Sun Myung Moon

Sun Myung Moon (; born Moon Yong-Myeong; 6 January 1920 – 3 September 2012) was a Korean religious and cult leader, also known for his business ventures and support for conservative political causes. A messiah claimant, he was the founder of the Unification Church (members of which consider him and his wife Hak Ja Han to be their "True Parents"), and of its widely noted "Blessing" or mass wedding ceremonies, and the author of its unique theology the Divine Principle. He was an anti-communist and an advocate for Korean reunification, for which he was recognized by the governments of both North and South Korea. Businesses he promoted included News World Communications, an international news media corporation known for its American subsidiary The Washington Times, and Tongil Group, a South Korean business group (chaebol), as well as other related organizations. Moon was born in what is now North Korea. When he was a child, his family converted to Christianity. In the 1940s and 1950s, he was imprisoned multiple times by the North and South Korean governments during his early new-religious ministries, formally founding the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, simply known as the Unification Church, in Seoul, South Korea in 1954. Since that time, the Church teaches conservative, family-oriented values from new interpretations of the Christian Bible mixed with theology from Moon's own text, the Divine Principle. In 1971, he moved to the United States and became well known after giving a series of public speeches on his beliefs. In the 1982 case United States v. Sun Myung Moon, he was found guilty of willfully filing false federal income tax returns and sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. His case generated protests from clergy and civil libertarians, who said that the trial was biased against him. Moon was criticized for making high demands of his followers, who were very dedicated and often referred to in popular parlance as "Moonies".