Sun Myung Moon

Sun Myung Moon is the spiritual leader of the Unification Church, also known as "The Moonies." He is also the owner of the Newpaper, "The Washington Times" as well as other holdings all over the world. In 2004 in a ceremony in Washington D.C. he took part in a ceremony where he was crowned "Messiah and King of Peace." The ceremony was attended by several US Congresspeople and Letters of support were read from both former President George HW Bush and from Sen. Joe Lieberman. in 1941 Mr. Moon entered Waseda University in Japan, where he studied electrical engineering. Two years later he returned to Korea and married his first wife, Sun Kil Choi, who bore him a son. In 1946, leaving them behind, he moved to Pyongyang, now the capital of North Korea, to found a predecessor of the Unification Church called the Kwang-Ya Church. He was imprisoned by the Communist authorities, and later said that they had tortured him. He was freed in 1950. Mr. Moon divorced his first wife in 1952. In 1960, Mr. Moon married the 17-year-old Hak Ja Han, who would bear him 13 children and be anointed “true parent.” He embarked on world tours over the next decade and in 1972 settled in the United States, seeing it as the promised land for church growth. He took an interest in politics, urging that President Richard M. Nixon be forgiven for his role in the Watergate crisis. In the late 1970s, Mr. Moon came under scrutiny by the federal authorities, mainly over allegations that he was involved in efforts by the South Korean government to bribe members of Congress to support President Park Chung Hee.Then, in October 1981, Mr. Moon was named in a 12-count federal indictment. He was accused of failing to report $150,000 in income from 1973 to 1975, a sum consisting of interest from $1.6 million that he had deposited in New York bank accounts in his own name, according to the indictment. In a 1997 speech, he said America had “persecuted” him. He also attacked homosexuals and American women. Mr. Moon and his church largely dropped from public view in the late ’90s and 2000s.