Sun Myung Moon

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sun Myung Moon giving a speech in Las Vegas, USA on April 4, 2010


Sun Myung Moon, 2010 at a speech in the USA
Hangeul 문선명
Hanja 文 鮮明
Revised
Romanization 		Mun Seon-myeong
McCune-
Reischauer 		Mun Sŏnmyŏng

Sun Myung Moon , also San Myung Mun , (born February 25, 1920 in Sangsa-ri , Heian-hokudō Province , Chōsen , Japanese Empire ; † September 3, 2012 in Songsan-ri , South Korea ) was the founder and head of the so-called Unification Church .

Life

Sun Myung Moon was born in what is now North Korea at a time when it was part of the Japanese Empire as part of Chōsen (1910-1945). His birth name was Yong Myung Moon. At the age of 15 , Moon , who comes from a Presbyterian family, said he had a vision of Christ on Easter Sunday (April 21, 1935) . In this vision Jesus asked him to continue his mission.

When Moon was 9 years old, his father sent him to a village school where Confucian scriptures and Chinese characters were taught. At the age of 13, Moon passed the entrance test for a normal school and switched to Osan School. This school was a Korean nationalist school where the lessons were not held in Japanese , but in Korean . Moon therefore changed schools again and from 1934 attended Jeongju Public Normal School, where classes were held in Japanese, the national language of the time. According to his own account, Moon gave a speech at the graduation ceremony in which he criticized the Japanese colonial rule and was observed by the police from then on.

In 1938 Moon moved to Keijō and attended the Department of Commerce and Industry at the Imperial University of Keijō . From 1941 to 1943 Moon studied electrical engineering at a business college at Waseda University in Tokyo . Moon graduated in September 1943 and returned to Chosen.

While Moon lived on the Japanese main islands, he supported the Korean Provisional Government founded in Shanghai and participated in underground movements that campaigned for Chosen's independence from the Japanese Empire.

In October 1944, Moon was arrested by the police and by February 1945 in the police headquarters of the province Keikidō detained. He was charged with being a member of a communist party for having worked with communists in the underground movement.

After Korea gained independence in August 1945, the peninsula was occupied by the Soviet Union north of the 38th parallel and the United States south of the 38th parallel . When Moon tried to pay with South Korean money on a visit to his home in the Soviet-occupied part of Korea in October 1945 , he was arrested again there and imprisoned for a week.

In 1946, Moon left his family and went to Pyongyang to do missionary work there. There he was arrested in 1948 for "breaking the social order" and sentenced to five years in a labor camp in Hŭngnam . When Hŭngnam was evacuated by UN troops on October 14, 1950, Moon was able to flee.

Moon fled with two followers to the port city of Busan in the south of the Korean peninsula, where they arrived on January 28, 1951. He lived in a mud hut and wrote down his teaching there in a manuscript entitled The Original Principle (Wol Li Won Bon). He instructs one of his followers, Eu Hyo-won, to systematically record the contents of the manuscript in a book. In 1957 the book "Explanation of the Divine Principle" (Wol Li Hae Sol) appears. In 1966, Moon published a revised version entitled Explanation of the Divine Principle . This book is still considered to be the basis of Moon's doctrine of faith.

family

Sun Myung Moon married Choi Sun-gil on May 4, 1944. In 1955 his second son Hee-jin was born. Hee-jin later died in a train accident. In 1959, Choi Sun-gil divorced Sun Myung Moon and the first son, Sung-jin, grew up with his mother. On April 1, 1960, Sun Myung Moon married his second wife, Hak Ja Han , with whom he had 14 children.

Unification Movement and Teaching

On May 1, 1954, Moon founded the Holy Spirit Society for the Unification of World Christianity in Seoul . He later renamed it Unification Church or Unification Movement. It is often referred to in public as the Moon sect .

The unification movement has existed in Germany since 1963 . According to their own information, 800 families are committed to the Unification Church in Germany.

Members of the Unification Movement believe that Moon is the Messiah and was given the task of continuing his mission by Jesus . Earlier, Moon was called master (translation of the Korean word sŏnsaengnim - teacher) by his followers . Nowadays he is known as True Father or Father Moon .

The teaching of the Unification Movement results from the book The Divine Principle and the Reden Moons, which are published in numerous books. Basic elements are the Daoist cosmology, shamanistic folk religion from Korea, as well as the principle of Christian mission theology. According to the divine principle, God created human beings so that they might attain perfection. The first human couple Adam and Eve should have founded a perfect family as object partners of God on this basis. However, by falling into sin, they violated this principle.

Jesus' mission as Messiah was to make amends for the fall of man by starting a family and taking all of humanity into that family. However, because of the crucifixion, Jesus could not have fulfilled this.

Economic investments

In 1963, Sun Myung Moon founded a manufacturing company from which the Tongil Group developed. It is a not-for-profit organization whose proceeds are used for Unification Church activities .

The Moon Group has stakes in the North Korean Pyeonghwa Motors , in the global ginseng trade and controls a South Korean arms and machine tool manufacturer.

Outside the home base, the unification movement is economically strong, especially in the United States. It controls dozens of companies there, including the conservatively oriented capital city newspaper Washington Times and owns the UPI press service . The founder of the religion, however, got into trouble in the United States. There he was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 1982 for tax evasion. In total, Moon has been in jail about half a dozen times. In Latin America , the Unification Church built its strongest base in Uruguay . There she owns the newspaper “ Últimas Notícias ”, a printing company, the third largest bank in the country and the hotel “Victoria Plaza” in the center of Montevideo .

According to an April 11, 2006 article in the Chicago Tribune , Moon's True World Group controls the fishing and trading of fish for sushi in the United States.

Meetings with heads of state and government

Moon, who called on Americans to pardon President Richard Nixon for the Watergate affair , was received by him in the White House in 1974 . In April 1990, Moon met Mikhail Gorbachev , the President of the Soviet Union . Moon praised the political and economic changes in the Soviet Union. In 1991 he met the North Korean President Kim Il-sung for a meeting in Hamhŭng . Among other things, they talked about the reunification of separated families in North and South Korea, economic cooperation between the two countries and the North Korean nuclear program. After the death of Kim Il-sung in 1994 and the death of his son Kim Jong-il in 2011, Moon sent a delegation to North Korea to express his condolences. In 1995, Moon met the Argentine President Carlos Menem . In July 2011, Nigerian President Goodluck received Jonathan Moon and his wife as state guests.

Peace Cup

In 2002, Sun Myung Moon announced the introduction of a worldwide soccer tournament that he organized. The so-called Peace Cup should contribute to international understanding and the overcoming of ideologies. The competition was under Moon's patronage. As the owner of two football clubs, he was able to win over FIFA and the world-famous footballer Pelé for his project. All of the profits made by marketing the competition will be donated to starving children in Asia and Africa .

entry ban

From 1995 to 2007, Sun Myung Moon and his wife were banned from entry by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior because the unification movement belonged to the youth sects and psycho-groups whose activities could endanger young people. In November 2006 this ruling was revoked by the Federal Constitutional Court for reasons of religious freedom and referred back to the Higher Administrative Court (OVG) Rhineland-Palatinate . The OVG lifted the entry ban in May 2007 because such entry bans could only constitute significant dangers for public safety and order or for national security.

An entry ban was in effect in Japan until Moon's death.

death

On September 3, 2012, shortly before 2 a.m. local time, Moon died in South Korea at the age of 92 of complications from pneumonia. About 35,000 guests attended the funeral in Gapyeong on September 14th. Hyung Jin Moon , chairman of the Yeosu World Expo Organizing Committee Dong Seok Gang, Tarsem Kim and Alfred Moisiu gave the funeral speeches.

Web links

Commons : Sun Myung Moon  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rev. Moon, Times founder, dies at 92 , The Washington Times, September 2, 2012.
  2. ^ Moon, Sun Myung, 2011, My Life for World Peace - Sun Myung Moon autobiography , Kando Verlag, Schmitten, p. 48, ISBN 978-3-922947-44-8
  3. ^ Moon, Sun Myung, 2011, My Life for World Peace - Sun Myung Moon autobiography , Kando Verlag, Schmitten, p. 49, ISBN 978-3-922947-44-8
  4. ^ Moon, Sun Myung, 2011, My Life for World Peace - Sun Myung Moon autobiography , Kando Verlag, Schmitten, p. 76, ISBN 978-3-922947-44-8
  5. ^ Breen, Michael, 1997, Sun Myung Moon - The Early Years 1920-53 , Refugee Books, Hustpierpoint, West Sussex, pp. 66-67, ISBN 0-9531637-0-9
  6. ↑ a b Handbook of Religious Communities. Published on behalf of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany (VELKD) by Hans Krech and Matthias Kleiminger. 5th edition Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2000, ISBN 3-579-03585-1 , p. 427.
  7. ^ Montross, Lynn: The Hungnam Evacuation , The Marine Corps Gazette , December 1951 (English).
  8. ^ Introvigne, Massimo 2000, The Unification Church Studies in Contemporary Religion , Signature Books, Salt Lake City, Utah, ISBN 1-56085-145-7
  9. ↑ The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity on unification.net of June 26, 1995 (English).
  10. ^ German Moon Movement mourns spiritual leader Die Welt, September 3, 2012.
  11. ↑ Working group for public relations of the Vereinigungskirche eV on the official website. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
  12. ↑ Business engine of a global faith ( Memento from September 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), Korea Joongang Journal from April 12, 2010 (English).
  13. ^ Sushi and Rev. Mun , Chicago Tribune, April 11, 2006 (English).
  14. ^ A b France24.com: Rev Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Moonies, dies at 92 , September 3, 2012
  15. ↑ Felicity Barringer: EVOLUTION IN EUROPE; New Flock for Moon Church: The Changing Soviet Student , The New York Times, November 14, 1990
  16. ^ A b Hyung-Jin Kim: Unification Church founder Rev. Moon dies at 92 , Associated Press, Sept. 2, 2012
  17. ↑ Calvin Sims: Unification Church Gains Respect in Latin America , The New York Times, Nov. 24, 1996
  18. ↑ Sun Myung Moon's Speeches from 2002 of June 29, 2002 (English).
  19. ↑ Founder of the Mun sect is allowed to enter . Focus from May 4, 2007.
  20. ^ Rev. Moon, religious and political figure, dies in South Korea at 92 . CNN on September 3, 2012.
  21. ^ Sands, David R. / Wetzstein, Cheryl Unification Church faithful gather in South Korea to mourn Rev. Moon . The Washington Times of September 14, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Moon, Sun Myung
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mun, San Myung (alternative romanization); Mun, Sun-myung (alternative romanization); Mun, San-myung (alternative Romanization); 문선명 (Hangeul); 文 鮮明 (Hanja)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South Korean founder and head of the Unification Church
DATE OF BIRTH February 25, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Sangsa-ri, Heian-hokudō Province , Chōsen , then the Japanese Empire , now North Korea
DATE OF DEATH 3rd September 2012
Place of death Songsan-ri , South Korea