#unification church in guyana
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UC member Barbara Burrowes had connections to the CIA-sponsored fascist dictatorship of Guyana
The following excerpts were originally posted on the old WIOTM by "Don Diligent" posted on the old WIOTM on December 10, 2016. (WIOTM archive link)
▲ Barbara Burrowes Van Praag
Barbara Burrowes - August 1970
(In 1962) NATO called me for a job which was never before given to a civilian. After three years, the job ceased, so I left for Rome.
Barbara Burrowes - July 16, 1971
Today is my seventieth day in Guyana and quite a lot has transpired since my arrival on May 1st…I am working at the National History and Arts Council, a division of the Ministry of Information and Culture. It covers all branches of the arts as well as archaeological findings, Government celebrations etc.
Barbara Burrowes - March 22, 1972
While in Washington our Leader instructed me to send two young men to Washington for IFVC training.
Barbara Burrowes - July 19, 1972
The Guyanese Family is increasing although I would like the rate to be much faster. Some of the young people are jobless so I have to use some influence and get the employment.
Barbara Burrowes - February 1973
On January 19th, the Family entertained visitors with a film show by the British Council at the Center. After the show there was some valuable give and take with ourfriends who were encouraged to return and listen to Divine Principle.
There were two articles about the Family in the Government owned ‘Sunday Chronicle’. The first article was very well written and photos were displayed on the whole middle page of the newspaper. The second article was not as good because many erroneous statements were made, but Barbara was allowed to insert a letter correcting same. This letter and the first article have been the talk of the nation for weeks and many people are beginning to respond positively.
Diane Ngui-Yen, radio reporter, actress and friend of the Family interviewed all the members of the Family. Members were asked what made them accept Divine Principleand why they decided to live in the Center, among other questions. This also stimulated many listeners to visit the Center.
Barbara Burrowes - May 1973
We have a lady lawyer who, after having accepted Principle, has been able to bring many people, clients and her staff, to accept Principle.
Barbara Burrowes - November 1973
Barbara Burrowes…formed the “Unified Family Singers.” Dr. Beryl Simon, the mayor of Georgetown, invited the singers to give a special concert for underprivileged children. They sang at Saint George’s Cathedral, the largest wooden structure in the world, with the President of the Republic among their listeners.
October saw the first semi-public meeting of the International Federation for Victory Over Communism, a national conference of Unified Family leaders, and open house for friends.
Barbara Burrowes - October 1985 - Our Mission in Guyana – A Brief History
During that first year I witnessed to many important people – including the prime minister of Guyana, who wanted to assign me to a special government mission.
I was interviewed by several reporters, so through both the radio and the newspapers people were informed…
August 1980 - Guyana: THE FACES BEHIND THE MASKS
For obvious reasons, given the situation described below, the author of this article, who has spent considerable time in Guyana, must remain anonymous.
Guyana’s history during the last twenty years is replete with duplicity and bizarre occurrences, many of which have been directly linked to covert CIA operations. In addition,Guyana’s Prime Minister Burnham, and his People’s National Congress Party have become accomplished at the arts of deceit, dirty tricks, covert operations, and political violence in their efforts to maintain themselves in power and privilege.
The 1961 elections were marked by further Colonial Office gerrymandering and fierce campaigning that was aided by U.S. dollars channelled through the CIA-linked Christian Anti-Communist Crusade…
On November 18, 1978, U.S. Representative Leo J. Ryan and four of his party were gunned down under the noses of Guyana Defence Force personnel and soon the world and later Guyana was to hear the horror of the Jonestown massacre.
Despite the sensational murders and “suicides” resulting in at least 914 deaths, there has been no investigation by Guyanese officials and only half-hearted prosecution of chief suspect Larry Layton. He was recently acquitted in a Georgetown court on attempted murder charges and many say he will never have to face trial for his role in the killings of Ryan, those in his party, or the hundreds of others at the People’s Temple. (Charles Beikman, the only other person to face charges related to Jonestown, has been sentenced to only two years for his throat slashing of Sharon Amos and her three children.) Defense Attorney for the cult killers is none other than Rex McKay, who has reportedly taken a sizeable fee and made large investments in the U.S.
The Jonestown death camp and related controversy, including the existence of a People’s Temple hit team, will probably never be fully explained. However, persistent rumors and abundant loose ends have led to the recent reopening of U.S. Congressional hearings intoCIA linkages with the People’s Temple. The following is a partial list of some of the factors which have fed flames of controversy.
• Ryan aide Joe Holsinger reports that a White House official told him on the night of the Ryan murder that there was a CIA report from the scene.
• Large supplies of sophisticated behavior modification drugs were found in Jonestown.
• Jonestown also was well supplied with sophisticated arms.
• Unduly large amounts of cash’ were found in the camp.
• A number of Jonestown residents were U.S. criminals on probation or parole.
• Larry Layton’s father, who admits pouring cash into the People’s Temple, was a U.S. government bio-chemist, raising the spectre of MK-ULTRA.
• First reports indicated only 300 dead and one week later the world learned of the 914 person death toll. We are asked to believe that 600-plus bodies were hidden under 300!
• The Justice Department attorney picked to handle the investigation, William Hunter, “coincidentally” had a personal relationship with Timothy Stoen, the former San Francisco Assistant District Attorney who for a time was Jim Jones’s right-hand man.
• Leo Ryan’s name appears in “Who’s Who in the CIA” by Julius Mader.
• The removal of the bodies was conducted by U.S. military personnel.
The list is endless and for the Guyanese and American people, there is little likelihood that the truth will ever reach the surface. In Guyana, the Jonestown tragedy served to focus attention on other cult groups with similar deals involving the Burnham government. These include the Moonies, a Black group from Brooklyn, New York called The East, as well as the House of Israel. The latter is a largely Guyanese cult led by a fugitive North American who calls himself Rabbi Emmanuel Washington.
Those looking for answers about Jonestown should know that the Guyanese official selected to investigate the matter is none other than the faithful Chancellor Crane, who to this day has yet to convene his first hearing on the grisly massacre.
February 1980 marked the promulgation of the new PNC constitution and the publication of still another secret deal between Burnham and CIA-linked forces. It was revealed that in October 1979, the PNC had concluded a deal with a consortium of right wing U.S. religious groups headed by Franklin Graham (Billy’s son) for a massive resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees from Thailand to the Yarikita region of Guyana near the Jonestown camp.
These were no ordinary refugees, but were in fact the remnants of the once powerful Laotian Hmong (formerly called Meo) army which was recruited by and fought for the CIA under Colonel Edward Lansdale, Hugh Tovar, Edgar “Pop” Buell, and others in the secret war in Laos.
Nor were they religious groups of the ordinary variety. They counted among their number elements of the Summer Institute of Linguistics/ Wycliffe bible translators, which has been named as a CIA front by Time magazine.
For Guyanese with a bloody history of CIA destablization, the plan was too much and widespread opposition forced the temporary postponement of this scheme to import a 40,000-strong mercenary army.
At the end of February 1980, James Mentore, head of the Special Branch and assistant Police Commissioner was fired for “leaking information to the opposition.” His dismissal and subsequent disappearance has led to much speculation as to his fate. Mentore, who received little attention by the U.S. media, has much to tell. As Security Chief he holds information that could unravel the Jonestown mystery as well as document the connections between Guyana government repression and U.S. assistance there-to. While many Guyanese suspect his disappearance can be traced to a death squad sanitizing operation, other rumors indicate his presence in the Washingotn, D.C. area as recently as June. It is known that CIA officer James Lee Adkins (named in CAIB Number 9) sought contacts with WPA members immediately following Mentore’s disappearance, ostensibly seeking information concerning the Security Chiefs whereabouts. These attempted contacts were rebuffed and the true purpose of the CIA man’s inquiry is not clear.
there is growing evidence of a well-organized network of PNC supporters in this country who continue to do the bidding of their Guyana-based masters and who finance activity with illicit drug sales. The center of the cover drug and goonsquad operations appears to be New York City and involves elements of a Guyana ex-police organization and the remnants of a New York cult. Green and McClean have made repeated visits since the assassination and are reported to have conferred with elements of the above groups in Brooklyn.
While many U.S. citizens and organizations have joined the growing condemnation of Guyana’s repressive regime, these sentiments have not been echoed by the official Washington establishment. To the contrary…the IMF and World Bank proudly announced a special joint funding package totaling 100-plus million dollars and support for a multi-billion dollar hydro-power aluminum smelter scheme slated for Guyana’s Upper Mazarumi district. These events have been heralded by the Washington Post as “good news for the Caribbean.”
Thus, with masks removed the face of imperialism is revealed and the stage is set for the final phase of the struggle by Guyana’s people against the Burnham dictatorship and the U.S. agencies which installed and have maintained it for sixteen years!
Related links below
Mind Control U.S.A. (1979)
Ex-‘Moonies’ Tell of Suicide Options (1979)
Introvigne’s Jonestown
Private Armies of Mindanao (2010)
Drugs and death squads: The CIA connection (1989)
Was the CIA Behind the Jonestown Massacre? (2022)
#cia#moonies#religion#cults#house of israel#guyana#unification church in guyana#unification church in south america#south america#forbes burnham#counterinsurgency#barbara burrowes#nato#imperialism#anti-communism#dictators#dictatorship#parapolitical#parapolitics#intelligence agencies#united states of america#u.s. government#jonestown#jim jones#peoples temple
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Cults
Cult is the term commonly used for a new religion devoted to a living leader and committed to a fixed set of teachings and practices. Such groups range in size from a few followers to worldwide organizations directed by a complex chain of command. Members of these groups generally consider them to be legitimate religions and rarely call them cults. Most historians of religion use the more neutral term new religious movement instead of cult. Because there is no one definition of cults, their number and membership today cannot be accurately measured.
Kinds of cults. Traditionally, the term cult referred to any form of worship or ritual observance, or even to a group of people pursuing common goals. Many groups accepted as religions today were once classified as cults. Christianity began as a cult within Judaism and developed into an established religion. Other groups that began as cults and developed into organized churches include the Quakers, Mormons, Swedenborgians, Christian Scientists, Methodists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Seventh-day Adventists. For a discussion of cults in the ancient world, see Mysteries .
During the 1960's, new religious movements spread and flourished in the United States. Since that time, negative publicity about cults has altered the meaning of the term cult. Today, the term is applied to groups that follow a living leader who promotes new and unorthodox doctrines and practices. Some leaders demand that members live apart from everyday society in communities called communes. Leaders claim that they possess exclusive religious truth, and they command absolute obedience and allegiance from their followers. Some cults require that members contribute all their possessions to the group. None of these characteristics are unusual in the history of religions. But they tend to create suspicion among outsiders, especially those whose family members join such groups.
Modern cults. Probably the most notorious new religious movement of the late 1900's was the People's Temple, a group led by the Protestant clergyman Jim Jones. Hundreds of his followers moved into a rural commune called Jonestown in the South American country of Guyana. They lived under Jones's absolute rule. In 1978, members of the People's Temple killed a U.S. congressman and three journalists. Jones then ordered his followers to commit suicide, resulting in the deaths of more than 900 people, including Jones. See Guyana (History) .
Another controversial group was the Branch Davidians, led by the self-proclaimed prophet David Koresh. In 1993, a 51-day confrontation between the Branch Davidians and federal forces near Waco, Texas, ended with a tragic fire in the group's compound. More than 80 Branch Davidians died, including Koresh.
Some movements regarded as cults did not begin as religious groups. A movement called Synanon was originally organized in California to rehabilitate drug addicts. It changed into a commune that won legal recognition as a religion.
Two of the largest groups regarded as cults in the United States had origins in Asia. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), commonly called the Hare Krishna movement, was established in 1966. Its leader, the Hindu teacher A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, had come from India to the United States in 1965. During the 1960's and 1970's, he established many centers in the United States and other countries. Many members of ISKCON wear orange robes similar to those worn by Indian holy men.
The Unification Church, founded by the evangelist Sun Myung Moon, is an adaptation of Christianity. Its members, commonly called "Moonies," believe in a cosmic struggle between the forces of good and evil. The Unification Church has been aggressive in seeking conversions. Like many other cults popular in the 1970's, however, it began to adopt a more moderate tone in the 1980's.
Less aggressive and more loosely organized cults tend to stress such personal spiritual practices as meditation. Transcendental meditation, for example, offers forms of meditation practice to participants but does not require adherence to specific religious creeds. See Transcendental meditation.
Source:
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March 16, 2024
LOS ANGELES — For decades, religious cults have taken advantage of people who have given over their lives and fortunes to charismatic figures who prey on naive individuals.
People of different faiths usually disagree on theology. However, theological differences are not necessarily the determining factor that defines a group as a cult. Others may consider a particular group to be a false religion. but it is not a cult in the classic sense of the word nor from the perspective of modern psychology.
Legitimate religions encourage honesty, transparency, and critical thinking.
Conversely, cults, and their leaders, condone the use of deception for recruitment and fundraising purposes. They also use manipulation and fear tactics to maintain control of their members. The negative characteristics of deception and manipulation distinguish a cult from a legitimate religion.
Additionally, cults and religions often embrace social behavior that mainstream society considers out of the ordinary. In and of itself, this is acceptable, whether it is a different dress code, diet, or language. However, some cults cross the line and foster bizarre, destructive, and even dangerous social behavior.
It will be helpful to examine some cult behavior that ranges from defying common sense to outright destructive and criminal behavior.
In the 1970s, followers of Reverend Sun Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah, supported his Unification Church by standing on street corners for hours selling flowers. These followers, known as “Moonies,” would use misleading “salesmanship” and claim they were raising money for non-existent senior centers or homeless shelters. They referred to this tactic as “Heavenly Deception.” They used it to rationalize that it was okay to lie because they were taking money from Satan and collecting it for “God’s work.” This was extreme misbehavior, but nothing compared to what cult leader Jim Jones did.
In 1978, Reverend Jim Jones moved his Jonestown People’s Temple cult from San Francisco to Guyana, South America. In an unbelievable show of destructive behavior that would become known simply as the Jonestown Mass Suicide: 913 men, women, and children drank poisoned Kool-Aid and died simply because Jones told them to.
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< Click on image above for the full article >
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Worldly Ways Chapter 3 part 15
doctor out of respect; in his first book, The Truth About Mars, he describes meeting Nur El, the Martian ambassador to Earth, who he had met in an underground city on Mars while he was traveling there using astral projection; Ernest Norman had also claimed to be clairvoyant, an archangel name Raphael, and not only the second of christ, but the second coming of Socrates, Queen Elizabeth, Mona Lisa, Confucius, and Benjamin Franklin, as well-Sun Myung Moon, an man from what is now North Korea, had founded the Unification Church in 1954; Sun Myung Moon's followers had believed that he the second coming of christ, and consider his wife Hak Ja Han and him to be their true parents; the members of the Unification Church are known by the derogatory term “Moonies”, and were also known for selling flowers in airports and on street corners-Charles Manson, cult leader, and songwriter, who had formed the Manson Family in 1967 in San Francisco, California; they had soon moved to an ranch in San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, California where they would listen to him and play guitar and take psychedelic drugs; in the summer 1969 the Manson Family had murdered actress Sharon Tate and eight others-Jim Jones leader of the People's Temple, who had organized an mass suicide in an compound in Guyana, an country in Northern South America, in 1978; he had also claimed to not only being the second coming of christ but the second coming of The Buddha, Akhenaten, Vladimir Lenin and Father Divine as well-Hulon Mitchell Jr. who had went by Yahweh Ben Yahweh, had founded the cult Nation of Yahweh in 1979 in Miami, Florida in the Liberty City neighborhood; his followers saw him as Jesus Christ and the cult had come out of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement; Nation of Yahweh has said Yahweh Ben Yahweh had come to Miami in 1979 and had taken an vow of poverty and within seven years had made Nation of Yahweh an 250 million dollar empire-
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Thank you Col. Pak
I would like to express my appreciation to Col. Dr. Pak for confirming a small detail that I have previously expressed in my testimonials about my church experience in Bayou La Batre, Alabama. For all of those members who may have scoffed at my accounts of Moon's fishing fleet based in Colombia and other places; I would like to direct their attention to this excerpt from a speech that the good Colonel gave in Cartegena Colombia during a Causa event there in the eighties:
http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Books/Tims1/Tims1-35.htm
"I want to mention that we are working toward greater cooperation between the two countries of Colombia and Korea, and this is evidenced by a Korean fleet of 45 fishing boats now anchored off the Atlantic coast of Colombia. A business relationship has been established between our two countries, and I am serving as president of the Korean side of the arrangement. So I am very pleased to be visiting the Colombian side at this time...He is Rafael Espinoso, the president of Vikingo of Colombia."
Yes the Korean side of the arrangement have certainly been busy. Now it's up to you to connect the dots and put the pieces together for yourselves. The rest of the story is the fact that this fleet of fishing boats was evicted from every country that it operated until they landed in Colombia for some reason. Starting with Brazil then Uruguay, then Guyana and now you know the rest. The fleet was finally disbanded and sent to the shipyard in Bayou La Batre to be sold off or refitted for American customers. This occurred around the early nineties, roughly about the same time that Moon was rumored to have purchased decommissioned Soviet submarines from the North Koreans. Whoops! There I go again. Dropping rumors. Frank F
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Sep 14, 2023 Updated Sep 15, 2023
Bard College has officially announced it is purchasing the Unification Theological Seminary (UTS) property in Barrytown, which has been on the market since at least 2018, for $14 million. College President Leon Botstein confirmed to faculty Wednesday, September 13, that the college is buying the 260-acre property, which was the American home of Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church beginning in 1975. On Thursday, Botstein spoke exclusively with the HV Pilot about the announcement.
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According to Bard officials, the initial uses for the former seminary will include new studios for the Center for Human Rights and the Arts and administrative offices for the Open Society University Network (OSUN), of which Bard is a founding member. Other instructional facilities uses are anticipated as well.
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The property includes the main seminary building, a number of outbuildings, and grounds laced with bucolic trails that UTS kept open to the public over the years. The original home here, called Massena, was built in 1796 by John Livingston. The iconic home, once visited by a young Theodore Roosevelt, was destroyed in a fire in 1885, and was rebuilt in a stark gothic style. In 1928, it was purchased by the Christian Brothers, who turned it into a seminary for Catholic youth education. The Unification Church bought it in the '70s and ran it as a theological university and venue for religious activities. The Unification Church’s founder, Sun Myung Moon, died in 2012 and the school became unaccredited in 2015. The property has been for sale since 2018. UTS has since moved its American headquarters to Manhattan and recently changed its name to HJ International.
UTS’s ownership of the property was not without its own controversies over the years. Botstein said the Unification Church was not the best neighbor.
“We were no friends of the ‘moonies,’” Botstein said, using a term for Unificationists that they consider pejorative. “Let's get that straight. Early on in the 80’s their presence was an irritant and a danger to us. That was when they were accused of kidnapping people, and this was a kind of detention center before it became a theological seminary. We had troubled relations with them because of their proselytizing activities. But as their popularity receded, it became more like a ghost town. As it disintegrated we looked at it again.”
Now the storied property enters a new chapter. With the acquisition of both Montgomery Place and UTS, Botstein has dramatically increased the footprint of Bard College during his long tenure, but he says he doesn’t see his legacy in brick and mortar or even the money the school has been able to raise, but rather in the ideas Bard had fostered during his time at the helm. The new facility, he said, provides more space for those ideas to germinate.
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“… New Haven Advocate, January 7, 1976, at 3, col. 2 (visitors to Unification Church training camp in Barrytown describe “security measures” that include guard houses, walkie-talkies, and shotguns); …”
Cited in The Assassination of Representative Leo J. Ryan and the Jonestown, Guyana Tragedy: Report of a Staff Investigative Group to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives
LINK
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Mad About Moon
Assault at Barrytown: James J. Sheeran and the Unification Church drop charges against each other. (1975)
A visit to Ann at Barrytown (1975)
At Barrytown all members must continually strive to lose their identity and become one with Moon’s will (1976)
Ken Sudo and the secret Barrytown 120-day training manual and Unification Church fraud
Physically restrained against his will at Barrytown
The Unification Church in AD magazine – by Jane Day Mook
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Moonie Acquitted of Murder By Reason of Insanity (1976)
Acquittal Given Due to Insanity, Hartford Courant, June 25, 1976, at 16, col. 1 ("disciple" of Unification Church acquitted of murder by reason of insanity, following testimony of psychiatrist that defendant's religious experiences in the organized had “made him think that he could feel evil vibrations from others.”)
Cited in The Assassination of Representative Leo J. Ryan and the Jonestown, Guyana Tragedy: Report of a Staff Investigative Group to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives
#moonies#murder#insanity#mental health#legal#law#members#church members#unification church members#unification church#unification church in usa#unification church in the united states#unification church in the united states of america#violence
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People who feel irrelevant are easy prey for cult leaders
Albany Times Union By Michael C. Brannigan,
Commentary Thursday, May 24, 2018
“In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” wrote the 16th-century Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus. Without disciples, there is no leader.
In this era of critical reasoning's eclipse, the Times Union's recent revelations and earlier series on the local NXIVM cult and its leader Keith Raniere, a.k.a. "Vanguard," stirs up a hornet's nest of concerns. However, instead of one-dimensionally asking, "What's wrong with these people?" let us consider the following. What is the dynamic between cult leaders and followers? Why do disciples go to nearly any length to conform? Examples abound, like the Unification Church (Moonies) and infamous Children of God/The Family International. The largest mass suicide in America occurred in March 1997 when 39 members of Marshall Herff Applewhite's Heaven's Gate drank their phenobarbital cocktails, expecting transport to the "Next Level" by UFOs.
Granted, the term "cult" is tricky, involving a subtle and complex process. Nonetheless, cults represent closed groups with an equally exclusive and absolutist, all-or-nothing agenda that leaders foist on unreflective followers.
What about cult leaders? Typically charismatic with an obsessive need to control, usually through docile lieutenants, and convinced of their "calling" and claiming special knowledge, even genius, they often display extreme paranoia and delusions of grandeur. They nurture their megalomania by interpreting events to fit their narratives while blending empathy and manipulation, sincerity and deceit, all fed by disciples' blind obeisance.
As for followers, there is no one profile. Under the banner of social justice, Jim Jones' Peoples Temple was racially diverse. In 1977, the year before his group's mass suicide/murder of 913 in Guyana, he was one of the recipients of the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian of the Year Award at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco.
Cult leaders bestow meaning for those whose lives have flattened into irrelevance or have splintered from personal trauma. Their control, however, is only effective with disciples' compliance. And since they pay a steep emotional price for waywardness, disciples fear the leader's disregard. As social psychologist and former cult member Alexandra Stein argues in "Terror, Love & Brainwashing," the behavior is similar to the Stockholm Syndrome's emotional bonding with one's abuser — rather than run away from captors, followers run to them.
In closed environments insulated from external influences that can threaten the "guru's" power, devotees have no time for self-reflection. In Heaven's Gate, each follower had to be in another's presence, that person's "check partner." In this cognitively and emotionally airless cage, rituals like assuming new names signify a new identity enmeshed with the group. Aum Shinrikyō members, responsible for the March 1995 Tokyo sarin nerve gas attack, adopted new Sanskrit names to serve Shoko Asahara, blind in one eye from congenital glaucoma. Such identity abduction was painfully etched when NXIVM's secret sorority DOS (Dominus Obsequius Sororium, loosely "Master of Obedient Women") bodily branded its members with the leaders' initials.
Regarding cults, the book is never closed. When we can be manipulated to satisfy our human need to belong, any one of us is a potential disciple. But it is one thing to have a need; quite another for the need to have us. The yearning for moral absolutes continues, and there is no lack of self-professed saviors and willing disciples, particularly now when we hunger for meaning amid fears of dystopia and destruction. Let us never forget, however, that the more we discard thinking for ourselves and ditch our rational and moral rudders, the more vulnerable we become to forfeiting our souls.
Michael Brannigan is the Pfaff Endowed Chair in Ethics and Moral Values and Dean of Spiritual Life at The College of Saint Rose. His email address and website: [email protected] and www.michaelcbrannigan.com.
https://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Commentary-People-who-feel-irrelevant-are-easy-12942188.php
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Ex-'Moonies' Tell of Suicide Options (1979)
A scene from Boonville
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/01/19/ex-moonies-tell-of-suicide-options/7299d86a-ea0a-45b2-9bc9-6a1846283156/
A California magazine claims that the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church has given some of its members instructions in suicide practices to be used if confronted with deprogrammers.
The report, in the current issue of New West magazine, was denounced by Mose Durst, state director of the church, as "rubbish and compost" and an attempt to make political capital out of the murder-suicide of Rev. Jim Jones' followers in Guyana.
According to the two-page New West article, former Moon church members interviewed by the magazine said they were told that death by their own hands is preferable to deprogramming or life outside the church. All of the members quoted left the church two or more years ago.
One of the former members, 24-year-old Virginia Mabry, is quoted as saying that she attended a lecture in December 1976 at the Moon House in San Francisco where "Moonies" were told to make their deaths look like murder if they had no chance to escape from a deprogrammer.
"The best thing would be to throw ourselves in front of the deprogrammer's car, because then he'd be charged with murder," Mabry was quoted as saying. "Second, depending on how much time we have, we were told to slice either our wrist or our jugular vein."
Philip Kashian, 22, was quoted as saying he attended a church lecture in January 1977 where death by razor blade was encouraged as a response to kidnaping and deprogramming.
New West said that neither Durst nor other members of the Unification Church have been willing to comment on the report. But Durst said the magazine never tried to obtain the church's views.
"There was no attempt whatsoever, by mail, by phone or by any other way to reach any member of the Unification Church for comments," Durst said. "They reached members who, for several years, have had as their actual purpose the desire to destroy the Unification Church."
Durst said the former members who were quoted have been criticizing the church for years and never mentioned suicide until after the killings at Jonestown.
The magazine quoted from speeches by Moon in "Master Speaks," the transcripts of his speeches and sermons, to attempt to show that he supports suicide.
"Have you ever thought that you may die for the Unification Church?" Moon is quoted as saying in a speech called "Let Us Go Over the Boundary Line."
Durst said that the church's teachings were based on Judeo-Christian tenets and "suicide is completely anathema."
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BISHOP MAURICE DAVIS - FRIEND OR FOE?
Many of the old-time Ex-Moonies that read this Blog, like myself, remember Bishop Maurice Davis. He was one of the most celebrated “enemies” of the UC back in the 1970s. Here’s what Michael Mickler had to say about Davis:
Of those Jewish commentators attacking the Unification Church on the basis of its recruitment practices, Maurice Davis has been the most vehement. A Reformed rabbi from White Plains, New York, Davis became aware of the Unification Church when two members of his congregation joined, and he quickly became a leading Church critic. Further, as founder and leader of C.E.R.F. (Citizens Engaged in Re-Uniting Families), Davis claims to have “succeeded in rescuing 174 kids”. His position is advanced in such articles as “In Defense of Deprogramming”, “Lonely Homes, ‘Loving’ Cults”, “Moon for the Misbegotten”, and “The Moon People and Our Children”. Overall, these articles move from exposure of the Unification Church as “evil and dangerous” to a defense of his own methods (“no force, no restraint, no threatening, no lying, no frightening”) to an analysis of why youth, and Jewish youth in particular, are “vulnerable.”
http://www.tparents.org/UTS/UC-Biblio/UC-Biblio-3.htm
Now, what if I was to tell you that Bishop Maurice Davis wasn’t as much of a friend to the anti-cult “crusade” as he was portrayed to be. And would you believe me if I told you that Davis was a willing collaborator in the MKULTRA project? You wouldn’t believe me, right? I can hardly believe I’m even considering the notion myself. But I have to, now that I’ve read an article in the “Executive Intelligence Review” that implicates Davis in very serious wrongdoings. It does indeed appear, that this famous Rabbi didn’t have the best interests of suffering parents, that lost their children to cults:
In 1956…Rabbi Maurice Davis was finishing up a five-year stay in Lexington, Kentucky, where, in addition to running a Reform Jewish congregation, he was a chaplain with the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital for drug addicts. The Addiction Research Center (ARC) at Lexington, run by Dr. Harris Isbell, was at the time one of the main recipients of covert MK-Ultra funds to carry out largescale brainwashing and mind-control experiments on the captive population. Through his chaplain’s post at the facility, Davis was reportedly a key player in the MK-Ultra work that went on at Lexington. According to one of Dr. Isbell’s staff doctors, Sherman Kieffer, Davis was a bridge between the community and the hospital wards, where “patients” were treated to heavy doses of drugs, interspersed with electroshock and induced sleep…
One of the “therapeutic” approaches taken by the ARC toward their patients, was the encouragement of participation in cults.
In 1956, Davis was moving on to bigger and better things-a post as chief rabbi at the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation, the largest Reform synagogue in the state. His work as a community-based patron of mind-bending cults would continue to grow.
Indianapolis is a city whose social welfare and community health structure is dominated by the Eli Lilly Corporation, which at the time was a key element of the secret MK-Ultra work, providing LSD to the CIA out of its pharmaceutical labs. Davis immediately became a fixture of the “ecumenical activist” community there, becoming an intimate collaborator of the Episcopal Bishop Paul Moore…
One of the most infamous projects on which Davis and Moore teamed up during their stay in Indianapolis was the sponsorship of the career of cult leader Rev. Jim Jones and his People’s Temple. Not only did Davis personally intercede with the city government to have Jones installed on the city’s Public Housing Commission; Davis also got Jones his first church building.
Dr. West and Rabbi Davis never abandoned their secret MK-Ultra work. By the mid-1970s, their paths crossed, as both men became fixtures in a nationwide network ostensibly committed to helping families to rescue their children who had been recruited into religious cults.
In the immediate aftermath of Jonestown, the very medical experimenters, psychiatric shock-troops, and community mental health operators who had crafted the fine art of brainwashing in the 1950s and had fathered the counterculture and the proliferation of irrationalist cults in the 1960s, surfaced a nationwide series of organizations bearing such alluring titles as the American Family Foundation (AFF), the Cult Awareness Network (CAN), Citizens Engaged in Reuniting Families (CERF), and the International Foundation for Individual Freedom (IFIF).
It appears that the same secret government funding conduits that had been used to fuel the MK -Ultra efforts were back at it again, funding the army of erstwhile “anti-cult” networks.
In the post-Jonestown climate, the American Family Foundation, with “Jolly” West on its board of directors, and the Cult Awareness Network, linked to Rabbi Davis, became clearinghouses for a nationwide network of kidnappers , targeting members of what are in some cases genuinely dangerous cults for kidnappings and brainwashing. The fact that these dangerous cults, such as the Unification Church, Scientology, and EST, were all outgrowths of MK-Ultra and related covert projects, underscores the point that the “anti-cult” networks were a continuation of the very same experiments.
AFF and CAN adopted the euphemistic term “deprogramming” to describe their activities. Ironically, the term “deprogramming” likely derives from one of the most primitive and brutal forms of brainwashing developed under the MK-Ultra funding umbrella, “depatterning.”
Developed at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, Canada by Dr. Ewen Cameron, an intimate collaborator of Tavistock Institute brainwashers Dr. John Rawlings Rees and Dr. William Sargant, “depatterning” initially involved the use of drugs, sleep therapy, electro-convulsive shock treatments, and sensory deprivation torture to break patients of their behavior patterns and beliefs. Cameron’s efforts were so heavy-handed and so incompetent that the CIA wound up paying out millions of dollars to victims of his “depatterning” lab to cover up the full horror story. Other more “reasonable” brainwashers, like Sargant, argued in books bearing such titles as Battle for the Mind and The Mind Possessed, that the same results could be achieved by replicating the process of religious conversions-without having to get into the kinds of heavy drug and electro-shock techniques that have only limited applications in an institutional setting.
To prove that point, under AFF and CAN, armies of kidnapers were sent out into the field to profile both the distraught parents and the cult recruits. Operating under what one longtime deprogrammer characterized as a “license to kidnap” from witting local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, these kidnaping teams operated with impunity from coast to coast throughout much of the 1980s.
Given this new phase of the covert mind control war, a certain degree of operational control apparently was shifted from the CIA to the FBI. The FBI’s Training Academy at Quantico, Virginia established a fulltime staff of behavioral scientists. And at the nearby University of Virginia, an Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy began receiving funds of the Criminal Justice Institute, to set up as a reservoir of professional forensic psychiatric personnel, many veterans of the MK-Ultra wars…
Up until last year, Dr. Park Elliot Deitz, formerly of the MK-Ultra-linked Maclean Hospital and the Bridgewater State Institution for the Criminally Insane in Massachusetts, was the chief guru at the institute. Deitz was apparently a liaison between the FBI and the CAN and AFF. In at least one instance, CAN-sponsored kidnapper-deprogrammer Ken Connor was deployed through Deitz in an arm’s-length operation run for Quantico.
https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1989/eirv16n40-19891006/eirv16n40-19891006_034-from_mk_ultra_brainwashing_to_th.pdf
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By the time that the Rockefeller and Church Committee revelations about the CIA’s drug and brainwashing experimentation hit the light of day, many of the key players in the postwar human guinea pig programs had been quietly removed from the pad of one set of CIA funding fronts and set up in a series of community-based “anti-cult” fronts. During the mid-1970s, these groups proliferated as a loose federation of regional and local parents groups, ostensibly combatting groups like the Unification Church and the Scientologists. In a recent autobiography, longtime CIA “occult bureau” figure Miles Copeland candidly admitted that U.S. and British intelligence agencies had thoroughly penetrated and virtually taken over Scientology, as well as the Moral Rearmament Movement of Frank Buckman. The Church Committee, among other investigative bodies, detailed the intelligence community links of Reverend Moon’s group. So who was kidding whom?
The anti-cult networks vintage mid-1970s centered around MK -Ultra stalwarts like Dr. Louis Jolyon West, Rabbi Maurice Davis and Dr. John Clark. They set up shop in groups like Rabbi Davis’s Citizens Engaged in Reuniting Families (CERF) and the Citizens Freedom Foundation.
When one of Maurice Davis’s proteges, Rev. Jim Jones, oversaw the suicide/murder of nearly 900 followers in Guyana in late 1978, the loose federation of MK-Ultra community fronts consolidated into two national organizations, the American Family Foundation (AFF), a collection of psychiatrists, and the Cult Awareness Network (CAN).
Attached to each of the so-called anti-cult groupings was a small army of professional kidnapers claiming expertise in the previously unheard of field of “deprogramming.” According to several former “deprogrammers” interviewed for this series, these individuals, often trained in the military or intelligence community, were given a literal “license to kidnap.”
Government-blessed kidnappings, druggings, attempted brainwashings. Psychological warfare teams deployed under the cover of parents groups running guerrilla warfare
maneuvers on the streets of America. This continuing legacy of MK-Ultra continues to enjoy the protection of government agencies and the witting complicity of major national news outlets.
https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1989/eirv16n42-19891020/eirv16n42-19891020_044-why_tavistock_brainwashers_hate.pdf
Even though this EIR two-part series on MKUTRA might not be 100% correct in all it’s assertions, we still need to realize that Bishop Maurice Davis was not who we thought he was.
'til the next,
Don Diligent
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Statement by Fraser Committee Staff Director Robert Boettcher on 15 November, 1979
The United States Congress asked the Fraser Committee on International Organizations to investigate Korean-American relations. The following statement by the Committee’s Staff Director Robert Boettcher was made on November 15, 1979:
The ritual death of more than nine hundred Americans in Guyana last year unfortunately did not lead to an awakened national concern about destructive religious cults. Instead the tragedy came and went as just a media event. Its place in the public consciousness today seems mainly to be as one of the ‘big stories’ of 1978. Americans seem unprepared to come to grips with the possibility that there are other Jim Joneses whose words are absolute to large followings, and who operate as if above the law and with frightening potential for violence and death.
Our institutions, such as the mental health establishment and law enforcement agencies, fail to address seriously the phenomenon revealed by the People’s Temple. Yet it is still with us. The cults are flourishing. The one I know best. . . the organization of Sun Myung Moon . . . has in the past two years expanded its business empire with fishing industries in five states and the backing of a movie starring Laurence Olivier and Jacqueline Bisset. Only three months ago, two Moonies were charged with firing shots into an occupied car, an act of violence defended by a Unification Church spokesperson. And next week in Los Angeles, Moon will hold his annual International Conference for the Unity of the Sciences. Each year, hundreds of scientists and scholars, some of them Nobel laureates, attend the conference, even knowing that Moon intends to use them for his own propaganda, that he tells his obedient followers, ‘I am your brain,’ and that former members of the cult say Moon preaches and teaches suicide.
The people are entitled to an active interest in the cult phenomenon by mental health and behavioral professionals. One Harvard psychiatrist has said cult indoctrination techniques are ‘direct assaults on sanity.’ Ex-Moonies have said they felt capable of killing their parents and old friends while in the cult. But there are very few professionals studying cult mind control. They seem unprepared to deal with the concept, and the National Institute of Mental Health has been deterred even from discussing it by angry objections from the cults themselves:
An important legal question is also being ignored. There are compelling arguments that cult mind control violates the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which outlaws involuntary servitude.
As long as there is no accepted definition, scientific or legal, of mind control, cult leaders can continue to do their worst to recruits, efforts to free persons from cults will stay mired in legal controversy, and constructive treatment of former members will be hard to come by.
Inaction by the Justice Department has been characterised by confusion, caution, and neglect. For confusion, we have Attorney General Bell’s comment after the Guyana tragedy: ‘I don’t know what a cult is. I’m a Baptist. Maybe I’m a member of a cult.’ Then two months later Bell said he believed Patty Hearst had been brainwashed, but did nothing to suggest he thought brainwashing was possible by anyone other than Patty Hearst’s captors.
For caution, there is a letter to a Congressman by Benjamin Civiletti before he became Attorney General. On behalf of the Justice Department, he refused to look into the coercive effects of brainwashing because, he said, to do so ‘would seem to require a finding that the members’ religious beliefs were false.’ Earlier, during the Ford administration, the Justice Department turned down a State Department request to investigate Moon’s Unification Church for the reason that there was no prima facie evidence that it was not a bona fide church.
All of these attitudes play into the hands of the Moon cult which, for convenience sake, began calling itself a church about ten years ago and, ever since, has been insisting deceitfully and successfully that it is really no different from the established churches and therefore must have full First Amendment protection.
For neglect, we have the Justice Department ignoring the evidence and recommendations of the Fraser subcommittee, of which Congressman Leo Ryan, slain in Guyana, was a member. As stated in the final report of its Investigation of Korean-American Relations in 1978, the subcommittee found evidence that the Moon Organization had systematically violated US laws governing taxes, immigration, banking, currency, and foreign agents registration, and had at least attempted to violate the Arms Export Control Act in connection with Moon’s manufacture of M-16 rifles at his armaments plant in Korea.
Since the subcommittee’s mandate had expired and it had no law enforcement authority, it recommended that the executive branch of the federal government form an interagency task force to examine the evidence and conduct further investigation to determine whether formal charges should be brought by the appropriate agencies. A year later the Justice Department, whose role would be central in such a task force, has taken no action other than to decide against the task force proposal.
Some specifics on the Justice Department’s neglect:
The subcommittee found evidence that the Moon Organization had acted as an unregistered agent of the South Korean government by organizing political demonstrations for the Korean CIA, collecting money in the United States to support a radio service controlled by the Korean CIA, and negotiating with Americans for renewal of a Korean government contract to make M-16 rifles.
The only action known to have been taken by the Justice Department was in 1971 when it conducted one interview with Bo Hi Pak, Moon’s chief minion in Washington. Pak was asked if he was a Korean agent, said he was not, and Justice closed the case.
The Immigration and Naturalisation Service, which is subordinate to Justice, apparently has done nothing with evidence that Moon and his wife may be illegal aliens. There is a strong indication that they obtained their immigrant visas by making false statements.
The FBI, also in Justice’s domain, could be expected to investigate thoroughly and make findings about an organization operating throughout the country whose leader’s speeches are replete with exhortations of death and violence, and whose members have fermented violence and been reported to have made numerous death threats. There are no indications that the FBI is doing so with respect to the Moonies.
The FBI and Justice Department action which led to convicting nine Scientologists of conspiracy seems only minimally encouraging for the general public and somewhat ironic. In this case, the government did move against cult lawlessness, but it was for the purpose of protecting the government’s own particular interests, since the Scientologists had broken into government offices and planted spies in government agencies.
Moon’s ties with the Korean government having been ignored by the Justice Department, the prospects for his future relations with the Korean government may be brighter than ever. The person emerging as likely to succeed President Park Chung-Hee as the new strong man is Kim Jong-Pil, the founder of the Korean CIA. For the past seventeen years, Kim has been Moon’s most influential political ally.
The former members of Moon’s cult who are here today deserve support for the organization they have founded, Ex-Members Against Moon. I know they have a sincere motivation to help persons still under Moon’s control, who are bright, able young men and women like themselves.
The American people deserve support from the government, mental health professionals, and media. Lawlessness and psychological abuse, whether practiced by the Mafia or self-styled messiahs, should be put down. Jim Jones had his last stand in the Guyana jungle. Moon tells his followers he has an island off the coast of South Korea where he will take them when the world turns against him. One Jonestown tragedy is one too many.
United States Congressional investigation of the Unification Church
Bo Hi Pak and the KCFF scam – and Sun Myung Moon’s ROFA scam
Moonie “Dirty Tricks” against Donald Fraser
The Mysterious Death of Robert Boettcher in 1984
Donald M. Fraser’s house was attacked by an arsonist just after his investigation into the Unification Church. It was only saved by good fortune.
The house of Mr Justice Comyn was destroyed by arsonists just after the UC lost a massive libel case in London…..
Moon sought to influence the American political agenda by pouring more than a billion dollars into media.
Messiah on the Run
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Nansook Hong – In the Shadow of the Moons book, part 3
I am holding our first baby, and Hyo Jin is holding the youngest child of Sun Myung Moon.
In The Shadow Of The Moons: My Life In The Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Family by Nansook Hong 1998
Chapter 4
page 74
I entered the United States illegally on January 3, 1982. In order to obtain a visa, the Unification Church concocted a story about my participation in an international piano competition in New York City.
Had American immigration officials only heard me play, they would have recognized the ruse immediately. A pianist of my limited abilities would not have been among the contestants had such an event actually existed. To lend credence to the claim, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon had the best piano student at Little Angels school accompany me to New York for the same phony recital.
I confess I did not give much thought to the deceit that frigid winter day when my parents and I waved good-bye to my brothers and sisters and left for America. We accepted the Reverend Moon’s view that man’s laws are secondary to God’s plan. By his rationale, a fraudulently obtained visa was no less than an instrument of God’s design for my Holy Marriage to Hyo Jin Moon.
The truth is, I had not been thinking much at all in the six weeks since our engagement. Looking back, what I most resembled was a porcelain windup doll. Turn the key and she walks, she talks, she smiles. I was a schoolgirl, overwhelmed by the transformation I had undergone literally overnight. One day I was a child, shooed from the room whenever adults were discussing serious matters. The next day I was a member of the True Family, fumbling for the appropriate response when my elders bowed before me.
After Hyo Jin and his parents returned to America, my mother and I spent weeks shopping for a wardrobe that would match my metamorphosis from girl to woman. Gone were my school uniforms, my T-shirts and blue jeans. My teenage self was buried beneath tailored business suits and conservative sheaths. Awkward though I felt in this new role, I savored the attention. What girl would not revel in a round of dinner parties thrown in her honor? Whose head would not be turned by the solicitations of those so many years her senior?
If there was any hint of the troubles to come, it was in the discomfort I felt in the company of my intended. In December Hyo Jin Moon returned briefly to Korea, without his parents. Our meetings were strained as much by our lack of common interests as by his relentless pressure for sex. My mother had given me several books to read about marriage, but I was still unclear what the sex act actually entailed.
Hyo Jin took me to the Moon family’s home in Seoul during his visit and, under the pretext of showing me his room, cornered me by his bed. “Lie down with me,” he said. “You can trust me. We’ll be married soon.” I did as he asked, only to stiffen with fear as his clearly experienced hands groped my body and his fingers fumbled with layer upon layer of my winter clothing. “Touch me here,” he instructed, his hands guiding my own along his inner thigh. “Stroke me there.”
Sex before marriage is strictly prohibited by the Unification Church. Because Sun Myung Moon teaches that the Fall was a sexual act, incidents of premarital or extramarital sex are considered the most serious sin one can commit. Here I was, a scared and virginal girl of fifteen, having to remind the scion of the Unification Church, the son of the Messiah, that we both risked eternal damnation if I did as he demanded. He seemed more amused than angry at my righteous naivete. For my part, I believed with all my heart that God had chosen me to guide Hyo Jin away from his sinful path.
I had no idea how difficult that task would be. Even as the Korean Airlines jet landed at Kennedy International Airport in New York, I gave no thought to what my life actually would be like in America, a world away from everything I knew and everyone I loved. Humbled by my selection as Hyo Jin Moon’s bride, swept up in events being orchestrated by others, I did not ask myself how a mere mortal would fit into the “divine” family of Sun Myung Moon or how a virtuous girl could tame an older rebellious youth like Hyo Jin Moon.
As we deplaned in New York, I became separated from my parents in the crush of travelers being herded into lines for U.S. customs. The uniformed agent looked annoyed when I handed him my two large suitcases. He spoke brusquely to me, but because I did not speak English, I could not answer his questions. There was a flurry of activity and some shouting before someone came to assist me.
I watched as the customs agent dumped my neatly folded clothes onto the counter, searching the side and back pockets of my luggage. What was he looking for? What would I have?
It did not occur to me that the customs agent had reason to be suspicious. Where was my sheet music for this piano competition? Why had I packed so much for such a brief trip? Wasn’t I wearing thousands of dollars’ worth of necklaces given to me as engagement gifts in Korea? Hadn’t church leaders told me to hide them beneath my sedate brown dress?
I was arriving in the United States at the height of American antipathy toward Sun Myung Moon. He was reviled in the United States as a public menace on the order of the Reverend Jim Jones, the leader of the Peoples’ Temple cult who, in 1978, had fed more than nine hundred of his followers cyanide-laced fruit juice in a mass suicide in Guyana. The newspapers in America were full of stories about young people being brainwashed into following Sun Myung Moon. A cottage industry of “deprogrammers” had sprung up across the country, paid by parents to kidnap their children from Unification Church centers and “reeducate” them.
Having been born into the Unification Church, I knew little firsthand about the recruitment techniques that had made the church so controversial. I was skeptical about such melodramatic descriptions as “brainwashing,” but it was certainly true that new members were isolated from old friends and family. Church members were encouraged to learn as much as possible about new recruits in order to tailor an individual approach to win him or her over to the Unification Church. Members would “love bomb” new recruits with so much personal attention it is hardly any wonder that vulnerable young people responded so enthusiastically to their new “family.”
It was a recruit’s old family that usually suspected sinister motives in this all-embracing religious community. The year I came to America, it was not uncommon for travelers to be approached at airports, at traffic signals, or on street corners by young people selling trinkets or flowers for the Unification Church. Begging is hard and humiliating work and followers of Sun Myung Moon did it better than most. Asking for money is easier when you believe your panhandling is going to support the work of the Messiah.
The American government had as many questions about Sun Myung Moon’s finances as American parents had about his theology. Senator Robert Dole, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, had concluded hearings on the Unification Church with a recommendation that the Internal Revenue Service investigate the tax status of the Reverend Moon and his church. Only a month before my engagement, a federal grand jury in New York had indicted the Reverend Moon, charging him with evading income taxes for 1972 to 1974, as well as conspiracy to avoid taxes. No doubt that indictment had more to do with the scrutiny I received at JFK International Airport than the size of my suitcases did.
I knew none of that then, of course. I knew only that I was coming to America to join the True Family. Hyo Jin Moon paced impatiently outside the customs area. As I emerged, shaken from my ordeal, I looked around for the reassurance of my parents, but Hyo Jin hustled me to the parking area and his black sports car, an engagement gift from his father. He carried a small bouquet of flowers but was so exasperated by the delay he almost forgot to give them to me. My parents would meet us at East Garden, he said. I was too tired to object.
It was a silent, forty-minute drive north from New York City to Westchester County, through the wealthy suburbs where Manhattan’s corporate executives and professional elite make their homes in quaint, rural towns along the Hudson River. It was late. It was too dark to see much and I was too tired to care.
I paid more attention as we drove through the black, wrought iron gates. This was East Garden, at last. Hyo Jin acknowledged the guard at the security booth and headed up the long, winding driveway. Even in the dark, I thought I could make out the exact spot on the rolling lawn that I had gazed at reverentially for so many years. In our home in Korea, my family displayed a photograph of the True Family, seated on the emerald green grass of their American estate. I used to stare at that photograph, unshakable in my belief in the perfection of the individuals pictured there. In their expensive clothes, posed in front of their magnificent mansion, they represented the ideal family we prayed to emulate. I treasured that photograph the way other teenagers treasured photographs of rock ’n’ roll stars.
The Reverend and Mrs. Moon and the three oldest of their twelve children greeted us at the door. I bowed down to Father and Mother, humbled to be in their home. I listened for the sound of another car as I was led through the enormous foyer into what they called the yellow room, a beautiful solarium. Where were my parents? When would they and the church elders come? Surely I would not have to converse alone with the Reverend and Mrs. Moon!
As I entered the house, I stopped to take off my heavy winter boots. In Korea one never enters a home without first removing one’s shoes. It is a sign of respect as well as an act of fastidiousness. Hyo Jin’s sister, In Jin, stopped me. I should not keep her parents waiting. In the yellow room, we exchanged pleasantries about my trip. I smiled and said little, keeping my eyes downcast. It is impossible to overstate the level of my nervousness. I had never been alone in the company of the True Family. I was nearly paralyzed by a mixture of fear and reverence. I was relieved to hear the slam of a car door signaling the arrival of my parents.
While our parents conversed downstairs, Hyo Jin took me on a brief tour of the mansion. As large as it was, the house seemed to be bursting with children and their nannies. When I arrived in America, Mrs. Moon was pregnant with her thirteenth child. Most of the little ones and their baby-sitters were asleep that night in their barracks-like quarters on the third floor. Seeing them tucked in their beds made me ache for my own younger brothers and sisters back home in Korea, especially the youngest, Jin Chool, who was six years old.
It was well past midnight when we said good night to the Moons and a driver took my parents and me to Belvedere, the church-owned estate a few minutes from East Garden where guests often stayed. First my parents were shown to a room, then I was escorted down the hall to the most beautiful bedroom I had ever seen. Decorated in shades of pink and cream, the room was fit for a princess. In addition to the queen-sized bed, the room had a living area with a large couch and comfortable armchairs. It had a crystal chandelier and two walk-in closets bigger than some of the rooms we rented in Seoul when I was small. The bathroom was enormous, its original blue-and-white hand-painted tiles retaining the elegance of the 1920s, when the mansion was built.
I had never seen such a room. There was even a television set. I fumbled with the controls, and though I did not understand a single English word, I quickly discerned that I was seeing some kind of advertisement. I wish I had a photograph of my expression when I realized that I was watching a commercial for dog food. Special food for dogs? I was transfixed by the scene of a dog scampering across a kitchen floor to a bowl full of brown nuggets. In Korea, dogs eat table scraps. I fell asleep on my first night in America in a state of wonder — I was living in a country so rich that dogs had their own cuisine!
In the morning a driver returned to take my parents and me to the Moons’ breakfast table in the wood-paneled dining room at East Garden. This is where the Reverend Moon conducts his business and church affairs. Every morning leaders come here to report to him in Korean about his financial enterprises around the globe. At the long rectangular dining table, the Reverend Moon decides what projects to fund, what companies to buy, what personnel to promote or demote.
The Moon children do not eat their meals with their parents. They appear at the breakfast table to bow to the Reverend and Mrs. Moon each morning to begin their day. Then they are led away to the kitchen, where they are fed before school or playtime. On this morning, the older children joined their parents and mine for breakfast. I caught sight of the little ones peeking through the kitchen door to steal a glimpse of me, their new sister. I felt warmed by their giggles but shocked to learn that the younger Moon children did not speak Korean.
The Reverend Moon teaches that Korean is the universal language of the Kingdom of Heaven. He has written that “English is spoken only in the colonies of the Kingdom of Heaven! When the Unification Church movement becomes more advanced, the international and official language of the Unification Church shall be Korean; the official conferences will be conducted in Korean, similar to the Catholic conferences, which are conducted in Latin.” I knew that members around the world were encouraged to learn Korean, so I was confused by the failure of the Reverend and Mrs. Moon to teach their own children what I had been taught was the language of God.
I was overpowered that morning by the strange smells of an American breakfast. There was bacon and sausage, eggs and pancakes. The sight of all that food made me slightly nauseous. In Korea I was accustomed to a simple morning meal of kimchi and rice. Mrs. Moon had instructed the kitchen sisters to serve papaya, her favorite fruit. She knew I would never have tasted such an exotic delicacy and she kept urging me to try some. She showed me how to sprinkle the fruit with lemon juice to enhance the flavor, but I simply could not eat. She looked displeased. My mother ate the papaya placed before me and praised Mrs. Moon for her excellent choice.
The Reverend Moon sensed my unease. He spoke directly to Hyo Jin: “Nansook is in a strange place, in a foreign country. She does not speak the language or know the customs. This is your home. You must be kind to her.” I was so grateful to have my fears acknowledged by the Reverend Moon that I only vaguely noticed that Hyo Jin said nothing in response.
Hyo Jin did come to see me at Belvedere but his few visits were not reassuring. They only reinforced how ill-suited we were to one another. I was afraid of him. He would try to embrace me and I would pull away. I did not know how to be with a boy, let alone with a man I was soon to marry. “Why are you running away from me?” he would ask. How could I tell him what I was too young to understand myself? I was honored to be the spiritual partner of the son of the Messiah but I was not ready to be the wife of a flesh-and-blood man.
I passed through the next four days as if in a series of dream sequences. I moved from scene to scene, numb from exhaustion and the magnitude of unfolding events. I went where I was directed. I did as I was told, concerned only that I make no mistakes that would displease the Reverend and Mrs. Moon.
Mrs. Moon took my mother and me shopping at a suburban mall. I had never seen so many stores. Mrs. Moon gravitated to the most expensive shops. At Neiman-Marcus she selected unflattering, matronly dresses in dark colors for me to try on. She chose bright red or royal blue outfits for herself. I suspect that she resented my youth. She had heard her husband on my engagement day say that I was prettier than she. It was hard for me to imagine a woman as stunning as Hak Ja Han Moon being jealous of anyone, especially a schoolgirl like me. She had been only a year older than I when she married Sun Myung Moon. At thirty-eight, pregnant with her thirteenth child, she still had the flawless skin and facial features of a great beauty.
She was outwardly generous to me, summoning me to her room that first week to give me a dress she no longer wore and a lovely gold chain. I took the chain off in her bathroom as I tried on the dress and mistakenly left it on the sink. She sent her maid to me later at Belvedere to give me the necklace. Mrs. Moon opened her closet and her purse to me, but from the very first, I felt she closed her heart.
The position of first daughter-in-law in a Korean family is, by tradition, an exalted one. She will inherit the role of mother and be the anchor of the family. There is even a special term for first daughter-in-law in Korean: mat mea nue ri. It was clear from the beginning that I would not fill this role in the Moon family. I was too young. “I had to raise Mother and now I have to raise my daughter-in-law, too,” the Reverend Moon always said. It was only later that I recognized that no outsider would have been allowed a key role in the Moon family. As an in-law, one had to know one’s place. For me that meant when the family was gathered, being the last person to sit in the seat farthest away from Sun Myung Moon.
Given the attention of customs officials that I had attracted at the airport, the Reverend Moon decided it would be prudent to stage a piano recital after all. I was in a panic. I had not practiced. I had brought no music with me. My mother assured me that I could get by with a Schumann piece I had memorized for class at Little Angels. I thought perhaps I remembered it well enough. Hyo Jin and Peter Kim, the Reverend Moon’s personal assistant, drove me into New York City one afternoon to give me a chance to practice on the stage of Manhattan Center, the performing arts facility and recording studio owned by the church in midtown, where the recital would be held.83
I sat alone in the backseat of one of the Reverend Moon’s black Mercedes, staring out at the city as its skyscrapers came into view. I knew I should be impressed, but it was a cold, gray January day. My only impression was how lifeless New York City seemed. In retrospect, that dead feeling may have had more to do with my own emotions; they were as frozen as the concrete landscape outside my window.
At Manhattan Center, we met Hoon Sook Pak, the daughter of Bo Hi Pak, one of the highest-ranking officials in the church. She was Hyo Jin’s age; he had lived with her family in Washington, D.C., during his tumultuous middle-school years. She would later become a ballerina with the Universal Ballet Company, Korea’s first ballet troupe, founded by Sun Myung Moon. They greeted one another warmly in English, though both spoke fluent Korean. I stood there mute while they chatted at great length. I could feel my cheeks burn. Why were they ignoring me? Why were they being so rude? I got even angrier when Hyo Jin left me in a small anteroom while he went to talk to some other people. “Stay here,” he instructed as if I were a puppy he was training to obey.
I felt a surge of that familiar stubborn pride that had provoked so many childhood arguments with my brother Jin. As soon as Hyo Jin was out of sight, I went exploring. The performing arts center is adjacent to the old New Yorker Hotel, now owned by Sun Myung Moon. The church uses the hotel to house members. The entire thirtieth floor is set aside for the True Family, to accommodate them on their overnight stays in New York City. I wandered around, jiggling the doorknobs of locked rooms.
Hyo Jin was furious when he returned to find that his pet had not stayed put, as ordered. “You can’t just go off like that. You are in New York City. It’s dangerous,” he screamed. “Someone could have kidnapped you.” I said nothing but I thought, “Pooh! Who would kidnap me?” Mostly I hated that this rude boy thought he could tell me what to do.
Hundreds of church members filled the concert hall on the night of my performance. I was a small part of the evening’s entertainment. I was the third of several pianists to play. I wore a long pink gown that my mother had bought for me before we left Korea. My stomach was doing somersaults, whether from the sushi I’d eaten at lunch or from the prospect of performing for the True Family, who were seated in the theater’s VIP box. In Jin, Hyo Jin’s sister, spooned out Pepto-Bismol for me to drink. It worked. I thought of that pink liquid as I did dog food: one of the wonders of America.
I played too quickly. The audience did not know I was done, so there was a delay in the applause. I was just relieved that I had made it through the piece and only missed a few notes. As soon as I got backstage, Hyo Jin and In Jin told me to change into my street clothes. I did as they said, not realizing there would be a curtain call for all the performers at the end of the evening. I could not go onstage dressed so casually, so I took no bows with the others.
In the Moons’ suite in the New Yorker after the show, the Reverend Moon was so pleased with the evening that he decided that a real piano competition should be an annual event. Mrs. Moon, however, was icy toward me. “Why didn’t you take your bow with the others?” she snapped. “Why did you change your clothes?” I was taken aback. What could I say? That I had done as her son instructed? Hyo Jin watched me squirm and said nothing. I just bowed my head and accepted my scolding.
My failure to appear for the curtain call was not my first infraction, it turned out. Mrs. Moon had been keeping track of my missteps. She enumerated them all for my mother the next day. I had been rude to enter their home wearing my boots; I had been careless to leave the necklace on the sink; I had been ungracious not to eat heartily at mealtime; I had been thoughtless not to take a bow at curtain call. In addition, she told my mother, Hyo Jin complained that my breath was stale. Mrs. Moon sent my mother to me with words of caution and a bottle of Listermint mouthwash.
I was devastated. If first impressions were the most lasting, my relationship with Mrs. Moon was doomed my first week in America.
The wedding was set for Saturday, January 7, in order to accommodate the school schedules of the Moon children. There was no marriage license. We had had no blood tests. I was a year below the legal age to marry in New York State. My Holy Wedding to Hyo Jin Moon was not legally binding. Not that I knew that, or cared. The Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s authority was the only power that mattered.
We attended breakfast with the Reverend and Mrs. Moon in the morning. My mother urged me to eat. It would be a long day. There would be two ceremonies. A Western ritual would be held in the library of Belvedere. I would wear a long white dress and veil. Afterward there would be a traditional Korean wedding, for which Hyo Jin and I would wear the traditional wedding clothes of our native country. A banquet would follow in New York City.
My mother asked Mrs. Moon if I might have a hairdresser arrange my hair and apply my makeup. A waste of money, Mrs. Moon said; In Jin would help. I worshiped In Jin as a member of the True Family, but I was not so certain I trusted her to be my friend. She did as her parents asked, winning their praise for her kindness to me, but I could see that I was no more her type than I was Hyo Jin’s. As she dusted my face with powder, she offered me some advice. I would have to change, and fast, if I was going to fit in with the Moon children, especially my husband. “I know Hyo Jin better than anyone,” she told me. “He does not like quiet girls. He likes to have fun, to party. You need to be more outgoing if you want to make him happy.”
Hyo Jin looked pleased enough when he stopped by to see me just before the ceremony, but I knew I was not the source of his happiness. On this day he would be his father’s favorite, the good son, not the black sheep. He even agreed to trim his long shaggy hair to please his parents.
As I walked alone down the long hallway that led to the library and my future, an old Korean woman whispered to me, “Don’t smile or your first child will be a girl.” That was an easy instruction to follow, and not just because I knew the great disappointment that greeted the birth of females in my culture. My wedding day was supposed to be the happiest day of my life, but all I felt was numb. I want to weep for the girl I was when I look at the photographs in my wedding album. I look even more miserable in those pictures than I remember feeling.
There was a crush of people on both sides of me as I entered the library and made my way across the room to the Reverend and Mrs. Moon in their long white ceremonial robes. The library was very hot, packed with people, all of whom were strangers to me except for my parents. It was an impressive room, its dark wood-paneled walls lined with old, unread books, its high ceilings hung with chandeliers. It was hard not to believe in that setting that I was fulfilling God’s plan for me and for the future of the True Family charged by him with establishing Heaven on earth. I was an instrument of his larger purpose. The marriage of Hyo Jin Moon and Nansook Hong was no silly, human love match. God and Sun Myung Moon, by uniting us, had ordained it.
It was a smaller group of family and church leaders who attended the Korean rites upstairs in Belvedere. I was learning that the Moons do the most momentous things in life in a hurry, so I barely had time to arrange my hair in the traditional style before I was summoned. I forgot to dot my cheeks in red in the customary manner, a failure noted by Mrs. Moon and the ladies who surround her. Hyo Jin and I stood before True Parents at an offering table laden with food and Korean wine. Fruits and vegetables were strewn beneath my skirt as part of a folk tradition meant to symbolize the bride’s desire to produce many children.
I remember little of the actual ceremony. I was so tired that I relied on the flash of the official church photographer’s camera to keep me focused. I was grateful for orders to “stand here” or to “say this.” If I kept moving, I would not collapse.
A driver took Hyo Jin and me back to East Garden to change our clothes for the reception that would be held in the ballroom of Manhattan Center. He delivered us to a small stone house up the hill from the mansion. With its white porch and charming stone facade, it looked like something out of a fairy tale. This is where Hyo Jin and I would live. We called the place Cottage House. There was a living room, a guest room, and a small kitchen on the first floor. Upstairs was a small bathroom and two bedrooms. Our suitcases, I saw, had been delivered to the larger of the bedrooms.
Hyo Jin insisted that we have sex. I begged him to wait until the night — True Parents expected us to be ready to leave within the hour — but he would not be put off. I did not want to be naked in front of him. I slipped into bed to remove my clothes, a practice I would continue for the next fourteen years. I had read the books my mother gave me, but I was totally unprepared for the shock of sexual intercourse. When Hyo Jin got on top of me I did not know what to expect. He was very rough, excited at the prospect of deflowering a virgin. He told me what to do, where to touch. I just followed his directions. When he entered me, it was all I could do not to cry out from the pain. It did not take very long for him to finish, but for hours afterward, my insides burned with pain. “So this is what sex is,” I kept thinking.
I began to cry, from pain, from exhaustion, from shame. I felt we were wrong not to wait. Hyo Jin kept trying to shush me. Didn’t I enjoy it? he wanted to know. It was very “ouchy,” I told him, using a little girl’s word for a woman’s pain. He said he’d never heard that reaction before, confirming all the rumors I had heard in Korea. Hyo Jin had had many lovers. I was shocked and hurt that he would confess his sin in such a callous and cavalier way. I wept even harder, until his sharp tone and angry rebuke forced me to dry my tears. At least I now knew what sex was and who my husband was. It was horrible; he was no better.
While we were dressing, a kitchen sister called to say that True Parents were waiting for us in the car. We rushed downstairs and into the front seat of a black limousine. Mrs. Moon looked at me accusingly. “What delayed you?” she snapped. “There are people waiting.” Hyo Jin said nothing, but our flushed faces and hastily arranged clothing made our actions evident. I was glad the Moons were in the backseat so that they could not see my shame.
I fell asleep on the drive into Manhattan but my rest was short-lived. The ballroom of Manhattan Center was filled with banquet tables and hundreds of people, most of them American members. They cheered as we entered and took our seats at the head table. I was tired of all the hoopla, but there still were hours of entertainment and dining ahead of me. It was an American meal of steak and baked potatoes and ice cream and cake. My mother urged me to eat, but everything tasted like sand. Despite the Korean flavor of the entertainment, the entire evening was conducted in English. I understood not a word of the many speeches and toasts raised in honor of Hyo Jin and me. I smiled when the others smiled and applauded when the others did likewise.
The language barrier had the effect of making me a spectator at my own wedding. I was in this group but not part of it. I looked around at all the Moons singing, clapping. Everyone looked so happy. It was pretty exciting to watch. I was yanked out of my isolation when my father, who also did not understand English, told me he suspected I would be asked to make some brief remarks. “In English?” I asked, terrified. “No, no,” my father reassured me. “Hyo Jin will translate for you.” My father told me to keep it short, to thank God and the Reverend Moon and to promise to be a good wife to Hyo Jin. When the time came I did as my father said. The room erupted in shouts of “What did she say?” from the non-Korean audience. “Oh, it was nothing important,” Hyo Jin told them as he went on to make his own remarks in English to tumultuous applause.
I kept my hands in my lap as I clapped. The Reverend Moon instructed me to lift them onto the table and told me to applaud more openly to demonstrate my joy on my wedding day and my appreciation of Hyo Jin. I did as he instructed, thinking all the while: “I am such an idiot. Can’t I do anything right?”
The festivities did not end even after we returned to East Garden. It is a Korean tradition for wedding guests to strike the soles of the groom’s feet with a stick for his symbolic thievery of his bride. Back at Cottage House, Hyo Jin put on several pairs of socks in preparation for this ritual assault. The Reverend and Mrs. Moon laughed as church leaders tied Hyo Jin’s ankles together so he could not escape. Every time they hit Hyo Jin’s feet Father would express mock outrage: “Stop, I will pay you not to hit my son.” Those wielding the stick would take his money and resume their beating. “I’ll give you more money if you stop,” the Reverend Moon would shout and again the laughter would begin as they stuffed Father’s money into their pockets and began hitting Hyo Jin again.
I watched the proceedings from a soft armchair that threatened to swallow me straight into sleep. Everyone commented on my calm demeanor. “She does not cry out to them to stop hitting her husband.” I was not calm; I was numb. At the urging of the crowd, I tried to untie his ankles but I was so tired Hyo Jin had to do it himself.
The next morning we all gathered at the Reverend Moon’s breakfast table. Hyo Jin disappeared early, I don’t know to where. I stayed to wait on the Reverend and Mrs. Moon. I was not certain what my role should be in the True Family, and my new husband was little help in guiding me. I fell naturally into the role of handmaiden to Mrs. Moon.
It was not until after the wedding that anyone suggested to me that Hyo Jin and I might take a honeymoon. He wanted to go to Hawaii, but the Reverend Moon suggested Florida instead. Ours was not a conventional wedding trip. We made an odd threesome: husband, wife, and personal assistant to Sun Myung Moon. The Reverend Moon had handed his assistant, Peter Kim, five thousand dollars, with instructions to drive us to Florida. No one told me where we would be going or what we would be doing. My mother, accustomed to the formality of East Garden, packed a suitcase full of prim dresses for me, and I tossed in a single pair of blue jeans and a T-shirt.
Peter Kim and Hyo Jin sat in the front seat of the blue Mercedes. I sat alone in the back. They spoke in English for the eleven-hundred-mile trip down the East Coast. My sense of isolation was complete. The two men decided where and when we would stop to eat or sleep. I remember fighting off tears at a gas station rest room. I could not figure out how the hand dryer worked. I thought I had broken it when it would not stop blowing hot air. It was a small moment, but a lonely one. Such a simple thing and I had no one to ask for help.
I brightened a little when we arrived in Florida and Peter Kim suggested taking me to Disney World. I was a fifteen-year-old girl. I could not imagine a more wonderful vacation spot. Hyo Jin was unenthusiastic. He had been there many times before. He reluctantly agreed to stop in Orlando. It was cold. A light drizzle was falling, but I did not care. I walked down Main Street USA toward Cinderella’s castle and understood exactly why they call Disney World the Magic Kingdom. I kept my eyes peeled for Mickey Mouse or any of the familiar costumed characters, but I would not have an opportunity to see any of them. Ten minutes after we arrived, Hyo Jin declared that he was bored and wanted to leave. I was astounded by his selfishness, but I followed a few steps behind as he led the way back to the Mercedes.
The Reverend Moon had suggested we drive to give me a chance to see some of the United States, but Hyo Jin soon ran out of patience with that plan as well. He summoned a security guard from East Garden to fly down to Florida to pick up the car. We were flying to Las Vegas, he told me.
I had no idea where or what Las Vegas was and neither Hyo Jin nor Peter Kim bothered to enlighten me. Neither did they tell me that the Reverend and Mrs. Moon and my own mother and father were vacationing there. I did not know we would be joining our parents until we walked across the hotel restaurant to the table where they were seated. My mother chastised me for gazing distractedly around the room as I walked toward them. It would only have been disrespectful, I told her, if I had known that the Moons were there and I did not!
I was all the more confused when I learned that Las Vegas is a gamblers’ paradise. There were slot machines in the restaurants, casinos in the hotels. What were we all doing in a place like this? Gambling is strictly prohibited by the Unification Church. Betting of any kind is seen as a social ill that undermines the family and contributes to the moral decline of civilization. Why, then, was Hak Ja Han Moon, the Mother of the True Family, cradling a cup of coins and feverishly inserting them one after another into a slot machine? Why was Sun Myung Moon, the Lord of the Second Advent, the divine successor to the man who threw the money changers out of the temple, spending hours at the blackjack table?
I dared not ask, but I did not need to. The Reverend Moon was eager to explain our presence in a place I had been taught was a den of sin. As the Lord of the Second Advent, he said, it was his duty to mingle with sinners in order to save them. He had to understand their sin in order to dissuade them from it. I should notice, he said, that he did not sit and bet at the blackjack table himself. Peter Kim sat there for him and placed the bets as the Reverend Moon instructed from his position behind Peter Kim’s shoulder. “So you see, I am not actually gambling, myself,” he told me.
Even at age fifteen, even from the mouth of the Messiah, I recognized a rationalization when I heard one.
Chapter 5
page 94
I returned to East Garden a married woman in the eyes of the Unification Church, but to all appearances, I was still a child in need of schooling. If I had harbored any doubts about my second-class status in the family of Sun Myung Moon, the discussions about my education certainly clarified my standing.
With the exception of my new husband, who at nineteen still had not completed high school, the school-age children of the Reverend Moon attended a private academy in Tarrytown. Mrs. Moon made it clear that she had no intention of paying the forty-five-hundred-dollar-a-year tuition at the Hackley School for me. Public school would do.
Early in February, Peter Kim drove me to Irvington High School to enroll me in the tenth grade. We stopped at a convenience store first to buy a notebook and some pencils. I would use the name Nansook Hong. No one was to know of my marriage or of my relationship with the Moon family. Peter Kim presented himself to the principal as my guardian. My report cards would be sent to him. I had been in the top 10 percent of my class at Little Angels Art School back in Seoul, but the prospect of attending an American school filled me with dread. I walked behind Peter Kim through the noisy corridors of this typical suburban high school, taking in the laughter and casual dress of the teenagers rushing past me. How would I ever fit into this scene of pep rallies and junior proms? How would I even understand my English-speaking teachers? How would I ever reconcile being a serious student at school and a subservient wife at home? How would I be anything but lonely living this double life?
I woke every day by 6:00 a.m. in order to greet the Reverend and Mrs. Moon at their breakfast table. The mornings were crazy in the mansion kitchen. No one was ever certain what time the Reverend and Mrs. Moon would come downstairs, but when they did, they expected to be served immediately. The two cooks and three assistants would have prepared a main course, but as often as not, they would have to scurry if the Moons preferred something else. I would already have had a bite to eat in the kitchen before the Moons arrived at the table with a host of church leaders. I would drop to my knees for a full bow when they appeared and wait to be dismissed to the care of the driver who delivered me to school.
I was usually very tired in the morning because Hyo Jin never came home before midnight and demanded sex when he did. More often than not, he was drunk when he stumbled up the stairs of Cottage House, reeking of tequila and stale cigarettes. I would pretend to be asleep, hoping he would leave me alone, but he rarely did. I was there to serve his needs; my own did not matter.
I tiptoed around our room in the mornings, though there was little danger of waking my husband. He slept soundly well into the day; sometimes he was still sleeping when I returned from school. He would rouse himself, shower, and then return to Manhattan to make the rounds of his favorite nightclubs, lounges, and Korean bars. At nineteen, Hyo Jin had no trouble being served in the Korean-owned establishments he frequented. He often took his younger brother Heung Jin, then fifteen, and his sister In Jin, sixteen, with him on his late-night drinking jaunts.
Hyo Jin invited me to join them only once. We drove to a smoky Korean nightclub bar. It was obvious that the Moon children were regular customers; all the hostesses greeted them affectionately. A waitress brought Hyo Jin a bottle of Gold Tequila and a box of Marlboro Lights. In Jin and Heung Jin drank right along with him, while I sipped a glass of Coca-Cola.
I tried to hold them back, but the tears came in spite of my best efforts. What were we doing in a place like this? All of my childhood I had been taught that members of the Unification Church do not go to bars, that followers of Sun Myung Moon do not drink alcohol or use tobacco. How could I be sitting in this place with the True Children of the Reverend Moon while they engaged in the very behavior that Father traveled the globe denouncing?
In the world of funhouse mirrors I had entered, their behavior was not the problem. Mine was. “Why are you being like this?” Hyo Jin demanded before moving in disgust to another table. “You are spoiling everyone’s good time. We came out to enjoy ourselves, not to be your baby-sitter.” In Jin slipped into the chair beside me. “Stop crying or Hyo Jin will get very angry,” she warned me sternly. “If you act like this, he won’t like you.” I had no time to compose myself before my husband yelled, “Let’s go. We’re taking her home.”
No one spoke to me during the long drive to East Garden. I could feel their disdain pressing against me in the overheated car. “Don’t cry,” I kept telling myself. “You’ll be home soon.” Just before Hyo Jin dropped me off, he picked up one of my classmates, a Blessed Child who shared the Moon siblings’ passion for fun. She squeezed into the backseat, not even acknowledging my presence. They practically left skid marks on the driveway in their rush to return to New York.
That was the first of so many nights I cried myself to sleep. On my knees for hours beside our bed, I begged God to help me. “If you sent me here to do your will,” I prayed, “please guide me.” I believed in every chamber of my young heart that if I failed God in this life, I would be denied a place in Heaven with him in the next. What good is a happy earthly life if you don’t go to God?
My knees were raw with carpet burns early the next morning when Mother summoned me to her room. Hyo Jin and the others still were not home. Where were they, she wanted to know. Why wasn’t I with them? Prostrate before her on the floor, I wept as I recounted the events of the previous evening. It was a relief to share this awful burden with Mother. Maybe now something would change. Mrs. Moon was very angry, but not at Hyo Jin, as I had expected. She was furious with me. I was a stupid girl. Why did I think I had been brought to America? It was my mission to change Hyo Jin. I was failing God and Sun Myung Moon. It was up to me to make Hyo Jin want to stay home.
How could I tell her that when her son did stay home, things were no better? He had usurped the living room in Cottage House for the use of his rock ’n’ roll group, the U Band. I hated their all-night practice sessions. The whole house shook when they played or listened to music on his stereo. Hyo Jin insisted that my training in classical music had made me a snob, but my distaste for his band had less to do with the music they played than with the way they behaved in our home. Band members would begin to assemble in the early evening, joined often by other Blessed Children who lived nearby. No sooner would I hear the guitars tuning up than the smell of marijuana smoke would drift upstairs, where I would be doing my homework.
My shock was a source of amusement to Hyo Jin and his friends, I knew, but the truth is my feelings about them were conflicted. I did not want to engage in proscribed behavior, but I was so very lonely upstairs with my schoolbooks. I did not want to join them, but I longed to be asked. I found myself living in an upside-down world, mocked by my peers for believing what we all had been taught, and chastised by my elders for failures that were not my own.
How could I tell Mrs. Moon that her children’s barhopping was the least of their sins? I said nothing while she berated me. It was not long afterward that Mrs. Moon called my mother to her room to catalog my failings. In Jin had reported that I had worn my wedding ring to school. In Jin said I was asking around about Hyo Jin’s old girlfriends.
I had done no such things, but it was impossible to defend myself before the Reverend and Mrs. Moon without seeming to criticize their own children, and that would not be tolerated. I tried to explain this to my own mother, but her only counsel was that I must be more careful not to offend the True Family. I must be cautious when I spoke. I must pray to become more worthy. That didn’t seem possible. I was criticized at every turn, judged guilty without a fair hearing. Too often falsely accused, I became wary of trusting anyone.
How I wished that my father or my brother Jin would come from Korea! The Moons had sent my father back to Seoul soon after the wedding. Jin was still there, too, waiting to finish high school and obtain a visa to join his wife, Je Jin Moon, in the United States. When he came, I knew Jin would be preoccupied with his own life. He talked of attending college at Harvard, and the Reverend Moon seemed willing to send him, my brother’s academic success a feather in the Messiah’s cap. I was thrilled for Jin but sad for myself; I would have to remain in East Garden, surrounded by those who hated me.
Un Jin Moon was an exception. She was a year younger than I. She did not get along very well with In Jin either. We became friendly soon after my arrival at East Garden. I will always be grateful for Un Jin’s kindness in those initial months. Everything was so new and I was so terrified of doing the wrong thing. At the first Sunday-morning Pledge Service I attended in East Garden, for example, I wore my long white church robes, only to discover all the Moons dressed in suits and dresses. I was mortified as only a teenager who is conspicuously dressed can be. I was embarrassed by my ignorance and hurt that no one had offered me guidance to such simple practices. Un Jin stepped in to fill that role, telling me what to expect at family gatherings and church ceremonies.
The Pledge Service was held in the study adjacent to the bedroom of the Reverend and Mrs. Moon. I was amazed at those services to realize that the Moon children did not know the words to the Pledge that I had been reciting from memory since I was seven years old. After the prayer service, the church sisters would bring snacks for the True Family: juice, cheesecake, doughnuts, and Danish. I would serve the Reverend and Mrs. Moon until it was time for us to go to Belvedere at 6:00 a.m., when the Reverend Moon preached his regular Sunday sermon before a gathering of local members.
It was an honor for me as a young woman to be able to hear Sun Myung Moon preach every week. He spoke in Korean, so it was easy for me to follow him. The American members relied on the rough translation provided by his assistants. I wish I could capture what it was about the Reverend Moon’s sermons that touched my heart. It was not that he was especially profound, or particularly charismatic. In truth, he was neither. Mostly he urged us to dedicate our lives to serving God and humanity by becoming moral and just individuals. It was a noble calling. Most of us in that room at Belvedere on Sunday mornings really believed, however naively, that by our goodness alone we could change the world. There was an innocence and a gentleness about our beliefs that is seldom reflected in the denunciations of Unification Church members as cultists. We may have been seduced into a cult, but most of us were not cultists; we were idealists.
While the other Moon children went drinking in New York, Un Jin and I would stay up late into the night baking in the mansion’s kitchen, chatting in Korean. Un Jin was a wonderful cook and a generous spirit, sharing her chocolate chip cheesecakes and homemade cookies with the security guards who had an office in the basement of the mansion.
The church members who composed the household staff were more accustomed to taking orders than gifts from the Moon children. The True Family treated the staff like indentured servants. The kitchen sisters and baby-sitters slept six to a room in the attic. They were given a small stipend but no real salary. The situation was little better for security guards, gardeners, and handymen who took care of the Moon properties. The Moons’ attitude was that church members were privileged to live in such close proximity to the True Family. In exchange for that honor, they were ordered around by even the smallest of the Moons: “Bring me this.” “Get me that.” “Pick up my clothes.” “Make my bed.”
Sun Myung Moon taught his children that they were little princes and princesses and they acted accordingly. It was embarrassing to watch and amazing to see how accepting the staff were of the verbal abuse meted out by the Moon children. Like me, they believed the True Family was faultless. If any of the Moons had complaints with us, it must reflect not on their expectations but on our unworthiness. Given that mind-set, I was especially grateful for Un Jin’s kindness. She never acted superior toward me; she seemed to like me for myself.
In Jin disapproved of my friendship with her sister but she could be nice to me herself when it suited her purpose. She came to me once, asking to borrow some clothes so she could sneak out that night. Her own room was next to her parents’ suite in the mansion and she did not want to risk running into Father. Why not? I asked. She told me that recently she had come into her room on tiptoe about 4:00 a.m. It was still dark. She thought she was in the clear, when she saw Father’s shadow in a chair across the room.
As Sun Myung Moon struck her over and over again, his daughter told me, he insisted he was hitting her out of love. It was not her first beating at Father’s hands. She said she wished she had the courage to go to the police and have Sun Myung Moon arrested for child abuse. I lent her my best blue jeans and a white angora sweater and tried to hide how shocked I was by her story.
As much as anything about my new life in the True Family, the antipathy between the Moon children and their parents stunned me. Early on, I was disabused of the idea that this was a warm and loving family. If they had reached a state of spiritual perfection, it was often hard to detect in their daily interactions with one another. Even the smallest children were expected to gather for the 5:00 a.m. family Pledge Service on Sundays, for instance. The little ones were often sleepy and sometimes cranky. The women would spend the first few minutes trying to settle them down. The Reverend Moon would become enraged if our efforts to shush them did not succeed immediately. I remember recoiling the first of so many times that I saw Sun Myung Moon slap his children to silence them. Of course, his slaps only made them cry more.
Hyo Jin never disguised his contempt for Father and Mother. He seemed to consider them as little more than convenient sources of cash. We had no checking account or regular allowance when we were first married. Mother would just hand us money, a thousand dollars here, two thousand dollars there, on no particular schedule. On a child’s birthday or a church holiday, Japanese and other church leaders would come to the compound with thousands of dollars in “donations” for the True Family. The cash went straight into the safe in Mrs. Moon’s bedroom closet.
Later on, Mrs. Moon told me that fund-raisers in Japan had been assigned to provide money for the support of Hyo Jin’s family and that funds would be sent regularly for that purpose. I had no idea how the mechanics of this worked. The money did not come directly to us. In the mid-1980s, money deposited in the True Family Trust was wired to Hyo Jin, and the other adult Moon children, every month. Hyo Jin received about seven thousand dollars a month, deposited directly into the joint checking account we had established at First Fidelity Bank in Tarrytown. The specific source of that money, beyond “Japan,” was never clear to me.
Hyo Jin would go to Mother regularly for large sums of cash. She never said no, as far as I could tell. He stashed his money in the closet of our bedroom, dipping into his cash reserves whenever he headed out to the bars.
I was terrified one evening when he began screaming and throwing things around our room as he prepared for one of his evenings in Manhattan. “I’m going to kill you, you bitch,” Hyo Jin yelled, as he rummaged through his closet, knocking clothes from their hangers and ties from their rack. “What did I do?” I asked apprehensively. “Not you, stupid. Mother. She’s trying to ruin my life.” His money was missing. He assumed Mother had come into Cottage House and taken it in order to curtail his drinking. I was doubtful. I had seen no evidence that either the Reverend Moon or Mrs. Moon tried to exercise any control over their children’s wild behavior.
As I picked up his rumpled clothes, I found a wad of cash on the closet floor, wedged between a pair of shoes. It must have fallen out of a coat pocket. I counted more than six thousand dollars. Hyo Jin snatched the money from my hand, continuing to denounce Mother with a string of profanities as he nearly knocked the door from its hinges on his way out to the bars.
School, as difficult as it was for me, was a haven of sanity compared with the chaos of Cottage House. In English class I memorized lists of vocabulary words with no idea what they meant. In biology class I stared blankly as the teacher spoke directly to me and the class convulsed with laughter at my total lack of comprehension. It was only in math class that I saw a glimpse of the competent student I once was. For those forty minutes we all spoke the universal language of numbers. I was only a sophomore but I was enrolled in a twelfth-grade algebra class that covered material I had mastered in fourth grade in Korea.
I sat with other Blessed Children from Korea at lunch and sometimes studied with them as well. My position as the wife of Hyo Jin Moon lent a formality to our relationship that precluded real friendship. That cafeteria table was just one more place where I did not quite fit in. Two of my Korean classmates came to Cottage House one afternoon to study with me. They asked for a house tour. I showed them the practice room crammed with guitars and amplifiers and drums of the U Band. I showed them the bedroom and my study, where Mrs. Moon had installed a desk and bookcases for me.
“But where do you sleep?” one of the girls asked. “In the bedroom, of course,” I said, realizing too late that they were staring at the queen-sized bed. As members of the church, they knew of my marriage to Hyo Jin Moon, but they must have assumed it had not been consummated. That was not such a foolish assumption, I realize now. The age of consent in New York State is seventeen. Hyo Jin could have been arrested for statutory rape.
My embarrassment turned to shame when one of the Blessed Children turned on the television and an X-rated movie in the VCR came on the screen. I had never even seen Hyo Jin use the VCR. I checked the television cabinet and it was full of similar movies. Hyo Jin only laughed later when I confronted him about the pornographic films. He liked sexual variety, he said pointedly, in his life as well as in his entertainment. I should know that he could never be satisfied with one woman, especially a girl as prim and pious as I.
Hyo Jin even went to his mother to complain about my lack of sexual maturity. She called me to her one day to discuss my wifely duties. It was very awkward. I had trouble following her euphemisms about being a lady during the day and a woman at night. We must be friends to our husbands in the day but fulfill their fantasies at night, she said; otherwise they will stray. If a husband does stray, it reflects a wife’s failure to satisfy him. I must try harder to be the kind of woman Hyo Jin wants. I was confused. Hadn’t Sun Myung Moon chosen me for my innocence? Was I now expected to be a temptress? At fifteen?
I was beginning to see the truth: our marriage was a sham. Hyo Jin had gone through with the wedding, but he had every intention of living the life he had before. I suspected that Hyo Jin was having sex with the hostesses at the Korean bars he frequented, but I had no proof. When I would ask him what he did when he stayed out all night, he told me that it was impudent of me to question the son of the Messiah. I would lie awake in our bed, imagining that I heard his car, when it was only the sound of the wind.
Soon after our wedding, I had physical proof of his promiscuous lifestyle, but I was too naive to recognize it. Within weeks of our marriage, painful blisters began to appear in my genital area. I had no idea what had triggered the eruption of such terrible sores. Perhaps it was a normal reaction to sexual intercourse. Perhaps it was a nervous reaction.
It was no such thing, of course. Hyo Jin Moon had given me herpes. For years I would have to undergo laser treatments and apply topical ointments whenever the rash erupted. I spent one entire night soaking in a warm tub after a laser treatment inadvertently burned the delicate skin in the affected area. Hyo Jin watched me crying in agony in that tub that night and never told me the true source of my pain. It was years before my gynecologist told me explicitly that I suffered from a sexually transmitted disease. I needed to know, she said, because in the age of AIDS, Hyo Jin’s adulterous behavior was not just a risk to his soul. It was a risk to my life.
In the spring of 1982, though, I knew only that Hyo Jin did not love me. Within weeks of our wedding, he told me we should go our separate ways before we ruined each other’s lives. “We can’t,” I replied, stunned and tearful. “Father matched us. He says we must live together. We can’t just split up.” That was when Hyo Jin told me that he had protested my selection, that he had never wanted to be matched to me, that he went through with the wedding only to please his parents. He had a girlfriend in Korea, he said, and no plans to give her up.
I don’t know which was more painful, his infidelity or the delight he took in flaunting it. Had he wanted to be discreet, Hyo Jin could have spoken to her privately. Instead he took sadistic pleasure in telephoning her in front of me from the living room in Cottage House. When he wanted to isolate me in East Garden, he spoke English to his friends and family. When he wanted to hurt me in my home, he spoke Korean to his girlfriend. “You know who I’m talking to, so go away,” he would laugh, before loudly proclaiming his love for the girl at the other end of the telephone line.
Several weeks after our wedding, Hyo Jin left for Seoul with no word to me on why he was going or when he might return. He did not come home for months. He was not there the morning I suddenly became ill during a birthday celebration for one of his younger siblings. My mother helped me from the table, knowing instinctively what I did not even suspect. I was pregnant.
I responded to my pregnancy like the child I was. How would I finish high school? What would the other kids say? The larger questions, about my lack of preparedness for motherhood, about the perilous state of my marriage, were too difficult for me to face. It was easier to worry whether I could make it through the school year without my condition’s becoming apparent to my classmates.
The news of his impending fatherhood did not bring Hyo Jin rushing home from Seoul. He never even called or wrote to me. I called him once, only to have him chastise me for wasting Father’s money. He hung up so abruptly that the Korean operator had to tell me my call was disconnected. I felt as though I had been slapped. When he did call to talk about the pregnancy, Hyo Jin spoke to Peter Kim, not to me. I was about to enter the kitchen one morning in the spring when I heard Peter Kim relaying to my mother the substance of that telephone call. I held my breath while I eavesdropped. What could possibly happen next? Even I was not prepared for what I overheard.
It was Hyo Jin’s position that since we were not legally married, he was under no obligation to me, he had told Peter Kim. He intended to marry his girlfriend, who was not a member of the church. If the Reverend and Mrs. Moon wanted to take care of me and the baby, that was their choice. He wanted out. I was very scared, listening to Peter Kim and my mother, who said very little. Could Hyo Jin do this? What would happen to me and my baby? How could Hyo Jin break apart what Sun Myung Moon had joined together?
Hyo Jin soon returned from Korea and, without a word of apology or explanation to me, moved out of Cottage House. “I’m sure Father will take care of you and the baby,” he said coldly. He even had the temerity to call to say that he would come by later that night to retrieve a prescription to treat his herpes. I was so incensed that before he arrived I unscrewed every light bulb in Cottage House so that he would have to stumble his way to the medicine chest. What satisfaction I took in my childish prank was short-lived. He was gone and I was alone and pregnant.
I had no idea where he was. It was not until later that I would learn that he had used the money we were given as wedding presents to pay for his “fiancee’s” airfare to the United States and to rent an apartment for the two of them in Manhattan. On his return to East Garden from Korea, he had told the Reverend and Mrs. Moon that he intended to live with the woman he chose. Neither parent made any attempt to stop him. I always believed that the Moons were afraid of their son. Hyo Jin’s temper was so volatile, his moods so irrational, that the Reverend and Mrs. Moon would go to any lengths to avoid a confrontation with him.
Instead, True Parents sent for me. I bowed before them, remaining on my knees, my eyes downcast. I hoped they would embrace me; I prayed they would reassure me. On the contrary, the Reverend Moon lashed out at me. I had never seen him so angry; his face was twisted and red with rage. How could I have let this happen? What had I done to so displease Hyo Jin? Why couldn’t I make him happy? I did not lift my head for fear Sun Myung Moon would strike me. Mrs. Moon tried to calm him, but Father would not be appeased. I had failed as a wife. I had failed as a woman. It was my own fault Hyo Jin had left me. Why hadn’t I told Hyo Jin that I would go with him?
My own thoughts made little sense. How could I go with him? To live with him and his girlfriend? I had high school to finish. I was frightened by the Reverend Moon’s fury but I was also hurt at being wrongly accused. Why was it my fault that Hyo Jin had taken a lover? Why was I to blame because the Reverend Moon’s son did not obey his father? I knew better than to voice these thoughts, but I had them just the same. It was my lot to humble myself before them, to take their abuse, and to speak only when spoken to. Tears burned my cheeks. I stayed on my knees, silent before the Lord of the Second Advent, but I seethed inside at the injustice of his attack on me. “Get out,” he finally screamed, and I scrambled to my feet. I ran all the way back to Cottage House, blinded by my tears.
I felt utterly abandoned. My mother was no use to me. She was trapped in the same belief system that ensnared us all. If Sun Myung Moon was the Messiah, we must do his will. None of us was free to choose. It was my fate to be in this situation. I had to deal with it as best I could. Only God could help me. In my room at Cottage House, I wept and prayed aloud for God not to forsake me. If he could not ease my pain, I prayed he would make me strong enough to withstand it.
I was full of self-loathing for my weak tears. I was ashamed to cry in front of God. He had chosen me for this holy mission and I was not only failing him, I was surrendering to self-pity. I prayed for God to strengthen my faith, to grant me the humility to accept the suffering he sent me.
On one such occasion, I had not realized that my mother was downstairs, listening to my prayers. When I came down, her eyes were as red as my own. It must have been hard for her to watch her daughter suffer so and feel powerless to help. I am only guessing at her emotions, though. We never spoke of our feelings. Perhaps we feared that if we acknowledged one another’s pain, we would only be driven deeper into despair.
I was learning early in my marriage that hiding my feelings would be the key to self-preservation. I spent my days going through the routines of a seemingly carefree schoolgirl and my evenings on my knees in desperate prayer. Every afternoon that spring, I paced around the wide circular driveway in front of the mansion, trying to sort out my thoughts. One of Sun Myung Moon’s early disciples joined me one day as I walked. No one in the Moon family had offered me any comfort. I was only assessed blame, which I was duty bound to accept. The church elder circled the pavement with me, urging me not to worry. My misery could harm my baby, he warned. Hyo Jin would come to his senses, he promised. I was embarrassed that my humiliation was such public knowledge, but I was grateful for the kindness of a respected elder.
That spring my brother Jin had finally come from Korea to join Je Jin at Belvedere. He had barely arrived when this crisis erupted: One afternoon the Reverend Moon summoned In Jin, Jin, and me to his room. “Should we throw Hyo Jin out of the family for what he has done?” the Reverend Moon asked us all, though it was clear that he expected only his daughter. In Jin, to answer. In Jin argued that Hyo Jin was young and wild but that he would listen to reason, that he would come home in his own time. It would be destructive for the church, as well as the True Family, to disown the heir apparent to the Unification Church. Jin agreed. I said nothing.
If Hyo Jin returned, Father said, we must all forgive him and help him adjust to his responsibilities. I, especially, must hold no grudge, the Reverend Moon instructed. He conceded that this was a difficult time for me but said I owed it to the baby to pray for God to soften my heart toward my husband. He and Mrs. Moon would get Hyo Jin back. The rest of us were to welcome him warmly on his return.
The next morning Mrs. Moon took one of the prayer ladies with her to the Deli, a diner in Tarry town. What I did not know was that Mother had arranged to meet Hyo Jin’s lover there. She arrived defiant, intending to fight for my husband. She told Mrs. Moon they would not let religion stand in their way, that Hyo Jin was prepared to leave the Unification Church for her.
I was told it was a spirited performance. But his girlfriend left that diner with a full wallet and an airplane ticket to California. The Moons paid her off, sending her to Los Angeles in the care of a Korean woman whom she would soon ditch in order to make her own way in the world.
The Moons were very pleased with themselves. They had gotten Hyo Jin back home to East Garden. Never mind that they were ignoring the underlying issues that made him leave in the first place. Never mind that he was returning even angrier than when he had left. By all appearances, everything was back to normal, and appearances were everything to Sun Myung and Hak Ja Han Moon.
One morning soon after Hyo Jin’s return, I came to greet True Parents at their breakfast table. I was surprised to see that they had been joined by the Buddha Lady, the Buddhist fortune-teller who had blessed my match to Hyo Jin the previous fall in Seoul. Mrs. Moon urged her to tell us what the future held for Hyo Jin and me. “Nansook is a winged white horse. Hyo Jin is a tiger. This is a good match,” she said. “Nansook will have a difficult time in life but her fortune is very good. Hyo Jin’s fortune is tied to hers. He can be great only if he sits on Nansook’s back and together they fly.”
Mrs. Moon was so pleased by the Buddha Lady’s optimistic forecast that she went out and bought me a diamond-and-emerald ring — the fortune-teller had told her that green was my lucky color. A few days later the Buddha Lady came to see me secretly at Cottage House. “Please remember me when you are a very powerful woman,” she said. “Remember the good fortune I saw ahead for you.”
What lay ahead for me was nothing like what the Buddha Lady foresaw. Hyo Jin was furious that his parents had interfered in his love life, but he was also a realist. He was in no position to follow his lover to California. He had no money, no job, no high school diploma, no means of support besides his parents. In the end, Hyo Jin was all talk. True love paled next to the prospect of being cut off from Father’s money.
Hyo Jin and this girlfriend would continue to correspond for years. He often left her love letters out in the open for me to find. When Hyo Jin learned that she had moved in with a new lover in Los Angeles in 1984, he was so distraught that he shaved his head.
In the spring of 1982, though, he had returned to Cottage House more angry than heartbroken. The indifference Hyo Jin had felt toward me in the winter had hardened into something much colder, much more frightening. I embodied his lack of choices in life. I represented his dependence on the two people he most needed and most despised in this world: his parents. Hyo Jin Moon would spend the rest of our life together punishing me for it.
Nansook Hong interviewed (with full transcript)
In the Shadow of the Moons book, part 1
In the Shadow of the Moons book, part 2
In the Shadow of the Moons book, part 4
In the Shadow of the Moons book, part 5
In the Shadow of the Moons book, part 6
WBZ News and Mike Wallace interview Nansook Hong
Second Generation gives a testimony on life with Hyo Jin Moon
Hyo Jin Moon came to court in Concord in the company of no fewer than four high-priced attorneys to fight Nansook Hong
Nansook Hong – [C-Span] Book Discussion – ‘In The Shadow of the Moons’ with FULL TRANSCRIPT
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Deconstructing Extremism in 21st Century America by Allen Tate Wood
Updated April 5, 2018
Prologue
The article which follows has grown out of many sources. The chief of these include a thirty-five year history of public speaking and education on the psychology of the cult phenomenon; my four and half years as a follower and then leader in the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon; my friendship with, and dialogue, with many former cult members including former members of The Hare Krishna movement (ISKON), The Way International, The Church of Scientology as well as the Moon organization. Among the academics who have guided me in my research and writing I include Dr. Margaret Singer, Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, Dr. Stanley Milgram and Dr. Silvan Tomkins.
When I began my work as a public speaker, my initial talks were mainly focused on my experiences in the Unification Church (The Moonies) between 1969 and 1973. As it has turned out the initial grid I used to explain the Moon organization to myself and my audiences has proved useful as a template to think about extremism in general…whether it be social, political or religious.
It is my hope that this article may be useful to individuals and families who have been adversely affected by destructive cult groups, to academics and journalists working to shed light on the structure and function of “high demand groups.”
I look on this short article as a work in progress and I welcome all feedback and reflections on what you find here.
Allen Tate Wood
What follows is a phenomenological morphology of extremist religion which, as it turns out, has proved useful in thinking about extremism in general. Here I am referring to psychological extremism in dysfunctional families, social groups, religious organizations, the military and corporate structures.
1. ABSOLUTE LEADER
This leader is not like other leaders. This leader is not simply a good person. This leader is not simply an intelligent or well-educated person. This leader is not like your local pastor, rabbi, priest or imam. This leader is not simply the shepherd of a flock who is well endowed with compassion, sympathy and intelligence. This leader is not simply a role model of ethical and moral behavior. This leader, in the minds of the faithful, is seen as absolute and infallible. This leader is not just seen as God’s representative on earth, but as God on earth. This leader is seen as the center of human history. This leader is seen as the fulfillment of the religious aspirations of all the peoples of the world. This leader is beyond challenge, question or reproach. Think of Stalin in Russia, Hitler in Germany, Mao Tse Tung in China or the Pope in Medieval Europe.
2. ABSOLUTE TEACHING
This leader brings with him or her an absolute teaching. This teaching is not an interpretation of the Bible or some other existing scripture like the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita or one of the many Buddhist texts. This teaching is viewed, by the faithful, as the final word from God. It is seen as the fulfillment of all the promises of all the scriptures in the world. It is seen not simply as moral exhortation and encouragement but rather as the inexorable formula for creating Heaven on Earth. It offers itself as the solution to the problem of evil. It supersedes and fulfills all previous scripture and religious doctrine. It, like the leader who brings it, is beyond question or debate. This teaching renders all inquiry, speculation and debate meaningless. This teaching sees its purpose fulfilled in the blind obedience of its initiates. For the successfully indoctrinated recruit the repudiation of the conscience, the rejection of the critical faculties and the colonization of the imagination are understood as an experience of God.
In the political and social realms dialectical materialism and historical materialism became the absolute teachings for both China and Russia during their embrace of Communism. Men and women ensnared in these absolutist teachings repudiate the dictates of their own consciences. They celebrate their captivity as they rehearse and practice the repudiation of their consciences, the rejection of their capacity for independent thought and their magical embrace of their imaginary savior.
3. HIERARCHICAL SOCIAL STRUCTURE
The structure of these high demand groups is not new. We see it in the history of Japan up to and including World War II, in medieval Europe in which kings ruled by “divine right.” If you violated your relationship with the monarch or his representatives you lost your right to exist. In the 20th century in Germany under Adolph Hitler the NAZI party instituted an un-paralleled hierarchical social structure in which children betrayed their parents to the NAZI party leaders when they heard their parents criticizing Hitler or the Party. We also see this form of rigid social structure in Communist China under Mao Tse Tung and in Soviet Russia under Lenin and Stalin. We see it in terrorist and criminal organizations and in the military and in large corporations. In these organizations obedience replaces all other notions of ethics and morality. The non-disclosure agreement and the loyalty oath become the sign, symbol and sacrament of these social behemoths.
4. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ADVERSARY
The psychology of the adversary is the foundation and the war cry of extremist organizations. “We are the real people…we are the true people…we are the children of God….We are the city on the hill.” “All who stand against us stand with Satan, the devil.” When one examines the history of great demagogues and dictators, one finds them as masters of the use of adversary psychology. They become adept at identifying and defining an enemy. The destruction and annihilation of this enemy then becomes the sacred task of the minions under the sway of the great leader. The world seen through these doctrinal eyes is black and white… good and evil. There is no longer any need to engage in research or inquiry… There is no legitimate authority outside of the leader’s domain. In the brave new world of religious and political extremism obedience to authority is the final fulfillment of moral endeavor. One need no longer engage in moral or intellectual inquiry. Obedience is seen as the highest form of knowledge. Imagination, research and learning are vilified, ostracized and ultimately crushed. Often extremist religious groups are unequivocal in their promises of a final battle between good and evil, an Armageddon in which the faithful will defeat, destroy and annihilate the forces of darkness. The absolute leader uses the identified enemy as a focal point for the projection of all the fear, anxiety, anger, shattered dreams and lost hopes of the masses.
5. THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS AS A MODUS OPERANDI
Where we are going is so good that whatever means we use to get there will be justified. Where are we going? To the Kingdom of Heaven, to the classless society, to a place without disease, famine or crime, to a place where the lion and the lamb lie down together, to a place where families remain whole, to a place where all men are honorable and all women are chaste… but before we get there we may have to lie, cheat, steal and murder along the way… but it is ok because where we are going is going to be so good when we get there that all the suffering that we have caused or inflicted or endured will seem as nothing. In the name of a glorious future we will unleash hell on an unsuspecting present… See “Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob” as part of the Unification Church’s rational for “Heavenly Deception.” Sun Myung Moon, the messiah of the Unification church, uses Jacob who stole the birthright from his brother Esau and became the founder of the nation of Israel, as the paradigm for his (Moon’s) path in the world. He said over and over again, “I am the universal Jacob. All those who stand with me stand in the position of Jacob. What is our job. It is to steal the birthright from Esau. Who is Esau? Esau is everyone outside our group: all individuals, groups, churches, religions and nations.” Here religious language and religious metaphor are used to justify what I like to describe as moral and political titanism. This is the kind of psychological superiority which grants exemption from any notions of compassion, mercy and honesty. A cursory examination of the history of the Unification Church sees Moon’s word made flesh in: charities fraud, currency and banking fraud, violation of immigration and naturalization law, collusion with Latin American dictators, arms manufacture and sales worldwide – all this in the name of creating heaven on earth.
6. CRISIS PSYCHOLOGY
Extremist organizations tirelessly work to rigidly control all information coming in. The leader and his or her doctrine provide the grid for judging what is acceptable information and what is not. This information control may include blocking all radio, tv, internet and newspapers. This places the leader and his cohorts in the position of precipitating a crisis whenever they wish…Witness Jim Jones People’s Temple Mass exodus to Guyana followed by the mass suicide/execution of 900 of his followers. This also brings to mind the mass suicide of 39 followers of the Heaven’s Gate movement in the late 90’s in California. The last one hundred years of world history has provided numerous examples of leaders manipulating and controlling information in order to win the allegiance and support of entire populations for going to war. Witness Vietnam, Iraq and most recently Libya. In their path to hegemony demagogues and dictators attack the free press, undermine government institutions which might place a check on their power and do all they can to silence and eliminate any criticism. In the United States we see crisis psychology used by the intelligence agencies and the military as moral justification for overthrowing nations. Witness our role in overthrowing the democratically elected governments in Iran and Chile and our role in training the military and police agencies in authoritarian regimes in Latin America. In the name of fighting Godless Communism we have supported regimes which routinely use torture.
7. THE INNER CIRCLE
The maintenance of secrecy is a sine qua non of modern life. Whether it is the military, government or corporate entities secrecy is highly valued and aggressively fought for. Criminal organizations routinely murder those who violate the workings of their inner circles. Government whistle blowers are branded as traitors and often sentenced to prison. Secrets maintained by religious extremists are keeping pace. Think of the Roman Catholic Church hiding the sex abuse of children by priests world wide. Think of the Jehovah’s Witnesses doing the same thing. Think of the Unification Church advertising their leader and messiah Sun Myung Moon as a pure virgin until he was 40 years old. In fact, he had been married at least once before he was 40 and had had numerous children out of wedlock. In extremist religious organizations the guarding of secrets is seen as an honor and a sacred duty not to be undertaken lightly. The dark histories of extremist organizations are often hidden from the rank and file members. The initiation into these histories is seen as a kind of rite of passage. The more dirt you carry, and cover for, the more you are trusted. The more of the dark history you protect the closer you come to the “great leader.” It turns out that the road to Heaven is paved with treachery and deceit.
Postscript:
Psychological extremism is visible and manifest in a wide spectrum of human social systems from individuals and families to clubs, gangs and churches to police forces, intelligence agencies, the military and political organizations, not to mention destructive cult groups. Much of the future history of mankind will revolve around our response to extremism in its many forms. Will we allow it to shape and control our perceptions of ourselves and our world, or will we find a way to see it for what it is – a psychological deformation which opens the door to a history of cruelty and a history of man’s continuing inhumanity to man.
For me, the outstanding fact of extremist organizations is their ability to control behavior and thought by controlling language. A return to balance and health for the victims of thought reform will include an in-depth exposition of the techniques which were used to capture them as well as a return to the world in which language is metaphorical and suggestive rather than absolute and fixed.
Allen Tate Wood
Bibliography:
Thought Reform and The Psychology of Totalism by Robert J. Lifton, Norton and Co. New York, 1961
Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View by Stanley Milgram, London: Tavistock Publications, 1974
Combatting Cult Mind Control by Steve Hassan, Inner Traditions International, Limited, 1988
www.atwood7.com
My Four and a Half Years with The Lord of the Flies
Mis Cuatro Años y Medio con el Señor de las Moscas
Moon’s strategies for grabbing power clearly explained: VIDEO
Allen Tate Wood answers Walter Evans’ questions about the Unification Church (now rebranded as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification). He talks about Moon’s plans to penetrate the religious, political and economic worlds to further his own aims to grab power. Strategies for gaining the allegiance of leaders were / are very concrete.
A brief critical examination of the Divine Principle theory of history
A Pilot Study – by Jane E.M. Williams & Allen Tate Wood
Moon’s Ignorance – he “spoke to Buddha,” but thought he was Chinese!
1. Freedom of the Press in Korea – Unification Church style
2. Freedom of the Press in Japan – Unification Church style
“In Korea, one even senses a fear, like one induced by the Mafia, among the opposition, and … outspoken opponents speak of death threats.” Prof. Sontag, 1976
Moon’s followers poured a pot of urine and feces on the head of a Seoul University Professor of Religion.
Abducted and beaten up by the Unification Church in Korea
Moonie “Dirty Tricks” against Donald Fraser
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RE: On Dan Fefferman and Political Theology
Reading over the members spasm of voluminous spam on the blog over the last couple days and one article from Applied Unificationism jumped out at me. It was a submission by Dan Fefferman with his analysis on the various Moon church schisms and their particular brand of "Political Theology". My comments to articles at Applied Unificationism never get posted so I will place them here on WIOTM. Dan Fefferman has a very interesting history as a member and was deeply involved in formulating Rev. Moon's version of "Political Theology". As an operative, Dan was never the one to carry an AR-15 into battle but he certainly associated with plenty of people who did and would without much persuasion. Dan was called to testify at the House International relations subcommittee investigating U.S. Korean relations. This is a fascinating document if you have the time to read the transcripts. I almost fell off the sofa when I noticed in the title that Congressman Leo Ryan was a prominent member of the Subcommittee. Leo Ryan was murdered by members of the Peoples Temple cult after he visited their compound in Jonestown Guyana shortly after the subcommittee investigation was concluded. That is a post for another day. The following is a brief excerpt and supporting links dredged up by the tireless Mr. Moon Critic, (thunderous applause). Pay close attention to all of the excerpts in bold font as they probably contain clues to the hidden effects of said "Political Theology". You may want to follow the links and search the back grounds of all the names mentioned here for a real education on Political and Religious subversion. Thanks again for participating, Frank F
Mr. Harrington (of the Fraser Committee) asks Dan Fefferman about Ed Feulner
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pur1.32754077268948;view=1up;seq=72
Mr. HARRINGTON:
I have another document which staff will make available to you entitled “Daily Report,” from yourself to Mr. Salonen, dated September 11, 1974.
Item No. 4 is entitled “Letters re Korea Trip,” and states, “Please give me more guidance about what to say to Minister Kim and Ed Feulner. The information has already been communicated from Ed to Min. Kim.”
First, can you identify Ed Feulner? I don’t know if I have the correct pronunciation. I assume it is close enough for you to know whom I am referring to.
DAILY REPORT
Dan Fefferman report to Neil Salonen
1. Appointments - Lunch with Sven Kraemer on Thursday to discuss Vietnam. He has not seen us since our return, and he invited Louise and me to be his guests. Lunch with Phuong Dung, Friday. I don’t know whether these two are connected through conscious conspiracy or simply through the spiritual world.
4. Letters re Korea trip. — Please give me more guidance about what to say to Minister Kim and Ed Feulner. The information has already been communicated from Ed to Min. Kim. (Mr. Moon Critic note: Mr. Kim was the founder of the K.C.I.A.)
8. David Martin - Came to dinner tonight...He wants to sometime to talk to you and Re. Moon about some ideas he has. One thing he mentioned was using church a.c. missionaries in countries like Greece and Portugal to coach anti-Communist forces as a catalyst for effective action.
9. Internal Security - This business about new leaks is getting ridiculous, Pentagon papers, White House "investigatory reporting" (also called muckraking) that crucified an American President - now, Laurence Stern (of all people) comes up with a story quoting minutes of a "top secret State Department meeting" at which Sec. Kissinger allegedly ordered the CIA to overthrow Allende. I really want to do something about this. We'll start with the TIDE, but I'd seriously like to suggest putting some muscle behind it sometime in the future after things settle down. There should be laws against this kind of thing. (Please excuse my diatribe).
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/news/20001113/
Detailed minutes of the “40 Committee” meetings—the high-level interagency group chaired by national security advisor Henry Kissinger—which oversaw U.S. efforts to undermine the election and government of Socialist leader Salvador Allende. These meetings reveal strategies of “drastic action” planned to “shock” Chileans into taking action to block Allende.
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//news/20000919/index.html
The report, “CIA Activities in Chile,” revealed for the first time that the head of the Chile’s feared secret police, DINA, was a paid CIA asset in 1975... “CIA actively supported the military Junta after the overthrow of Allende,” the report states. “Many of Pinochet’s officers were involved in systematic and widespread human rights abuses....Some of these were contacts or agents of the CIA or US military.”
https://isgp-studies.com/le-cercle-pinay
The most important American think tank...was the Heritage Foundation...the Heritage Foundation was closely linked to Le Cercle. President of the Heritage Foundation from 1977 to 2013 and again for 7 months in 2017 was Edwin Feulner, a Knight of Malta, a known Cercle visitor, and solid member of the global superclass. Paul Weyrich, a wealthy co-founder and financier of the Heritage Foundation, has also visited Le Cercle...Both Feulner and Weyrich were involved in the Council for National Policy and generallyconsidered to be loyal to Opus Dei...
Additionally, a number of Cercle members have been involved with institutions with strong links to the Moonie cult. Among them are the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which counted the involvement of Brian Crozierm, Edwin Feulner and Zbigniew Brzezinski; and the Global Economic Action Institute, of which the London branch was chaired by Julian Amery, head of Le Cercle at the time the story came out. Many neocons, who also became prominent in Le Cerce, became allied with the Moonies in the 1980s.
Vernon Walters...while deputy CIA director - under President Gerald Ford...and secretary of state Henry Kissinger - Walters was one of the key founders of Latin America's Condor operation, a continent-wide anti-communist and anti-socialist death squad with CIA backing...Kissinger, then operating under Nixon, sanctioned the CIA to overthrow the democratically-elected moderate president of Chile, Salvador Allende.
http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Books/Tims1/Tims1-44.htm
Freedom and Responsibility - Bo Hi Pak - September 20, 1987
Reverend Moon, President Morales Bermudez, President Sucre, congressmen, honored guests, distinguished participants, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Korea, the Land of the Morning Calm, and welcome to the World Media Conference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Morales_Berm%C3%BAdez
Francisco Morales-Bermúdez Cerruti - President of Peru - 1975 to 1980
Morales Bermudez is currently being prosecuted by Italian judge Luisianna Figliolia for the presumed forced disappearance of 25 Italian citizens in the frame of Operation Condor, a campaign of political oppression against leftists orchestrated by the right-wing dictatorships of South America in the 1970s.
http://hdhstudy.com/wp-content/uploads/Publications/The_Cornerstone/1981-The-Cornerstone.pdf
Page 42
On September 1, UTS was honored by the presence of General Ramon Diaz Bessone, one of the eight two-star generals of Argentina, who presented an informative lecture on global communist expansion. He outlined the gradual expansionary strategy of the Soviets in the West; subversion, finlandization, and encirclement. These tactics may serve as a means to attain the eventual capitulation of Western Europe, the United States, and Latin America.
General Bessone pointed out that, since Argentina has an important cultural influence on Latin America, communists concentrate much effort on subversive activities in that country. He claimed that the Carter Administration and the Liberal press contributed to subversive activities and to the distortion of the Argentinian situation in world opinion when they condemned the defeat of communist guerrillas in Argentina on the grounds of violation of human rights. He stressed how advantageous public confusion, disinformation, and naivete regarding the world situation are to communists.
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram%25C3%25B3n_Genaro_D%25C3%25ADaz_Bessone&prev=search
Ramón Genaro Díaz Bessone (born October 27, 1925 ) is an Argentine military man who reached the rank of General of Division , who during the military dictatorship called Process of National Reorganization (1976-1983) held high positions, among them Commander of Corps II and Minister of Planning under the presidency of Jorge Rafael Videla.
In July 2004 the justice ordered the arrest of Diaz Bessone in the case for crimes committed under the Condor Plan .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor
Operation Condor... was a campaign of political repression and state terror involving intelligence operations and assassination of opponents, which started in 1968 and was officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America... Ecuador and Peru later joined the operation in more peripheral roles.
A target was Orlando Letelier... Michael Townley, General Manuel Contreras (former head of the DINA), and Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo (also formerly of DINA), were convicted of the murders...Townley confessed that he had hired five anti-Castro Cuban exiles...with the terrorist organization CORU's leadership...those elected to carry out the murder were Cuban-Americans José Dionisio Suárez, Virgilio Paz Romero, Alvin Ross Díaz, and brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll.
https://books.google.com/books?id=vgthWZ5KlskC&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=cuban+nationalist+movement,+coru&source=bl&ots=pfrLMwG4a2&sig=Yy4X7vwyPDhwHN0Sb_WYZxVs834&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioxcjYjP_RAhVGs1QKHT-tCcsQ6AEINDAD#v=onepage&q=cuban%20nationalist%20movement%2C%20coru&f=false
Perhaps the most deeply drug-linked of all CORU's members were those involved in the Cuban Nationalist Movement (CNM), a small neo-fascist group with bases in both Miami and Union City, New Jersey.
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/omega/New-York-9-10-1979.pdf
Pages 4 to 5 - An Army in Exile - An Inside Look at Cuban Terrorists 4 miles from Manhattan
Feeding the hopes of exile terrorists through the years have been powerful outside interests...and in 1977 a representative from yet another heavily financed international organization dedicated to fighting world Communism appeared on the scene: a Reverend Jose Casado of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church...Casado supplied $2000 to the Cuban Nationalist Movement to help pay legal fees for the three members convicted for their parts in the Letelier murder.
http://www.governmentattic.org/docs/FBI_File_UnificationChurch_1967-1988.pdf
Page 27 - December 1978 - COORDINATION OF UNITED REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATIONS (CORU)
Pak told source that Pak had recently testified in the "Koreagate" case in Washington, D.C. Source described Pak as a Korean National, 55 years of age, graying slick dark hair, wearing prescription glasses and appearing very cultured and intellectual.
https://vault.fbi.gov/sun-myung-moon/sun-myung-moon-part-07-of-12/view
Pages 113 to 114 - December 1978 - COORDINATION OF UNITED REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATIONS (CORU)
Purpose:
To furnish information received that Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church has agreed to furnish monetary support to the Cuban exile terrorist organization, CORU, in the United States...source learned that Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification church was prepared to financially back the Cuban exile terrorist element...(Bo Hi Pak) told source that he had testified in the (Fraser Hearings) case in Washington, D.C. (Bo Hi Pak) expressed keen interest in CORU and stated that Reverend Moon desires to discreetly establish and finance a network of radical anti-communist groups around the world.
https://vault.fbi.gov/sun-myung-moon/sun-myung-moon-part-10-of-12/view
Pages 18 to 19 - December 1978 - COORDINATION OF UNITED REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATIONS (CORU)
(Bo Hi Pak) advised that the Reverend Moon Organization wishes to provide financial aid to anti-communist Terrorists and is willing to utilize the Church as a cover for its activities...a small amount of money has been furnished in the recent past.
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/19780816.pdf
Page 14 - April 1978 - ORLANDO BOSCH AND ANTI-CASTRO TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS
COORDINATION OF UNITED REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATIONS (CORU)
Dr. Carlos F. Dominicis, CORU leader in the New York area...Dominicis had been approached by one Korean and one Spanish individual claiming to be delegates of Reverend Moon and had offered financial aid to FOCI and its anti-Castro activity. Dominicis advised that he had discussed the financial aid being offered by Reverend Moon with Frank Castro and Orlando Acosta and Dominicis was told by Castro and Acosta to go ahead and receive financial aid offered by the delegates of Reverend Moon. Dominicis advised that CORU is being proposed as the possible military arm of FOCI.
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https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/19/archives/73-record-tells-of-plan-by-sun-myung-moon-aides-for-drive-against.html
NEW YORK TIMES
Sept. 19, 1977
By Richard Halloran
"73 Record Tells of Plan by Sun Myung Moon Aides for Drive Against Nixon Impeachment"
WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 — On the evening of Dec. 29, 1973, leaders of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church in the United States gathered here to plan a drive intended to prevent an impeachment of the President they called “the Archangel Nixon,” according to the minutes of that meeting.
The head of the American branch of the church was further described in the minutes as disclosing something of Mr. Moon's ambitions, saying, “We are right on the edge of influencing people. Master wants to give an address to a joint session of Congress.”
Beyond that the minutes of that meeting seem to illuminate the aspirations of the Unification Church for political and religious influence in the United States and to illustrate its tactical approach to a political operation.
In a report last month, Representative Donald M. Fraser, Democrat of Minnesota, the chairman of the Subcommittee on International Organizations, one of the House panels that have been investigating alleged Korean efforts to influence American policy, said that his subcommittee had “received reliable information that Mr. Moon “and organizations connected with him maintained operational ties with the Government of South Korea and specifically the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.”
In addition, authoritative Government investigators here said that they had determined that the document was authentic.
The minutes quote Mr. Salonen further: “For deciding Congressmen, this is the crucial time. Impeachment proceedings are beginning. Yet polls are indicating that Nixon's popularity has just gone up by 4 percentage points to 31 percent. Now is the time to affect them at the grass roots level.”
Mr. Salonen outlined plans for allies and other political action intended “to show Nixon and Congress both our own power and the outer support..."
“1) Impact on the media—visibly strongly; 2) Impact on Congressmen, and 3) Impact on influential community leaders to approach Congressmen themselves.”
Mr. Salonen exhorted his lieutenants: “Each of us must work like 10 people to seem like at least 10,000. Approach this short‐range project with a long‐range view. We will always be doing and planning things like this. Always be ready.”
After Mr. Salonen spoke, the minutes disclose, he turned the meeting over to Daniel G. Fefferman, who was national project director. Mr. Fefferman is currently under a threat of a citation for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions before the subcommittee headed by Representative Fraser. Mr. Fefferman has contended that the subcommittee infringed on his First Amendment rights protecting freedom of religion.
“The problem is,” Mr. Fefferman was recorded as saying. “that without a definite stance on Nixon, the media will have nothing to sink their teeth into. They will try to pin you down. So be careful, but get the press there.”
Mr. Fefferman appeared to have spent most of his time on why and how members of the church must stimulate news coverage. “The White House, Congress and the people will become aware of us through the press,” he said. “They must see something strong and nationwide.”
Mr. Fefferman, who then headed the Freedom Leadership Foundation, a political affiliate of the Unification Church, offered advice on dealing with the press: “Move as quickly as possible.” He urged that news releases be delivered early, with details filled in later.
In Washington, Mr. Fefferman directed that Unification Church members visit Representatives and Senators after informing themselves of the members' political positions. He said that Congressmen were to be involved in their movement...
Mr. Fefferman emphasized, “Few groups have the power to spread orders so quickly. In the future, we will be very powerful because of this. Even if he is negative, a congressman understands nothing better than voter power. Each one takes this seriously.”
“If you put a full page ad in the paper and your congressman won't see you,” he continued, “hold a demonstration. He would seem irresponsible then if he didn't see you.”
Mr. Fefferman was also quoted as directing that outside groups be recruited, including the Young Republicans, the Young Americans for Freedom, ethnic groups whose members were apt to be anti‐Communist, patriotic organizations like the Sons of the American Revolution...
https://appliedunificationism.com/2017/08/28/the-legacy-of-unification-political-theology/
The Legacy of Unification Political Theology - August 28, 2017
Rev. Sun Myung Moon founded the International Federation for Victory Over Communism in 1969 as a major ideological offensive. IFVOC established coalitions with other anti-communist organizations throughout the world. In the U.S., members created the Freedom Leadership Foundation (FLF) as the American affiliate of IFVOC. Thus, it created a “hawkish” face in terms of public image, despite its equally strong commitment to world peace, which remained somewhat hidden.
The VOC thrust had always been accompanied by globalist projects such as the One World Crusade and various scientific, ecumenical and peace initiatives. The first of these was the International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences (ICUS), begun in 1972 in New York and held annually throughout the 1970s into the 1980s.
The right-wing tendency experienced an unexpected resurgence with the ascendency of Hyung Jin (Sean) Moon and his brother, Kook Jin (Justin) Moon. With Hyung Jin’s support, Kook Jin began to promote in the U.S. the “Freedom Society,” an adamantly libertarian ideology opposed to left-liberalism.
Since Rev. Moon’s ascension in 2012 and the emergence of schisms centering on Preston and Sean, the underlying tensions in Unification political theology have come into sharper focus.
Hyung Jin and Kook Jin...in their Sanctuary Church faction, espouse a strongly right-wing libertarian viewpoint. They have also embraced conspiracy theories about 9/11, the Illuminati, world banking cabals, and the doomsday prophecies of a Messianic rabbi. In 2016, Hyung Jin and Kook Jin became enthusiastic supporters of the candidacy of Donald Trump. Lately, however, Sean has begun to worry publicly that Trump has given in to pressure from the “globalists” who he alleges want to surrender American sovereignty to international organizations and the so-called worldwide banking conspiracy.
The Unification Movement’s expression of its political theology initially focused on achieving Victory Over Communism but simultaneously developed various programs aimed at the longer term goals...The right-wing tendency experienced a brief resurgence during the period of Sean’s ascendency...Today, the overall movement has become less overtly political than it was during its heyday, with the exception of the Sanctuary Church faction, which is strongly right-wing libertarian in orientation.
In any case, with anti-communism no longer a central feature, and Rev. Moon no longer on the scene, the future of Unification political theology will remain in flux for the foreseeable future.
-------------------------------------------
https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-YAnJOkt3G0B4uEGh/Scott+&+Jon+Lee+Anderson+-+Inside+the+League+(1986)_djvu.txt
Inside The League
THE SHOCKING EXPOSE OF HOW TERRORISTS, NAZIS, AND LATIN AMERICAN DEATH SQUADS HAVE INFILTRATED THE WORLD ANTI-COMMUNIST LEAGUE
The Americans who have belonged to the World Anti-Communist League consistently contend that they have attempted to be a moderating influence or that they were unaware of the unsavory nature of other League chapters. The evidence, however, much of it compiled by the Americans themselves, shows that they knowingly belonged to a federation of death squad leaders, Nazi war criminals, and neo-fascists. At best, they are showcases of naivete; a more critical observer would say that they are showcases of far worse.
The first American League Chapter was the American Council for World Freedom (ACWF), founded in 1970 in Washington, D.C. The main force behind its creation, and its first secretary, was Lee Edwards, head of a public relations firm and former director of Young Americans for Freedom, the youth arm of the John Birch Society.
Edwards lined up an impressive array of conservative American leaders for the American Council for World Freedom to appear on its letterhead and to attend World Anti-Communist League functions. Lev Dobriansky, a former OSS officer in Germany during World War II and chairman of the National Captive Nations Committee (and currently ambassador to the Bahamas), joined, as did Dr. Walter H. Judd, former Republican congressman from Minnesota; John Fisher, executive director of the American Security Council; and Reed Irvine, a longtime fixture of the far right. A year earlier, Irvine had established Accuracy in Media, "a watchdog of the media by promoting accuracy and fairness in reporting." ACWF's eventual president was retired Army Major General Thomas Lane; Eleanor Schlafly represented the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation.
The Unification Church in the United States was also involved; Neil Salonen— president of the Church in the United States, secretary-general of the Freedom Leadership Foundation, and a director of the Moonie-owned Tong-il Armaments Company in Korea was on the ACWF board.
MR. MOON CRITICS NOTE: Lev Dobriansky would later help with "filling the park" for the Washington Monument Rally in 1976...Without his help that Rally could've been a disaster...and later he would become the President of the Global Economic Action Institute which was working closely with Le Cercle (Robert B. Anderson was the previous president of GEAI)
Walter Judd, Lee Edwards & Reed Irvine were ALL HANDLERS for Neil Salonen from the beginning to go along with David Martin...the most important HANDLER of all.
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Neil Salonen and the KCIA! - The Great Deception!
http://www.tparents.org/UTS/DoH2/DOH2-08.pdf
New Hope News
November 11, 1974
700 Members From across the U.S. Gather at UN for 7-Day Fast (Oct. 21 - Oct. 27)Pages 4-6
The purpose of the fast was to publicize the plight of Japanese citizens who are trapped in North Korea, wives of Koreans induced to repatriate to North Korea after the Korean War...The Association for Human Rights of Japanese Wives of North Korean Repatriates was...under the guidance of Mrs. Fumiko Ikeda.
Mrs. Ikeda and relatives of Japanese wives in North Korea spoke at Monday's opening ceremony as did President Neil Salonen, Dan Fefferman and Walter Gottesman,representing the Unification Church, (and) the Freedom Leadership Foundation, and the American Committee for Human Rights of Japanese Wives of North Korean Repatriates.
New Hope News
December 23, 1974New York Continues UN ActivitiesPage 58
On November 19 the American Committee for the Human Rights of Japanese Wives of North Korean Repatriates held a dinner in New York, attended by Mr. Salonen asPresident of the Freedom Leadership Foundation. Present at the dinner were a number of UN ambassadors or their representatives who had signed the Committee's petition.
As the question of maintaining UN troops in the Korean DMZ neared debate in the General Assembly, New York Freedom Leadership Foundation had widely distributed several flyers about the realities of life in North Korea...According to Mark Barry, the flyer was to appear as a full-page ad in the December 3rd edition of the Delegate'sWorld Bulletin, a newspaper widely read in the UN.
Friendly contact with many UN ambassadors is being maintained by about thirty members coming from, among other countries, Liberia, Guyana, Panama, and the Philippinesunder the direction of Kyoshii Nishi. The ambassadors have been responding very well, even visiting Belvedere on some weekends.
Page 61
Thus, our 7 Day Fast and Prayer and our continuous diplomacy influenced the United Nations vote.
New York Post
October 25, 1974
Page 40
The Moon people are back...They claim that the North Korean government refuses to allow thousands of Japanese women who married North Korean men and moved to thatcountry to return to Japan.
Although the leaders of the fast stress their only goal is "human rights," some members of the Korean and academic communities in this country have pointed out two facts which make timely an anti-North Korea demonstration by a group such as Moon's, which has the blessings of the South Korean government:
1) The UN will be considering, within the next month, whether to call for the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea...
2) President Ford will be visiting Japan and South Korea at the end of November...
The State Department...noted that the "Japanese wives" issue has been pushed in propaganda from a South Korean news service, which is suspected of being controlled by the government.
Although the Moon people and a spokesman for the South Korean Permanent Observer at the UN vigorously deny it, many Moon-watchers suggest there is a strong linkbetween Moon's various religious and political organizations and the Korean Central Intelligence Agency..."We're doing this solely for humanitarian reasons," said Joe A. Tully, the 28-year-old head of the New York Unification Church.
http://old.freedomofmind.com/Info/docs/fraserport.pdf
Investigation of Korean-American Relations (Moonies, aka Unification Church)October 31, 1978Other ties to the ROK GovernmentPages 31-32
In the 1976 KCIA Plan for Operations in the U.S., the FLF was mentioned in two places as an organization to be used to achieve KCIA objectives. In one section of the plan, it was to be used to counter activities of pro-North Korean organizations and individuals in the United States...The FLF is also mentioned in another section of the plan which dealt with operations in media circles.
The subcommittee investigation showed that the 1976 plan had been preceded by other plans for previous years and that many entries in it referred to operations already completed or reflected ongoing relationships with organizations and individuals. It also showed that Kim Yung Hwan, KCIA station chief from 1974 to 1976, was a key promoter of the 1976 plan. Testimony and UC documents showed that there was substantial contact between Kim Yung Hwan and FLF members.
One anti-Communist activity ordered by Moon was a 7-day fast at the U.N., in October 1974, the expressed purpose of which was to defeat a U.N. resolution calling for removal of U.N. troops from South Korea. A leader of the fast was a Japanese woman named Fumiko Ikeda. According to Pak Bo Hi, she was later the recipient of $3,000 in cash from the KCIA...This incident, together with others such as the planned anti-Japanese demonstration in 1974, lent additional support to executive branch reports that the Moon Organization had been used by the KCIA and other ROK agencies to carry out Korean Government policies and had been rewarded by the Government for these efforts.
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