KBS Hot Issues of the Week

Death of Rev. Moon Sun-myung

Reverend Moon Sun-myung, founder of the Unification Church, died last Monday of complications from pneumonia. He was 92.

He founded the Unification Church, which claims three million followers around the world. Based on the religious entity, he built vast businesses in various parts of the world.

Born in Jeongju, North Pyeongan Province in North Korea in 1920, Moon graduated from Waseda University in Japan with a major in electric science. He founded the Unification Church in 1954, one year after the Korean War ended. The church, from its early stage, eyed the world. Its overseas missions first took off in Japan in 1957 and advanced to the US in 1972.

In five decades, the church grew into a major religious organization followed by three million people in 194 countries.

Believers of the Unification Church are very loyal and tight-knit and they exert stronger power than the mere sum of followers. However, in Korea, the religion was labeled a heresy as the reverend called himself the “Messiah.”

With his enormous fortune, Moon built up various projects around the world and reaped great success thanks to his business acumen. The Unification Church operates a dozen businesses in Korea alone including Ilhwa Company and the YongPyong Resort. It also owns the Segye Ilbo newspaper, the US Washington Times, the United Press International, the Little Angels performing arts group and the Universal Ballet.

It also runs educational institutions including Sun Moon University, Sunhwa Arts Middle and High School and the University of Bridgeport in the US.

Since the 1970s, Moon also contributed to the global peace movement. He founded the Universal Peace Federation in 2005 and the "Parent United Nations" as a peace body to replace the UN in 2010. In 1990, he met with then General Secretary of the Soviet Union Communist Party Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow and discussed world peace. He also urged the Russian leader to forge diplomatic ties with South Korea.

Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US, he invited world religious leaders and held several peace marches in Jerusalem. Also since 2003, his empire has hosted the football tournament for club teams called the Peace Cup.

Rev. Moon shared special ties with North Korea. He founded an association campaigning for Korean unification in 1987 and visited North Korea for the first time in 1991. During this visit, he met his younger sister living in the North as well as North Korean founder Kim Il-sung. Moon and Kim were believed to have agreed to various investment projects including the development of the North's Geumgang Mountain.

An auto factory built in the North's Nampo city by Pyeonghwa Motors, which is known as a business arm of the Unification Church, is considered a rare success case of South Korean investment in North Korea.

Moon served as a channel for civic exchanges with the North, realizing an inter-Korean student seminar and a Little Angels performance in the North, among other accomplishments.