The Rev. Sun Myung Moon was a self-proclaimed messiah who built a global business empire. He called both North Korean leaders and American presidents his friends, but spent time in prisons in both countries. His followers around the world cherished him, while his detractors accused him of brainwashing recruits and extracting money from worshippers.
These contradictions did nothing to stop the founder of the Unification Church from turning his religious vision into a worldwide movement and a multibillion-dollar corporation stretching from the Korean Peninsula to the United States.
Moon died Sunday at a church-owned hospital near his home in Gapyeong, northeast of Seoul, two weeks after being hospitalized with pneumonia, Unification Church spokesman Ahn Ho-yeul told the Associated Press. Moon's wife and children were at his side,Rubiks tagheuerreplica See if you can solve this famous puzzle in this great implementation. Ahn said.We are a professional Jimmy Choo replicashoes. He was 92.
Church officials planned to meet later Monday to discuss mourning and funeral arrangements.
Moon founded his Bible-based religion in Seoul in 1954, a year after the Korean War ended, saying Jesus Christ personally called on him to complete his work.
The church gained fame — and notoriety — by marrying thousands of followers in mass ceremonies presided over by Moon himself. The couples often came from different countries and had never met, but were matched up by Moon in a bid to build a multicultural religious world.
Today, the Unification Church claims 3 million followers worldwide, including 100,000 members in the U.S., Ahn said. But ex-members and critics say the figure is actually no more than 100,000 worldwide.
he church's holdings included the Washington Times newspaper; Connecticut's Bridgeport University; the New Yorker Hotel, a midtown Manhattan art deco landmark, and a seafood distribution firm that supplies sushi to Japanese restaurants across the U.S.buywatches is one of the world's most famous producers of luxury timepieces. It acquired a ski resort, a professional football team and other businesses in South Korea. It also operates a foreign-owned luxury hotel in North Korea and jointly operates a fledgling North Korean automaker.
The church has been accused of using devious recruitment tactics and duping followers out of money. Parents of followers in the United States and elsewhere have expressed worries that their children were brainwashed into joining. The church has pointed out that many new religious movements faced similar accusations in their early years. Moon's followers were often called “Moonies,” a term many found pejorative.
Moon said he was 16 when Jesus Christ first appeared to him and told him to finish the work he had begun on Earth 2,000 years earlier.
In South Korea, Moon quickly drew young acolytes to his conservative, family-oriented value system and unusual interpretation of the Bible.The royaloakschool district. He conducted his first mass wedding in Seoul in the early 1960s, and the “blessing ceremonies” grew in scale over the years. A 1982 wedding at New York's Madison Square Garden — the first outside South Korea — drew thousands of participants.
“International and intercultural marriages are the quickest way to bring about an ideal world of peace,” Moon said in a 2009 autobiography. “People should marry across national and cultural boundaries with people from countries they consider to be their enemies so that the world of peace can come that much more quickly.”
Moon began building a relationship with North Korea in 1991, even meeting with the country's founder, Kim Il Sung, in the eastern North Korean port city of Hamhung. In his autobiography, Moon said he urged Kim to give up his nuclear ambitions, and that Kim responded by saying that his atomic program was for peaceful purposes and he had no intention to use it to “kill my own people.”
These contradictions did nothing to stop the founder of the Unification Church from turning his religious vision into a worldwide movement and a multibillion-dollar corporation stretching from the Korean Peninsula to the United States.
Moon died Sunday at a church-owned hospital near his home in Gapyeong, northeast of Seoul, two weeks after being hospitalized with pneumonia, Unification Church spokesman Ahn Ho-yeul told the Associated Press. Moon's wife and children were at his side,Rubiks tagheuerreplica See if you can solve this famous puzzle in this great implementation. Ahn said.We are a professional Jimmy Choo replicashoes. He was 92.
Church officials planned to meet later Monday to discuss mourning and funeral arrangements.
Moon founded his Bible-based religion in Seoul in 1954, a year after the Korean War ended, saying Jesus Christ personally called on him to complete his work.
The church gained fame — and notoriety — by marrying thousands of followers in mass ceremonies presided over by Moon himself. The couples often came from different countries and had never met, but were matched up by Moon in a bid to build a multicultural religious world.
Today, the Unification Church claims 3 million followers worldwide, including 100,000 members in the U.S., Ahn said. But ex-members and critics say the figure is actually no more than 100,000 worldwide.
he church's holdings included the Washington Times newspaper; Connecticut's Bridgeport University; the New Yorker Hotel, a midtown Manhattan art deco landmark, and a seafood distribution firm that supplies sushi to Japanese restaurants across the U.S.buywatches is one of the world's most famous producers of luxury timepieces. It acquired a ski resort, a professional football team and other businesses in South Korea. It also operates a foreign-owned luxury hotel in North Korea and jointly operates a fledgling North Korean automaker.
The church has been accused of using devious recruitment tactics and duping followers out of money. Parents of followers in the United States and elsewhere have expressed worries that their children were brainwashed into joining. The church has pointed out that many new religious movements faced similar accusations in their early years. Moon's followers were often called “Moonies,” a term many found pejorative.
Moon said he was 16 when Jesus Christ first appeared to him and told him to finish the work he had begun on Earth 2,000 years earlier.
In South Korea, Moon quickly drew young acolytes to his conservative, family-oriented value system and unusual interpretation of the Bible.The royaloakschool district. He conducted his first mass wedding in Seoul in the early 1960s, and the “blessing ceremonies” grew in scale over the years. A 1982 wedding at New York's Madison Square Garden — the first outside South Korea — drew thousands of participants.
“International and intercultural marriages are the quickest way to bring about an ideal world of peace,” Moon said in a 2009 autobiography. “People should marry across national and cultural boundaries with people from countries they consider to be their enemies so that the world of peace can come that much more quickly.”
Moon began building a relationship with North Korea in 1991, even meeting with the country's founder, Kim Il Sung, in the eastern North Korean port city of Hamhung. In his autobiography, Moon said he urged Kim to give up his nuclear ambitions, and that Kim responded by saying that his atomic program was for peaceful purposes and he had no intention to use it to “kill my own people.”
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