Sun Myung Moon
May 15, 1987
Inauguration of the Citizens Federation for the Unification of North and South Korea Little Angels Performing Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
Photo date and location unknown
My fellow citizens, we are gathered here today to mark the founding of the Citizens Federation for the Unification of North and South Korea. The reunification of our divided country has been our longcherished hope and desire.
As Koreans, we are proud of our rich cultural heritage, exemplified by our unique language and its system of writing, our elaborate arts, and our long history extending more than five thousand years. Korea is noted for its exceptional historical continuity and ethnic homogeneity. Koreans have long inhabited this beautiful land in peace-loving communities. From the beginning, we knew that we were destined to live in unity, not in separation.
Despite this destiny, we now have experienced 42 years during which our people and our land have been divided. Our joy and gratitude at the time of our liberation in 1945 did not last long, as we fell into the tragic separation between North and South. How long will this national tragedy continue? Although the prospects for peace appear dim, does this mean we have to give up our hope for national reunification?
My fellow citizens, I declare with my full conviction that the time for the unification of our homeland is at hand. We are gathered here today to facilitate its coming through the founding of the Citizens Federation for the Unification of North and South Korea.
Think for a moment how Korea was able to obtain its liberation in 1945. There were two prominent factors: One was the sacrifice and dedication of those who gave their lives for the restoration of our independence; the other was the global situation with the defeat of Japan at the conclusion of World War II.
The unity of the homeland today must come in the same way. The international communist movement of the past seventy years is now in its final phase. The decline of the Soviet Union and the countries under its domination is evident for all to see. They can no longer conceal their record of failure and deception. The fall of communism will be linked, without a doubt, to the fall of Kim Il Sung. This will be a factor that will facilitate the unity of our homeland.
Under the circumstances, it is most appropriate that we ignite the flame of a movement for unification, and elevate this movement by our faith in Heaven. To do this, we need to strengthen our desire for reunification. It is said, "Where there is a will, there is a way." It is also said, "God helps those who help themselves." Without a will and a desire for unification that is strong enough to move the heaven and earth of the North, how can we possibly expect unification? This is the very reason we are organizing the Citizens Federation for the Unification of North and South Korea today.
God or no God, the fundamental question
The thirty-eighth parallel not only marks the physical division of a people related by blood, it also designates a boundary between conflicting ideologies and value perspectives. It is because of this difference that, despite the fact that we all are descended from the same ancestral root, we fought against each other during the Korean War. This difference of values became an impenetrable wall that separated the brothers and sisters and severed the relationship between parents and children.
What is the basic difference between these conflicting value perspectives? It is faith in God versus the denial of God. The value perspectives that confront each other are theism and atheism.
The fundamental tenet of communism is the denial of God. There are no absolute values in communism because it rejects the idea of God and hence does not espouse any standard of good and evil. From these beliefs, one can easily derive the principle that the end justifies the means for the cause of communist revolution.
Communist theoreticians claim that communism is a science and use this claim to justify the denial of God and all religions. They denounce faith as superstition and declare that religion is the opium of the people. But did science in the twentieth century in fact render religion, faith and God obsolete?
The answer is no. On the contrary, science reveals that communism itself is a nineteenth-century superstition. Science in the twentieth century is serving as a witness to God by overthrowing communism's false view of the cosmos. The cosmos in the nineteenth century was seen as composed of absolutely solid particles that could not be divided into smaller units. Based on this concept, communists expounded their fundamental philosophy of materialism, saying that the universe essentially is composed of material.
However, the physics of the twentieth century has overturned this false view of the universe. Physics has revealed that in actuality, material is intangible energy and the physical universe and energy are compatible and interchangeable. A growing number of scientists today are of the opinion that the emergence of the universe was not an accident merely resulting from some autonomous laws of causality. They leave open the possibility that there was a primary act of will. This primary cause in science is what religion calls God.
The Creator of the universe is a God of intellect, emotion and will. We were formed in His image, and He finds delight in the flow of love to and from us. To experience joy through loving relationships with His children is the very reason God created. It follows that denying the existence of God is like denying the existence of one's parents. All values in human society begin from recognizing and establishing a filial relationship with the Creator. Science itself verifies that communism has no basis upon which to provide a value perspective. Hence it is destined to disappear.
The brutality and inhumanity of communism
Communism regards people merely as machines, as matter in motion. This is the obvious and inescapable conclusion of communism, which denies God. Labor is the communists' god, and people are merely a higher-stage animal evolved from apes that learned to use tools. They believe that it was through labor that language developed, and then reason. Through this process, apes became human beings. In short, they argue that labor is god and human beings are evolved animals.
In communist society a person is just a tool for use in the revolutionary struggle. Human beings have value only when achieving this end; otherwise they are worthless. This is why people in communist society are treated as subhuman. The record shows that communist governments annihilated more than 150 million innocent people in the seventy years following the Russian Revolution.
Humanity's dignity arises from the fact that we are the children of God, the Creator. In other words, our value originates from the fact that we have divinity, endowed by God. Therefore, to harm someone is in effect harming God, and to love someone is to love God. Each and every person is an individual embodiment of truth created by God. Every human being is a substantial manifestation of God Himself, and our life is eternal just as God is eternal.
The greatest sin committed by communism in regard to humanity is that its ideology denies God. Next, it considers people to be merely higher animals or moving matter, that is, machines. That is why countries espousing communism systematically deny human rights and human dignity.
We see the confrontation of these two conflicting value systems on the Korean Peninsula and in many other regions of the world. Unless this confrontation is resolved in a way applicable to the entire world, the problem of communism cannot be resolved and our hope for Korean unification is an illusion. Hence, to resolve the issue of Korean unification, it is essential to resolve the world problem, and vice versa. This is because the solution for Korea and for the world is the same.
I have been expounding the proposition that Godism, an expression of Unificationism, will resolve the conflicting value systems in the world today. Godism aims to clarify the existence of God and basic Godgiven human rights. Godism is indispensable if we are to free the communist world from its distorted vision and liberate Europe and America from secular humanism and decadent materialism. Our movement for unity must be grounded on this system of thought, which provides us with a new formulation of values.
In the confrontation between these conflicting value perspectives, our primary goal must be to pursue unification based on the principles of freedom and democracy. Unification has no meaning without these principles. Freedom is a sacred and inalienable right endowed by God. Our brothers and sisters in North Korea have this same right, despite being deprived of it for more than forty years. If the reunification we achieve is one through which they too can enjoy freedom, it can be called true unification.
We must learn from the experience of Vietnam. It is entirely wrong to consider that Vietnam is now unified. On the contrary, I tell you that Vietnam has been placed in servitude to the Soviet Union. Millions of Vietnamese have been purged, and boat people still take to the high seas at the risk of their lives. Vietnam now ranks as one of the poorest nations in the world, with its per-capita income at less than one hundred dollars per year. Truthfully speaking, no one can say that Vietnam has been unified.
Our brothers and sisters in North Korea thirst for liberation, and our movement's work on a global scale is the only way to accomplish it. We must strive diligently on behalf of our brothers and sisters who live under the darkness of communist rule in North Korea while longing for freedom and happiness.
The North Korean regime has been propagating its own unification tactics and strategy. It declares that South Korea must be liberated from the rule of U.S. imperialists and that the people of the South eventually must unite with the Juche, or self-reliance, ideology of Kim Il Sung. The obvious result of such a strategy is that the rule of Kim Il Sung and his son will subjugate the people of the South under their own banner of unification.
For forty years, the North Korean regime has been pushing for unification under the guise of various socalled peace offensives. Despite this constant pressure and the threat of armed invasion from the North, South Korea has achieved remarkable economic growth and has attained a prominent place in the international community. South Korea's gross national product now exceeds the North's by a ratio of five and a half to one. At the end of 1985, the South ranked twentieth in the world in terms of GNP and twelfth in trade volume.
South Korea will be far superior to the North in economic and military strength by the time of the Seoul Olympics in 1988. Therefore before Kim Il Sung dies, North Korea, in desperation, might seek to achieve unification by armed aggression. No one can deny that they might mount a military threat and even try to harass the Olympics. North Korea will employ all kinds of schemes with the purpose of halting the South's progress, and they are of the opinion that, if the Olympic Games go through successfully, their chance of uniting the Koreas by armed aggression, which they believe in almost religiously, will disappear forever. In order to stop the Seoul Olympic Games, North Korea, using propaganda and other tactics to confuse South Koreans, will strive to heighten anxiety and tension on the peninsula, creating political confusion in the South.
Taking the ideological offensive with head-wing thought
I declare with complete confidence that the next twelve years will be a decisive period. Hence, our gathering today for the founding of the Citizens Federation for the Unification of North and South Korea is of great significance in the history of our nation.
What is to be done? Our task is not simple or easy. In the first place, we need to empower ourselves by formulating a new value system appropriate for the process of reconciliation and unity of our people. The free world, including the United States, is now revealing its main weakness, which is the lack of a guiding ideology. This void is the result of material affluence, a confused sense of values, and secular humanism spreading its influence. Because of ideological confusion, the free world has retreated again and again. Exploiting this weakness, the communist world continues to expand its hegemony.
The Third World War will be a war of ideas. Military power alone will not defeat communism. Rather we need to strengthen our ideological stance, and only Godism can accomplish this task. Falsehood can be conquered only by the truth. The weapon needed for this is none other than Godism. From now on, unless the free world arms itself with Godism, that is, Unificationism, and assumes the ideological offensive, it cannot win over communism.
To fortify the thinking of our people, the Citizens Federation for the Unification of North and South Korea has to be in the vanguard. Godism is strong; it offers the resources needed to liberate our brothers and sisters in the North and all people suffering under the yoke of communist rule. While alerting the world to the dangers, the Godism movement also motivates people through a spiritual awakening, which will turn them away from the self-indulgence, immorality and corruption rampant in the affluent free world.
I sponsored the first mass rally based on Godism in 1976. This historic event was held in Washington, DC, the capital of the United States. There I openly declared that our next venue for a meeting on Godism would be in Moscow. I am thoroughly convinced that Godism can free the Soviet Union from communism. So I ask: What delayed the disintegration of communism up to this point? Communism's end is delayed because we cannot offer an alternative; we have been unable to arm ourselves with a strong thought system.
I strongly urge that we quickly initiate this new movement in Korea and expand it to the international level. We need to be armed with Godism; otherwise we cannot overcome communism or Kim Il Sung's so-called Juche ideology.
I call our Godism movement the head-wing movement, in contrast to the left-and right-wing movements. True world peace requires head-wing thought, because conventional left-and right-wing theories both are self-centered and power-oriented. Self-centeredness breeds conflicts of interest, and this continuously diminishes our ability to create peace and unity. We need to bring forth a new world ideology that will overthrow egoism. Altruism emanates only from God's providence of love, because God is the essence of love. Just as the mind controls the whole human body and its functions, so Godism, the head-wing thought, is superior to right-and left-wing thought. The right and left arms are part of the whole body; yet without the mind in the center, they fight each other and the whole configuration is paralyzed and unable to function. However, once the mind takes its place as the "head-wing," both arms become part of one united entity, serving the entire body following the commands of the mind.
With Godism, or head-wing thought, let us move toward the goal of achieving the unification of our homeland. Our aim is neither the invasion of the North nor the indoctrination of the South; it is to bring about unity and interdependence based on a true value system and armed with the head-wing principles.
Increasing our passion and power
We need to develop a passion for unification, because passion is what turns belief into practice. This passion for unification must be elevated and turned into the driving force of a faith-based movement. I believe God will help us when we all are united in this movement and when we pledge our full dedication and sacrifice to support it.
Without sacrifice on our part, our passion is mere rhetoric. As one project of the Citizens Federation for the Unification of North and South Korea, I am planning to build a prayer center for unification as well as a center for unification training, near the thirty-eighth parallel. There we can project our fervent desire for unification to the lands north of the thirty-eighth parallel.
Further, we need to be increasingly vigorous in our movement for unification. Our proposal for unification is a peaceful one, and to carry it out, we need to cultivate our abilities in every field. Vigor and resourcefulness are mandatory in order for us to penetrate the barricades of the Juche thought created by Kim Il Sung, which keeps North Korea one of the world's most primitive and closed societies. Only when Kim is convinced of the power of our thought system will he be persuaded to listen to our proposal.
As we have seen, formulating a new value system and arming ourselves with Godism are prerequisites for our movement for the unification of the peninsula. We also need to increase our national power and raise our international status. An important part of this is for the Republic of Korea to construct an advanced democratic society.
True democracy is the way to defeat dictatorship and personality cults. We find in Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address the eternal ideal: "government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth." The democratization of our nation is therefore a topmost priority.
Next, we must take the initiative in promoting and facilitating international support for this movement for unification. We need to make haste and arm ourselves with this ideology worldwide, and win support from our allies, such as the United States and the neighboring powers of China and Japan. We also need to motivate the Soviet Union to convince the North that it can no longer remain closed, and to support peaceful unification.
It is our hope that under the pressure of democratic development in the South, the regime in the North will renounce communism and become a willing partner in the unification of our homeland. Kim Il Sung's power may fade quickly once this process begins.
The need for international efforts
You are aware of the fact that, from early on, I made our world headquarters in the United States and educated the free world ideologically. I have created several media companies, including The Washington Times, and educated media professionals throughout the world. I have given direction to professors in universities around the world, led student movements in various nations, brought together veterans including retired generals, and commenced a movement to unite the nations of South America. What is more, for a long time I have personally led a movement to unite the world's religions.
You can see that I have devoted all my energies up to the present to support the United States and Japan, and to lay a foundation in every nation in Europe and South America, and now I can finally invest in China. I have done my utmost to achieve this end in order to create the international conditions for the liberation of North Korea.
As you well know, Korea's geopolitical situation is delicate. The interests of four great powers -- the United States, Japan, China and the Soviet Union -- all converge on the Korean Peninsula. We must consider these four powers in relation to our movement for unification. Otherwise the unification of our homeland cannot be realized. By carrying out education on the international stage, and through my success in various other fields, I have moved people and societies in a positive direction.
Today, on the basis of this success, we are opening a new chapter in this movement. Yet we must not think that we can carry out this movement single-handedly. To repeat, international cooperation and support are imperative. The Citizens Federation for the Unification of North and South Korea therefore needs to develop into an Asian Federation and eventually into a World Federation for its ultimate success. This is the long-cherished hope of all humanity and of God.
Let us march forward to victory
My fellow citizens, we are obligated to take on this task of unification because of its extreme significance to the nation, as well as to the world. Men and women of devotion and dedication are calling us to take up this historic duty. You are gathered here today to take part in the founding of the Citizens Federation for the Unification of North and South Korea.
The founding father of our nation, Tangun, built the foundation for the first community in this land. He established a standard for human value under the golden adage, "worship heaven and love people." The essence of Godism evolved from this spirit. Thus, Godism originated from our land.
I have already pointed out that Korea's problems are a reflection of the world's problems, and that the solution to the world's problems is essentially linked to the solution of Korea's problems. This implies that Korea will provide a solution for the world. This is very true, for Godism is not only the solution for the unification of Korea, it can also serve as a means for freeing all people from communism and secular humanism.
My patriotic fellow citizens: Let us march forward, armed with Godism, the new value system, and the new head-wing thought. Let us imbue our yearning for the unification of North and South Korea with spiritual fervor and set our passions aflame, so that we can even break through walls of stone. We are standing at the forefront of a great historical transformation. Let us have the self-confidence and determination to unite North and South Korea with our own hands. Our victory will shine in the eternal history of our people. Let us go forward, in accordance with the Will of God, to build the Citizens Federation into a practical foundation that will help the world.
With vigorous faith, we now solemnly declare that we accept this calling to become the vanguard of the movement for unification. Let us unite all our energies and march forward until the day our dream of the unification of South and North Korea is achieved.
I pray that God may bless you and your families abundantly.
Thank you.