves completely for True Father’s recovery, which I am confirming each day. I also have unending appreciation to Dr. Chun, the main doctor, for his dedication and hard work. True Father’s condition is being monitored without error twenty-four hours a day. All the necessary equipment and injections for treatment are being flawlessly employed.

Dear beloved members!
According to the principle of creation, human beings are born with a physical body, and everyone without exception will conclude their earthly life and move on to the spirit world which is the world of eternal life. Through True Father’s teachings, we are more than aware of this principle. At the same time, it is what makes us human that prevents us from neglecting or leaving an ill person unattended. It is the duty and proper way of being human to do our best in taking care of our parents, family members, or relatives around us if they fall ill and then fight their illness. This is because we live in the same era and environment as they live, and we build all manner of bonds and relationships as we go about our earthly life.

If that is so, what do you think True Mother and True Children are going through as they watch over and nurse True Father who is battling his illness each day? It is not that they do not understand the principle that human beings with physical bodies go through three stages of life. Indeed with True Mother, we are grasping Heaven and fervently praying for a miracle. True Father is the one and only messiah in human history. He is the one and only savior who will be recorded and attended to eternally as the True Parent. No couple other than the True Parents would ever become the True Parents of Humankind. The seven billion people of this world should stay up a ll night in prayer wishing for the recovery of True Father, who is so precious and dear to all of us, as he fights against his illness in the intensive care unit. We should appeal to Heaven for True Father to remain with us for at least another day before he departs if not for the sake of the pitiable souls on earth.

Beloved brothers and sisters!
However, it seems that Heaven’s providence does not always move according to human will. For a while it appeared that True Father’s condition was improving; however, during the last few days, the doctors reported that he has entered an irreversible stage of his condition. With a grieved and sorrowful heart, True Mother and the rest of us who looked after True Father at the hospital, conferred with the doctors at the Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital and the Seoul National University Hospital.

However, like a bolt of lightning from a blue sky, we unexpectedly received the following warning. The top doctors in the field of respiratory systems at the Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital and Seoul National University Hospital reached the conclusion that given the level of modern medical practice, they could no longer promise the recovery of True Father’s pulmonary function. I wept bitterly in the face of this shocking reality that the probability of True Father recovering his pulmonary function was virtually nonexistent. This was August 28. Seeing True Mother enter her room alone and endlessly crying, my heart was torn and I wailed in sorrow. In that we have reached the point at which this stark reality cannot be reversed, we have to take steps towards the next stage in providence.

In accordance with True Mother’s instructions, we held an emergency meeting in the afternoon of August 28. A solemn meeting was held with True Mother and eight participants—Rev. Young Hwi Kim, Dr. Bo Hi Pak, Rev. Jae Seok Lee, Dr. Joon Ho Seuk, Hoon-Mo Nim, Rev. Hyo Yul Kim, and Kook Jin Nim and Hyung Jin Nim representing the True Family. In light of the serious reality that we faced, all of us seriously contemplated and discussed what we could do to have True Father remain on the earth a little bit more and how to keep him comfortable before his eventual departure. True Mother’s will was stronger than ever. She stated “No matter what happens, we must protect True Father’s sacred body.”

Medically speaking, there is no mistake that the intensive care unit of a general hospital is strictly protected and under tight management. However, the spiritual atmosphere and environment was very inadequate and unclean. Several people die each day and during visiting hours, the ward is bustling with people like a stop at a train station. Being in a critical condition, True Father’s level of immunity had fallen to being close to zero. He is placed in a situation where there is no knowing when a stray bacteria or virus could invade True Father’s system. It is also deeply regrettable that True Father’s condition requires that he be kept ‘absolutely at rest.’ Thus, True Mother and the True Children were limited to two visits a day, allowing for only two people to enter for twenty minutes at a time. As a result, there were even some members of the True Family who were unable to see True Father for some days at a time.

In these unfortunate circumstances, the decision that was reached by True Mother and all the participants of the emergency meeting was to transfer True Father from the intensive care unit at the St. Mary’s Hospital to a special room (reserved for True Parents’ exclusive use) at the Cheongshim International Medical Center in Cheongpyeong where he can continue to receive treatment. All the medical equipment and treatment that True Father received at the intensive care unit at St. Mary’s Hospital will be transferred as well so that True Father’s treatment can continue uninterrupted. The process of transferring True Father from the Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital to the Cheongshim International Medical Center will be carried out under the responsibility of Dr. Chun, Father’s main doctor, and Dr. Kim who is the supervising doctor of patients with respiratory disorders at the intensive care unit of the St. Mary’s Hospital. Both doctors will be with True Father in the ambulance that will take True Father to the Cheongshim International Medical Center. These doctors will continue to visit True Father frequently and do their utmost for True Father’s treatment. Furthermore, we invited a doctor from Japan who specializes in dealing with the respiratory systems to be exclusively responsible for watching over True Father and overseeing his treatment twenty-four hours a day. The veteran nurses who were placed in exclusive charge over True Father at the intensive care unit at St. Mary’s Hospital will also accompany True Father when he is relocated to the Cheongshim Hospital and will remain there to nurse him. An intensive care unit will be fully prepared, placing True Father in a spacious room without having to share it with other patients. There he will be under the care of True Mother and other members of the True Family twenty-four hours a day. It is my wish that a miracle from Heaven occurs in relation to True Father’s condition amid the prayers and holy songs of our many members.

Although True Father is in the intensive care unit at a general hospital, in reality he is currently sustaining his life with the assistance of various machines. More than fifteen days have passed since he was admitted into an intensive care unit for pneumonia. Symptoms of complications have continued to arise. True Father’s kidneys have ceased to function, and the function of his liver is deteriorating rapidly. Furthermore, True Father’s circulation has reached the point where he can no longer sustain his life without the supply of oxygen artificially produced by a machine. In these circumstances, the officials at Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital informed us that “There is no longer any way to improve True Father’s condition through modern medical technology.” Thus, True Mother, the True Children and all those who participated in the emergency meeting, reached the conclusion that having True Father receive professional treatment at the Cheongshim International Medical Center established by True Parents within the estate of Cheongpyeong, a location designated as a holy ground for all people, would have greater providential significance. Soon True Father will be transferred, while receiving care by the doctors from the Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital, to the Cheongpyeong area where True Parents’ Cheon Jeong Palace is located.

Beloved brothers and sisters!
We should ask Heaven for a miracle through our continuous prayers and jeongseong. Let us pray with a fervent heart for True Father to completely restore his health by Foundation Day so that he can personally preside and oversee the historic and providential Foundation Day celebrations. I believe that miracles will occur if our prayers and jeongseong reach Heaven.

Dr. Joon Ho Seuk
International Vice-President
Unification Church
President of the Korean Church

Unification Church says Ailing Founder Sun Myung Moon Getting Better

The Korea Herald
August 21, 2012

The condition of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the Unification Church founder, has improved five days after he was admitted to a Seoul hospital with complications from pneumonia, the church's current leader said in his latest sermon.

The 92-year-old is in the intensive care unit of Seoul St. Mary's Hospital in southern Seoul where he was admitted last Tuesday.

Rev. Hyung Jin Moon, the head of the church and the youngest of Moon's seven sons, gave the information and a detailed description of his conditions while delivering his latest Sunday sermon at the main church building in Seoul.

The church posted a video of the sermon on the church's Web site on Monday.

"Only two days ago, the hospital had to operate an oxygenator at full capacity. But yesterday, oxygen was being provided sufficiently even though the operation rate was lowered to 30 percent," he said.

"We feel hope because he began to take thin rice gruel through a nose tube and started having bowel movements two days ago."

Despite the improvement, he said the founder is still gravely ill with 13 medical machines being connected to his body.

"Please keep praying for him as things may change at a moment, and he is an old man," he added.

A refugee from North Korea, Senior Moon founded the Unification Church in 1954, one year after the Korean War ended.

The church, officially called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, now claims some 3 million followers in 194 countries around the world.

It gained fame for conducting mass weddings among followers with one wedding ceremony held at Seoul's Jamsil Stadium in 1992 involving 30,000 couples.

Despite various controversies, the church has built a vast business empire all around the world, including 10 corporations in South Korea alone.

The church also has news media outlets such as the Segye Times of South Korea, The Washington Times and the UPI news agency in the U.S. under its wing. (Yonhap News)

Unification Church Founder in Critical Condition

AFP
August 16, 2012

SEOUL (AFP) - The founder of the controversial Unification Church is in a South Korean hospital in critical condition due to complications from pneumonia, his spokesman said on Thursday.

Sun Myung Moon, 92, was admitted to Seoul's St Mary's Hospital on Tuesday and has been unconscious since then, Ahn Ho-Yeol told AFP, describing his condition as very critical.

"He is on life support and cannot communicate... doctors say the next three days will be the critical period," Ahn said. Close family members, including Moon's son and successor as church leader Hyung Jin Moon, were at his bedside.

The church's website posted a message urging the faithful to hold special prayers from Thursday until September 24 for the recovery of "the true father", including a three-day fast beginning Friday.

The Unification Church -- founded in Seoul in 1954 and officially called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification -- is one of the world's most controversial religious organisations.

Its devotees are often dubbed "Moonies" after the founder and it is widely known for conducting mass weddings among followers involving thousands of couples.

It says it evangelises in some 200 countries and according to another spokesman has some three million followers worldwide.

The church's vast business empire includes The Washington Times newspaper and the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan.

Hyung Jin Moon, the youngest of Moon's seven sons, succeeded his father as the church's most senior leader in 2008 at the age of 28.

Sun Myung Moon, who was born in North Korea, visited the North in 1991 to meet its then-president Kim Il-Sung.

Unification Church Founder in 'Critical' Condition: Hospital Official

Yonhap News
Agency August 15, 2012

SEOUL, Aug. 15 (Yonhap) -- Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, is gravely ill with respiratory problems and put under intensive care, a hospital official said Wednesday.

Moon, 92, was admitted to the respiratory intensive care unit at Seoul St. Mary's Hospital on Monday, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Unification Church Founder Rev. Moon in Critical Condition

Song Sang-ho
August 15, 2012

Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the controversial Unification Church, is in critical condition with breathing problems, doctors said Wednesday.

He was taken into intensive care at the Catholic University’s St. Mary’s Hospital in Seoul on Monday.

“I understand that he is in critical condition after being admitted to the pulmonology division at the hospital,” said the official, declining to be named.

Moon founded the Unification Church in Korea in 1952 and has built it into a worldwide religious organization claiming up to 7 million believers.

Sun Myung Moon

It is famed for mass weddings, which it has trumpeted as “dedicated to the creation of a peaceful world beyond borders and races.”

Moon had picked spouses and presided over the ceremonies. The church extols Moon as the “True Parent of Mankind” and “the King of all Kings.”

Born in Jeongju, North Pyeongan Province in North Korea in 1920, Moon has carried out activities for the reunification of Korea and democracy and freedom across the world.

Moon is also a conservative media mogul. His church runs the U.S.-based Washington Times and the Segye Times in Korea.

This Rally is a Good Opportunity for the Unification Church to Make a New Start

Sun Myung Moon
February 6, 2012
Hoon Dok Hae
Cheon Hwa Gung, Las Vegas on 1. 15 by the H.C.

Note: These notes are taken from a Peace TV video clip. They cannot be published as definitive texts and should never be used in the future as an "official" publication of True Father's words. However, they do provide a good idea of the "spirit" of the message. -- Rev. Katsumi Kambashi

Mrs. McDevitt read Father's speech titled "True Path of Life" from his speech book # 41.

Rev. Yang made a report on the performance of the Little Angels:

"They will arrive in LA today (Feb. 6), and take a bus for 8 hours to get to Cedar city, Utah where they will hold the performance on Feb. 8. The best day for the next performance is the 11th, which is Saturday. It was amazing that although all the other major hotels in Las Vegas had been sold out, Caesars Palace was available for only that day. So we will have the performance at that hotel on the 11th.

Yesterday, I conveyed Father's direction to Dr. Pak, and he changed the space from 1,200 seats to 3,000 at the hotel accordingly. Rationally speaking, it is very difficult to change the size of an audience a couple of days prior to the performance day, but I strongly believe that nothing is impossible. True Parents are with us and this is the rally that heaven and earth are focused on, so I am determined to bring a great victory through this opportunity.

At the rally, we are planning to give 'peace medals' for 15 veterans who have been carefully selected through Dr. Pak and the committee. We will also present a gift for True Parents

We will provide a DVD which contains the video clips of the life of True Father and True Mother (one hour each in Korean, Japanese, and English, which was shown at the celebration of True Parents' Birth) to give to all the participants after the event."

Father said,

"This rally will be a good opportunity for the Unification church to make a new start inside and outside," and asked all the participants to make the utmost efforts for the rally in Las Vegas.

Hyung Jin Nim performed martial arts in front of True Parents.

During his performance, Hyung Jin Nim said,

"Martial arts is the most rapidly growing sport in the world."

"Father said that world peace must be promoted through soccer and martial arts."

"Martial arts is a method that makes men peaceful by releasing their energy."

"I have been in public mission for the past three years and have never showed my performance on purpose, because I thought the young people might misunderstand it just thinking 'It's cool!.' Rather, I have been focused on educating how to find True Parents as 'my Messiahs and parents,' and the unification of mind and body.

But this time when I was with True Father at Geomundo, Father told me to do it and he liked it. Then he told me to continue to do it. (Laughter) So I do it with this explanation. The martial art itself is not the best way to fight.

True Father is the best performer who has subjugated Satan, and that's why I think we must be more focused on internal training. How to win without physical fight is more important. Physical strength will be deteriorating without fail and so we need to be more focused on obtaining the internal wisdom, mind-training and loving True Parents. But I personally love it and it is a big part of my life. So actually (by telling me to do the performance) Father liberated me in a sense. I tried to hide my feeling but Father said, "시범하라, 이 자식아!" (A leader, this bastard!) (Laughter). So, though I am still a little bit worried about the young people who see my performance, I am happy that Father liberated me on this."