Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 403 - The Moonies Cult: Sex, Control, and Marrying the Dead

Episode Date: May 27, 2024

In Seoul, South Korea, in 1954, Sun Myung Moon founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, a new religious institution that would quickly become known as the Unification Church, and one of the biggest cults in modern history. Adherents would come to be known as "Moonies," following the controlling teachings a man who considered himself a new Jesus.  Sexual rituals, physical and psychological abuse, financial corruption, and so much more follow in this real life soap opera of a story. If you would like to support Richelle and her work - or at least check it out! - please visit:  https://firecatrich.carrd.co/Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/2xyTLWESI9EMerch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. And you get the download link for my secret standup album, Feel the Heat.

Imagine having no control regarding who you're going to spend the rest of your life with, who you will have children with. You wake up one morning as a normal high schooler, and then later that day your parents get word that the Messiah has chosen a husband or a wife for you. And by Messiah, I mean an egomaniacal Korean con artist that you've probably never even met but your parents have had a shrine to him in your house for years. Within a matter of days, you find yourself at the Messiah's house in upstate New York, where the Messiah lives, of course, crammed into a giant ballroom with dozens, if not hundreds,

of other people your age, some of whom you recognize from church. Others you don't. They speak in unfamiliar languages. They might be Korean or Norwegian or German. And they might be your future spouse. You just don't know yet. Finally, an elderly Korean man enters and you feel like the air has gone out of the room. With one hand, he starts pointing at the crowd, matching up couples. You and you, you and you.

Two by two. They leave the room, headed into their futures, headed into eternity as you've been taught your entire life. And you want to scream. You want wanna flee. Something about this does not seem right. You're only 16, maybe 17, you can't consent to get married. You're terrified that you won't like the person.

And more than anything, you're terrified of showing any of your emotions on your face right now. Because if you say no to this elderly man, you are saying no to the Messiah. You are saying no to your elderly man, you are saying no to the Messiah. You are saying no to your family's God. This might sound like a fictional Handmaid's Tale type of situation, but for hundreds of thousands of people over several decades, it was very, very real. It was happening all around the world to members of a church, but really a very controlling, abusive cult estimated to have around 10 million members at their height.

A cult led by Sun Myung Moon. Born Yong Myung Moon in a rural village in Korea in 1920, Sun Moon would achieve a, no pun intended, meteoric rise shortly after his family converted to Presbyterianism in 1930. Though just a boy, Sun Moon later claimed to have intense religious experiences, including a vision of Jesus who told him to complete Jesus' mission on Earth for him, to do what Jesus failed to do. That mission would be to establish the Unification Church, a so-called non-denominational church that sought and seeks to promote peace, family, unity, and anti-communism.

Or at least, that's what they said it was for. It's now known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, and it is a fraction of its former self. The church's detractors, and there have been so many over the years, from many countries, say that Sun Moon was a ruthless cult leader, leading followers commonly referred to as the Moonies. A massive cult, based on worshipping Sun Moon and his wife Huk Ja Yon as the true parents of a family of sinless beings. And of course, profiting massively. I'm talking

about making billions of dollars. This is no Children of Thunder or Emmanuel David or Coconut Cult. This isn't the Source Cult or the Fountain Cult or any of the other smaller cults we've covered. The Moonies were huge and still may have millions of members worldwide. The most common estimate I've seen is about 3 million. For years they gained insane amounts of influence with everyone, everyone from US lawmakers to foreign heads of state and at least one Japanese Prime Minister. Sun Moon built one of the biggest blatant cults in modern history. One that harmed

hundreds of thousands of people, was involved in a ton of shell companies, tax evasion, shady government shit, pushed the son of a member into the assassination of a former Japanese Prime Minister. This story is one of the most unique cult episodes we've ever covered. It even connects to Hunter Biden and the popularity of sushi in America in recent decades. The very strange, how is this not more commonly known story of the Moonies? Right here, right now, on another cult, cult, cult edition of Time Suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck. You're listening to Time Suck. Happy Monday and welcome to the Cult of the Curious.

I'm Dan Cummins, the Suck Master, George Soros' evil henchman, Bill Gates' pool boy, new world order disinformation specialist, and you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, hail Lucifina, praise be to good boy Bojangles, and glory be to Triple M. Today's episode is actually part one of a two-parter, but you're not going to have to wait a week for part two. It's going to come out tomorrow. I've been thinking about how to make little improvements to Time Suck this year, and I

think the biggest one is to stop trying to record a 30,000 plus word presentation in a single sitting. It's pretty draining. It's always been pretty draining trying to share accurate information in a compelling narrative form and be funny and engaged as I talk for three hours straight with no one else is tiring. And I've noticed that I start to fade a bit as I get past a two hour and 15 minute or so mark that happened to me actually the last episode with the depopulation stuff I just kind of felt bad that I wasn't giving it my all at the tail end and I feel like I rush in episodes like that because I'm worried about the episode being too big and that's not good for you especially since I naturally tend to talk too fast so I'm trying something

new today. We had a lot of good information about today's topic. A lot of stuff I did not want to cut. But if I did it in one sitting, it would easily be around a three and a half hour episode. So instead of tackling it in one sitting, I've divided it into two. But since in the past, there's been, you know, complaints about one topic being spread out over two weeks, and I'm not doing that. You're gonna get both parts of one week. And then next next week whole new topic if you didn't love this one. Sound good? Hope so? Let me

know. And now before I dive in just one announcement. I'd like you to meet Rachelle aka Firecat Rich, her creator handle. She's worked in the shadows for us here at Bad Magic Productions for a few years now. Help them keep our biggest fans over on Patreon happy, answering spaceless questions and a whole bunch more. Lindsay and I have come to really like and admire her. She's a great person, hardworking fellow content creator. She specializes in not safe for work, Hail, Lucifina illustrations. And she keeps having to move to new platforms because payment services like MasterCard are

putting more and more pressure on creator platforms to remove adult sexualized content. Violent content? Totally fine. Hateful speech? Oh yeah, no problem. Protected by the First Amendment. But a drawing? Where you can see an illustrated pussy?

Filthy fucking horror! We must save the children! Oh, America. When will you fucking grow up when it comes to sex? Never? Okay. I asked Rochelle to write up a little something explaining what she does to share with you, and here that is. On a dark and stormy internet, corporations and AI roam the web with their brand safe catalogs. Content with a heart that speaks to the passions and pleasures can be hard to find.

Firecat Rich is an independent adult illustrator and comic creator. Saucy, sassy, sex-positive, friendly comics and illustrations that are free to read on their comic website. Firecat Rich's most popular title is the webcomic Where Does It Hurt? which has been described by readers as a wholesome erotic fantasy adventure. Elves, magic and sex, oh my. It's over 500 full color comic pages featuring fantasy couples and throuples of all shapes and sizes. The ongoing webcomic turned 7 years old in July and guest artists have been invited to contribute to this celebration.

As an independent artist, they couldn't do it all without support from readers. Through Subscribestar, not only do you get to read the short and long form comics before anyone else, you also get to see exclusive behind-the-scenes content and short form story spreads. If that wasn't enough of an incentive, you can also get to join in on the creative process in the form of monthly teatimes, live chats on the Secret Supporter Discord, and regular content polls. Alongside the ongoing sexy comics, each month there's a new theme for the illustrations and story spreads supporters receive as a thank you for their support. Themes range from dark fantasy, science fiction, modern slice of life and more.

So pull up a seat, Firecat Rich is just getting warmed up and you can check out their work at Subscribestar. It's firecatrich.carrd.co. I know that's a lot so I'm putting the link in today's episode description. So there you go. I hope that gets her some some new fans because she's very good at what she does. And now I also asked you to pull up a seat and prepare your mind for a topic that is deceptively massive. There are a lot of places we could have started with the Moonies because the Unification Church has touched on so much.

The politics of several different countries, countless families lives, the industries of the U.S. and Japan, the 1970s counterculture in the U.S. and more. The Unification Church is probably the biggest cult you've never heard of, or the one that you know the least about. You may have heard of them if you were paying attention to the news in the 1970s and 80s. That's when criticism of them seems to have been at its height, at least in the United States. That's when most people were getting very concerned about their kids getting involved in this new agey sounding group that extolled them to donate all their money to the cause of spiritual world domination. In recent years, since the death of their messiah in 2012, the group has fallen from power, thankfully.

A real-life succession type story, full of corrupt siblings vying for power hastened their decline. A 2022 political assassination in Japan garnered the Moonies more press in that nation and also sped up the decline of their membership. It seems today they only maintain a truly strong body of followers in their mother country of South Korea. Cocaine abuse, alcohol abuse, domestic abuse, financial abuse, sexual abuse. This story has it all. Throw in some extra political intrigue and you've almost gotten a full picture of the Moonies. But with the group so active in multiple countries, you know, the US, Korea, Japan, and more, we're bound to find out more and more about them as time goes on. Let me share what we have learned this week about the Moonies right now.

Before diving into a timeline starting with the founder's birth and leading up to the present day, this timeline will conclude next episode. Let us first examine what does the Unification Church believe? Well, it's a little hard to pin down, at least on the surface. For years they would call themselves a non-denominational community, a group of people promoting the vague concept of peace, a foundation that aimed to bring down communism. The Divine Principle, which is the core Unificationist text claims quote we now have the means to heal all modern-day human problems exalt every human soul and bring the kingdom of God within the reach of every man well hot damn what a

sales pitch go big I like it right these fuckers have the means to heal not some but all modern day human problems. If only all of us would just give them all of our money and listen! Also, what the fuck are they waiting for? They've been around since 1954, so get to healing dipshits! The 1960s, over 16 million people died worldwide in famines alone, mainly in China thanks to Mao Zedong's great leap forward. In just the late 1970s, over 2 million died of famine in Cambodia.

Thank you, Khmer Rouge. Millions more have died in various African famines in Sudan, Somalia, elsewhere since 2000. And famine just one of the many many problems that Moonies have promised to fix, yet they haven't fixed yet. According to the late Reverend Sun Myung Moon, a title he gave to himself when he founded his church in 1954, the title of Reverend, this all-embracing claim is based on new, super-important revelations from God, which were of course given to him and only him, in order to complete the task of establishing God's kingdom on earth and bringing peace to mankind.

In summary, this new revelation teaches that ever since the fall, when Eve fucked everything up for everybody by not submitting to God's will or her Husbands God has been trying to rectify his creation, but has not succeeded He has worked through some chosen champions, but none of them just found enough acceptance amongst men to get the job done Noah Abraham Jacob Abel Moses David Jesus, all failed to various degrees. And you know why they failed? Again because of Eve.

Fucking Eve! That reckless, ratchety bitch, when she went for that apple, she got her and Adam, even though he didn't do anything wrong, cast out of the Garden of Eden and humanity has been a sinful, nasty species ever since. Then God tried to fix shit with Jesus. Did you hear about how he actually was not supposed to get himself crucified? Oh yeah, no, he fucked up for real. He's supposed to form a perfect marriage in order to redeem humanity and undo the harm perpetuated by the union of Adam and Eve. But instead, Jesus, aka second Adam in Moon's teachings, was executed before accomplishing his mission. And ever since, a third Adam has been needed to form this perfect marriage and complete Jesus' task and save humanity.

And it took almost 2,000 years. Forgot to find a new human strong and righteous enough to complete that task. And before we go any further, holy shit does the incongruity of an omnipotent, all-powerful, universe-creating deity not being able to complete a mission, any mission at all, against evil, really annoy the shit out of me. Why would this God ever need Jesus or anyone else to go complete a mission to rectify humanity's sins?

Why can't he just snap his celestial fingers and make it so? Is he all-powerful? Or is he both omnipotent and also too weak just to stop fucking around and beat the devil already? Anyway this third Adam would be recognized as the second coming of Christ. As the perfect man he would marry the perfect woman and they would then become the true spiritual parents of humankind. The first couple ever in history that through God's power is able to lead a completely

sinless life and to bring forth children with no original sin attached to them to continue to lead humanity following their ascension to heaven or something like that. Cult, cult, cult, our leaders and their children could do no wrong for they are perfect and holy. All humankind can be engrafted into this lineage by receiving the blessing of God through the true parents via special marriage ceremonies and thus the kingdom of God on earth will be restored. And I bet you can guess who the Messiah is. It's Tom Brady. No, Pat's H. No, no, Michaelucking McDonald. Nah, Sun Myung Moon, of course. But he would kind of sit on this for a long time. Not openly declaring it for years after he was told.

Then after gaining millions of followers, he would finally be tempted into revealing his true identity. He wouldn't have to hide anymore. In 1992, Sun Myung Moon openly proclaimed to be the Lord of the Second Advent, the return of the Messiah. Oh fuck yeah bro! The true owner of the world, as he said in 1997. Or was the true owner because he ended up dying like a sad little totally mortal and not perfect at all little bitch in 2020-20-excuse me, 2012. And salvation can

only come to those who are engrafted into his lineage, is what he said in 97. This also meant that eventually learning Korean would be mandatory for everyone to be saved because this is the language of the true parents which is frustrating. I was hoping it was going to be Spanish if not English. Korean looks like it's pretty hard language for somebody to learn a little later in life if they haven't learned a second language already. I might be fucked. Those who reject Sun My Young, Moon will perish. And this is why America has been declining. Did you know that?

The problems we're having right now? It's because we didn't embrace Sun, Young, Moon enough. The one nation under God will actually soon cease because God's final purpose is one world under God. And this can only be established in the lineage of the true parents that is Moon and his wife. So maybe the Moonies are the Illuminati. The real new world order puppet masters. Moon did not reveal all this right away, of course. That's never a good way to run a successful cult grift.

You gotta draw them in nice and slow, right? Let the early congregation build up before you drop the big bombs that might run some people off. But you know, once you've got enough of a following, once they've given all their shit away and they're dependent on you, well now, due to some sunk cost fallacy and this bigger member base, you can pull off a lot more crazy. Moon started writing the Divine Principle in the 1950s, in which he made his first big controversial claim

that the Bible was not a complete work in and of itself. Over 536 pages, the divine principle presents a set of principles based on the patterns which Reverend Moon found in the Bible during his years of searching. And without these principles, Moon claimed you can't understand the Bible correctly. Fucking boom! I have the only answers that matter. You think you know the Bible? You don't because you have to read my book to understand that book. One of the principles given by Sun Myung Moon is that the Bible often needs to be understood symbolically instead of literally. All right, of course, make sure it's open for a lot of interpretation, right? His interpretation. He writes, for instance, that we cannot believe that God would implant in Adam and Eve a desire to rebel against him and destroy themselves for the sake of a piece of fruit. So the fruit must signify something far more important than a tasty apple or pear.

Okay, yeah, that actually sounds very intelligent. All right, at least at first. But then Moon replaces this with an interpretation that makes far less sense. The Unification Church teaches that Eve literally had intercourse with Lucifer and received certain elements from him. Fucking Eve! You dirty snake fucker! You reptile-diddling trollop! Hoping to get rid of these mysterious quote elements, she then seduces Adam, passes the elements on to him as well. Thus sin enters the once perfect lineage created by God via some kind of paranormal STI and the evil lineage of Satan has been multiplying within us ever since. Also God has been trying to rectify the situation ever since. He needs to erase

the evil from his creation and to recreate the world of goodness he initially made. And again, how is he not more powerful? Right? He can create a world in seven days, a whole universe, but he's still working on fixing what Eve did thousands of years later. He can't fix this fucking weird DNA corruption we have because she fucked a snake or whatever. How long does it take for his wizard powers to fully recharge? With his divine principle, Sun Moon basically gives himself carte blanche to reinterpret the Bible however he wants.

Pretty slick cult leader move. On one case he looks at Revelation 7 verses 2 through 4 and chapter 14 verse 1 and based on these verses claims that Christ will be born in a country in the east from the rising of the Sun. That nation is Korea. The Korean people will become the third Israel. But how would people be brought to salvation? Once again, Moon turns to marriage. Individual people who are not his children and who still have that stain of original sin. Fucking Eve! Why couldn't she have submitted to Adam? Well, they can be incorporated into his holy lineage if and only if Moon matches them to a partner, blesses the union, and marries them in the

spiritual realm as well as in the physical. Then they get to go to heaven. Cue massive matching and blessing ceremonies, which Moon would preside over typically, sometimes blessing tens of thousands of couples at a time. Frank Coffman, a leading unificationist scholar, wrote of this saying, Our matchings and weddings are a direct and perfect manifestation of a profound theology and worldview. You see, unificationists believe that all the problems on Earth, from the Gulf War to child abuse, to the crumbling school system, you name it, are fruits of the fact that self-interest crept into the family, the love between husband and wife, reproductive affairs, and parent-child relationships. Thus, since the beginning, there has never been even one family whose members were not dominated by some significant degree of self-interest. Got it.

All of us people who have done things, like get married, have done them only because it's what we've wanted to do, and that is the reason the world is a shit show. Did you marry someone because you wanted to, and not because the Unification Church arranged your marriage? Well good job, fucking dickweed! A hundred or so kids are being beaten right now, or have already starved to death, or whatever, directly because of your selfishness. And what if you haven't gotten married?

Oh, you're even worse! Situation in Ukraine or Gaza right now? It's probably your fault. This actually is the level of crazy that Moonies have believed. And with such a focus on marriage, specifically marriage between men and women, you can probably guess how Moon felt about homosexuals. He once in 2003 compared gay people to, quote, dirty dung-eating dogs. And he said that, quote, gays will be eliminated in a purge on God's orders. So like, you know, like a teeny bit homophobic and intolerant. Moon's blessing ceremonies

have been merely one part of a process that fully indoctrinates new members into the church. For years their teachings would keep changing dramatically over time, but for years in order to become engaged in the unification church. One must have first been a member for at least three years. One must have recruited three new members. Oh yeah, make your members, find new members. And more importantly, one must have made the required financial contribution to the indemnity fund. That payment symbolized unification teaching that all of humanity shares in the debt owed for the betrayal of Jesus and that we must all pay for this collective sin.

Like literally like pay with money. Pony up sinner! For a long time that payment was only 120 bucks. However, the moonies would pressure members of many, many members and are likely still pressuring members in their little offshoot groups to donate so much more than that to their cause, like everything they had. Back to getting married. What's called the Holy Wine Ceremony was long a big part of a Mooney marriage and may still be in some of their little offshoots. I'll likely end up using past tense with a lot of these ceremonies and beliefs because it's hard to understand exactly how the the new version of the church and its offshoots have conducted themselves since 2012 and their beliefs have morphed quite a bit over the years. So when I'm talking about their beliefs, unless I state otherwise, whether past or present tense,

I'm talking about the Mooney's beliefs during the 70s, 80s, and 90s. The first dozen years of this century as well, mostly. The peak of their powers. The holy wine ceremony was usually held the same day as the matching ceremony. Facing the man, the woman drinks half a cup of blessed wine and then passes the cup to the man. The woman drinks first to symbolize Eve, the first to sin, and now the first to be restored to grace. The few drops left in the cup are then sprinkled on a holy handkerchief. Literally called a holy handkerchief. Yeah, why not? To be used, we are such a weird species, to be used after the blessing at the three-day ceremony.

After a couple receives a blessing, there is then an indemnity ceremony in which the husband and the wife each ritually and symbolically beat Satan out of one another with sticks. Like actual sticks. Couldn't find video this. To see how hard the bride and the groom are whacking each other. I'm sure you're not supposed to you know hit your partner very hard But you know at least a few people have gotten carried away Maybe they've got a little extra nervous about getting married after the new partner is you know really giving them a good vigorous whacking And what if you really hated the person you just met that you're now marrying? I mean a good stick beating might be a nice way to kickstart an annulment

Anyway, the three-day ceremony is the consummation of the marriage. Then, and this is even fucking weirder, according to Sun Moon's principles, a couple was then not to have sex for the first three years of their married life. 99% sure that's no longer the case, but they did this for years. When the abstaining couple finally would have sex, they were to follow a detailed pattern of sexual acts prescribed by Reverend Moon. Dude was exercising some serious control over his followers. This is how you fuck.

You have to fuck in this order to be a follower of me. The woman would take the superior position for the first two nights. So she is fucking riding. She's going cowboy, first two nights, symbolizing a restored Eve, bringing grace first to Satan and then to the fallen Adam. On the third night the couple is to engage in an aggressive anal for no less than two hours, no more than six. To fully consummate the marriage both partners are to receive a pegging huge part of Mooney married life. As is written in Sun Moon's Divine Principle, the Lord purifies through pain.

Only through sexual suffering can a marriage be cleansed of original sin. It is God's will! God's will must be done! Prepare thy holy bicycle for a real off-road ride in the mud! No, that's nonsense. On the third night, the man assumes the superior position. So missionary. Symbolizing the restored Adam and Eve fulfilling the mission God had intended for them at the dawn of creation. Okay? On the morning of the third day, the couple joins together in prayer. Then they bathe and wipe their bodies with that fucking stupid rag called the holy handkerchief, which had been dipped in wine and then now dipped in cold water. And now, fucking a la peanut butter sandwiches, they're sinless.

But it's not like being sinless enables them to now just go about on their own. Don't be silly. They still, of course, have to worship the go about on their own, don't be silly. They still of course have to worship the Reverend Moon as their Messiah, as the true Father. Their fucking hot hard Korean Father Daddy covered in bulgogi marinade, chunks of kimchi and barbecue sauce. But they for real have to worship Reverend Moon as some sort of daddy Messiah. At every Sunday service, members would begin by repeating the pledge. One as the center of the cosmos I will fulfill our Father's will,

purpose of creation, and the responsibility given to me for self-perfection. I will become a dutiful son or daughter and a child of goodness to attend our Father forever in the ideal world of creation by returning joy and glory to Him. This I pledge. Kind of sounds like they're worshipipping Reverend Moon as God, right? Cult! Cult! Cult! Repetitive mantras for brainwashing! 2. I will take upon myself completely the will of God to give me the whole creation as my inheritance. He has given me his word, his personality, and his heart, and is reviving me who had died, making me one with him and his true child to do this our father has persevered for 6,000 years. Oh, wow

The sacrificial way of the cross this I pledge that's what that's fucking crazy. He's been around for 6,000 years I wonder why he finally died in 2012 though I mean you you would think that his Highlander ass would have aged slower from like 1920 when he was born, you know, according to historical records, and to 2012 when he, you know, suppose he died, if he'd actually been around for 6,000 years. It's weird that his age accelerated so much in the last like, you know, 80 years. Three, as a true son slash daughter, I will follow our father's pattern and charge bravely forward into the enemy camp until I have judged them completely with the weapons with which he

has been defeated the enemy Satan, for me, throughout the course of history, by sowing sweat for earth, tears for man, and blood for heaven, as a servant, but with the Father's heart, in order to restore his children and the universe lost to Satan. This I pledge. For the individual, family, society individual family society nation world and cosmos who are willing to attend our father the source of peace happiness freedom and all ideals fucking all of them will fulfill will fulfill the ideal world of one heart and one body by restoring their original nature to do this I will

become a true son slash daughter returning joy and satisfaction to our father and as our father's representative I will become a true son slash daughter, returning joy and satisfaction to our Father. And as our Father's representative, I will transfer to the creation, peace, happiness, freedom, and all ideals in the world of the heart. This I pledge. And then finally, number five, I am proud of the one sovereignty, proud of the one people, proud of the one land, proud of the one language and culture centered upon God, proud of becoming the child of the one true parent, proud of the family who is to the one land, proud of the one language and culture centered upon God. Proud of becoming the child of the one true parent.

Proud of the family who is to inherit one tradition. Proud of being a laborer who's working to establish the one world of the heart. I will fight with my life. I will be responsible for accomplishing my mission duty and accomplishing my duty and mission. This I pledge and swear. This I pledge and swear. This I pledge and swear. Sounds like they're preparing for battle, like actual battle, willing to die for Papa Bear. All of these ideas are very fucking out there. In terms of traditional Christianity that Moon's new religion morphed out of,

so out there, it can be pretty hard to imagine why anyone would willingly join. And it's not like Koreans didn't have access to traditional Christianity when this cult kicked off. And we're only hearing Sun Moon's warped version. Missionaries had been in Korea as early as the 1840s. And by 1930, the year Sun Moon's family converted to Presbyterianism, there were around 147,000 Catholics and 168,000 Protestants on the Korean Peninsula. People looking for a little Jesus, they had a lot of options.

And from those options, so many would choose Sun Moon. Why? Nan Suk Hong, who was married to one of the elder Moon children in the 80s and 90s, beginning when she was just 15, would look back to her culture to explain why so many people were simply willing to accept what Moon preached as fact. She'd write, in addition to ancient beliefs and ancestor worship and the spirit world, there is a strong messianic messianic strain in my culture. The notion that the Messiah or herald of the righteous way would appear in Korea

predates the introduction of Christianity into Korea a hundred years ago. It has its roots in the Buddhist notion of Maitreya and the Confucian idea of Jin-in or the true man and in Korean books of prophecy. Kings ruling by divine right appears in some of the country's earliest legends. As children Sun Moon, Nan Suk, countless others learned the Korean folk tale of Dong-gun, a folk tale that explains how Korea itself came to exist. According to this legend, Donggun was the son of the divine spirit Hwan-Nung, who was himself the son of the Lord of Heaven, Hwan-Nin. Apparently Hwan-Nin granted his son permission to descend from heaven and established the

kingdom of heaven on earth. Hwan-Nung came to Korea. There he met a tiger and a she-bear who asked him how they could become human and Won-nung gave them sacred food to eat. The bear obeyed was transformed into a woman. The tiger did not obey was forced to remain a beast. Won-nung married the woman and Dong-gun was born of this union of a divine spirit and a former she-bear. Dong-gun established his royal residence in Pyongyang and named his kingdom

on earth Chusan or Korea. It was these very ideas, lineage, parentage, heaven on earth, that Sun Moon would take and run with to form his new group. When cult leaders create some new religious movement, their ideas seem to almost always come from existing religions and cultural traditions their initial followers are familiar with, right? I mean even Raylianism, that UFO based cult we explored back in episode 287, even they base their beliefs as the true interpretation of certain Christian, Buddhist, and Islamic teachings. You got to hook people in who are already living faith-based lives with, you know, some belief that can't be proven, that they're already comfortable with believing in and the Moonies certainly did that. And the

Moonies certainly are a cult and their founder, certainly a cult leader. According to Moon, it's okay to use deception in order to gain a donation or workshop attendance from members of Christian churches. Also acceptable to use brutality to separate Satan from a member that appears not to be fully devoted to Sun and Young Moon. A lot of members got fucking beat. And acceptable for his family to do virtually anything. Gamble, drink, have premarital sex, go party and do hard drugs, being an absent parent, you know, fucking...

Whatever. They're all part of the Messiah. And you wouldn't criticize the Messiah, would you? Let's now explore this insanity in depth. I have enjoyed being lost in this for a few days. And find out how it all began in today's Time Suck Timeline. Right after today's first of two mid-show sponsor breaks. And I'm back and if you don't want to hear these ads get the entire catalog ad free and more by signing up to be a space lizard on patreon for five bucks a month. And now let's get into this crazy ass Moony timeline.

Sun Myung Moon, born on January 6, 1920 in Pyongan, Pukdo in northwestern Korea, Kyung-Yu Moon was his father and Kyung-Gi Kim his mother. And doing my best with these pronunciations, some of them by the way very hard to track down. Some are like you know names and minor towns and stuff. Making educated guesses based on the pronunciation of similar words. His birth name was Myeong-moon translating to shining dragon and this will become a problem for him later in life because the dragon sometimes seen as a symbol of Satan.

Certain critics will later use his birth name to prove he was the Antichrist. I doubt it. Probably just a regular old grifter who ran a scam a lot better than most. He changed his name to Sun Mung Moon when he became an interint preacher. Before that, he was just a kid born into an interesting lineage. His paternal great grandfather, Jong-ul, known as Soon-ok, who lived from 1841 to 1918, settled in Songsa-ri where the majority of the 30 or so households there were of the Nampyeong Moon clan.

His extended family was prosperous, producing thousands of bushels of rice and providing hospitality to Koreans fleeing to Manchuria after their homes or land were confiscated by the Japanese occupiers who were in Korea. However, they fell on hard times after Moon's great uncle, Young Guk, fucking Young Guk, convinced them to sell most of the family land under the guise of borrowing that money to invest in a coal mine. Then he donated the funds to the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai. That motherfucker! How did they not kill him? What would you do if you sold your land to enter what was supposed to be a lucrative business deal with your uncle and then

he was like, surprise! I just gave your money away instead. Sun Moon's immediate family was able to retain three small plots of land comparatively small about six acres in total near the main house and eke out a modest living. I should add sources to English covering Moon's early life are pretty slim they're mainly limited to Moon's later excuse me voluminous speeches, which provided material for his autobiography as a peace-loving global citizen. And that source is obviously pretty biased since he wrote it. And we know that he is for sure full of shit. I mean, he claimed he was God on Earth. But we do know a couple things. We know that he was

the second son in a farming family of 13 children, 8 of whom would survive to adulthood. All these years into Time Suck, and hearing about how common child death was before we finally figured out how to vaccinate kids against various fatal and contagious diseases still shocks me. Nowadays in developed nations, it is unusual to have one of your kids die before they reach adulthood. But previous to the last, I don't know, 80 or so years of human existence, it was weird not to have any kids die

because people had so many kids and so many kids died. In the year 1800, more than a third of kids who survived childbirth still died by the age of five in the US, over 33%. In 2022, however, the global under five mortality rate had dropped to one in 27, less than 4%. Thank you, scientists! Back to Moon's family now.

Though they were originally Confucianists, most sources say Sun's parents would convert to Presbyterianism when he was 10 years old, thanks to Sun's great-uncle, that dipshit Young Guk, who was a minister. This is that same idiot who tricked his family into donating their fortune to the Korean government exile Not sure why they still trusted this guy. It's clearly pretty damn persuasive Other sources say that the family's conversion was caused by faith healings of Sun Moon's elder sister and brother Whatever the case Sun Moon claimed he eagerly embraced his new religion. He'll later write I Attended church faithfully without ever missing a week.

If I arrived at service even a little late, I would be so ashamed that I could not even raise my face. I don't know what I could have understood at such a young age to inspire me to be this way, but God was already a huge presence in my life. Protestant missionaries had been in Korea a long time, I mentioned that since the 1900s, or 19th century, excuse me. Some Koreans were especially drawn towards Christianity because of the social practice called the bone rank system. The system was strictly based on a person's hereditary bloodline and there was very little chance of social mobility. It does act as a caste system. A person's bone rank governs their official status, the level of authority they were permitted to wield, their marriage rights, even the color of

the garments they were allowed to wear and the maximum dimensions of their dwelling. Imagine not being able to move into a bigger house, not because you can't afford it, but because your bone rank is too low. You also can't wear your favorite color. No blue for you. You got the wrong fucking bone rank. Overall, we are a pretty fucked up species. When you look at all the ways we continually make life so much harder than it needs to be. The elite were divided into three bone rank classes. The Holy Bone class. Makes me think all these people are like skeletons. There's the Holy Bone class from which the sacred king sprang, the True Bone class or the upper aristocracy, and the Head classes which included all

other members of the aristocracy. Christianity offered Koreans the promise that even if there was no equality here on earth at least there would be in the next life. That's pretty depressing. Your life as a Christian will still be a shitshow here. You'll still be a shit show here. You'll still be a lowly, bone-ranking, piss-poor peasant, but once you're dead, you're gonna live like a king, eternally, promise, pinky swear. By the time the Reverend Moon's family converted to Presbyterianism in 1930, the economic hardship of a long-ongoing Japanese occupation that had begun in 1910 was beyond evident.

Nearly all Korean farmers were tenants, although they were producing record amounts of rice. The overwhelming majority of it was exported to Japan, and the local populace often went hungry. Korea in the early 20th century was a terrible place for most people to live, at least for Koreans. Japanese nationals made up only about 5% of the workforce, but held almost all of the top industrial jobs. They outranked even the best of Korea's bone folks. Japanese firms owned 92% of Korea's working mines in 1932, for example.

But it was Korean miners who toiled below ground and lived in unheated shacks above. Those Koreans fortunate enough to secure positions with the government were restricted only to low level jobs. So adding Japanese occupation to an already demoralized population made life on earth seem even more unfair and a perfect afterlife that much more appealing. The promise of heaven and God's grace and love certainly appealed to young Sun Moon. As a boy he sought religious knowledge on his own by going into the mountains alone to pray. Or maybe he never did that and this is just some myth building he wrote about. Some personal tragedies may have also driven him towards the church. He was very young.

He said he witnessed his great grandfather's grave being removed and the remains were exposed. And it filled him with quote shock and fear. He turned to the Bible for comfort. At the age of 15, five of his younger siblings all died in a single year. Sources don't say how, but I'm strongly assuming some outbreak of contagious disease. Around this time, Sun Moon became obsessed with the concept of evil, especially as it related to Japan's tyrannical rule. He scoured the Bible for passages that explained why evil existed if God was all-powerful. Also did normal kid stuff. In his autobiography, Sun Moon recalled boyhood adventures where he would spend entire days in the hills and meadows

around his home, wandering about in the forest, picking wild vegetables, climbing trees, studying birds, listening to insects, tending to the family cow, aggravating the family's hens, watching a mother pig give birth to piglets, catching eels and little water pools along a three mile path from his home to an inlet of the Yellow Sea. He would also write about helping his older brother run the farm, plowing rice paddies

in fields, transplanting seedlings, fertilizing crops which included breaking up solid excrement by hand into small pieces. That feels like some younger brother chores. I bet his older brother made him do all of the shit smashing. Okay, Sun Moon, I need to run this plow, drop some seeds into the ground. I'm gonna need you to find all the turds you can see. Just go look for turds and smush them up in your hands into really small pieces and stuff. Really get your fingers in there. Break it all up nice and good. And then he'd

just laugh his ass about it. Moon attended a traditional school in his village where he read the Analects of Confucius and the works of another prominent Chinese philosopher, Mencius. He was also taught how to write Chinese characters. The more he learned, the hungrier for education he became. I did believe that. This guy was no dummy. He longed to attend a formal school, so he and his cousin enrolled in the Unyoung Institute to prepare to take an exam required for admission to the Osan School in Jeongju, the county seat six miles away. And he would get in. Osan was a nationalist school where Japanese language was not taught and speaking it was

actually forbidden. Moon was an Arden student and skipped a grade. There he would learn about subjects that were otherwise forbidden in Korea. Korean script, geography, history, and mathematics, these were forbidden in most places because Japan was trying to just erase Korean culture. But perhaps surprisingly, he disagreed with the no Japanese policy. He would later say we had to know our enemy if we wanted to defeat them. He soon took another exam and entered the state-run Jongju Public Normal School. He memorized the Japanese katakana and the hiragawa alphabets before his first day. Then on Easter morning 1936 when he was 16 Sun Moon supposedly had a vision. That's what he would later claim. Maybe he had a small

stroke. Maybe he had a small stroke. Maybe he accidentally ate the wrong mushrooms. Or he 100% made all this shit up. He claimed he was on Mount Mood praying all night. All night. Begging God in tears, Francis. And then as he prayed, Jesus appeared to him and explained that through humanity's unbelief, he had been unable to complete his mission. And that Sun Moon was now commissioned to finish the task he, Jesus, could not complete. Sun said he had first refused, but Jesus was persuasive. I get it.

I mean, who's going to persuade you harder than Jesus? And eventually he agreed. And I'm going to say, get the fuck out of here. That is some seriously cocky shit to claim. To claim that Jesus not only appeared directly to you, but admitted privately to you that he kind of fucked up. And then begged you to do what he wasn't able to do as the Son of God. And on top of all that, you initially were like, nah. And then he had to really work to get you to change your mind.

work right to get you to change your mind. Behold Sun Moon, Tis I, Jesus. Oh, oh wow, Jesus? This is, this is incredible. I love you so much. Oh, thank you for sacrificing yourself to cleanse us all of our sins and save humanity. Yeah, um, about that I've never said this before but I didn't know I didn't actually save humanity's souls what what are you saying Jesus I'm saying I fucked up kid okay I feel sorry I shouldn't yell at you I'm just I'm sorry, I shouldn't yell at you. I'm just, I'm sad. Why are you sad, Jesus? Well, I'm sad, Sun Moon, because I let Father down. I was never supposed to be crucified. I was supposed to get married.

That is how I was going to clean the stain of Eve's filthy, filthy pussy from humanity. Sorry for the language, kid. But now that I'm dead, it's just... That's too late for me. But Sun Moon, it's not too late for you. What are you saying, Jesus? I'm saying that God has been waiting almost 2,000 years since my fuck- I mean, my mistake.

To find a soul as pure as yours. To save this entire filthy world. Past, present, and future. I'm saying... I need a hero. Holding out for a hero till the end of the night. But he's gotta be strong, and he's gotta gotta be fast and he's gotta be fresh from the fight what was that Jesus? oh sorry kid I haven't been able to get that song out of my head I went to you here in 1984 Bonnie Tyler's incredible but right now you have to save the world

I can't Jesus I'm too young I'm not strong enough. Well not yet dummy, but when you're older. Father doesn't need you to be strong, he just needs you to marry someone young, hot. And to pop out a lot of kids, and to take a lot of people's money, and then also have a lot of affairs, and cheat on your taxes, and make everyone worship you as they live in fear and poverty, and you live in comfort and luxury. Can you do that for us? For me? Jesus? For my father, Sun Moon? Yes I can, Jesus. I can fix the mess you've made. Oh that's great Sun Moon! But don't ever say that way again. You know how muscular and ripped I am? You've seen the pictures.

I will fucking beat the shit out of you brother!. But, you know, but I appreciate something like that. Something like that is, you know, maybe what happened. Insanity. Sun Moon would write the following about his medium. Early in my life, God called me for a mission as his instrument. I committed myself unyieldingly in pursuit of truth, searching the hills and valleys of the spiritual world. The time suddenly came to me when heaven opened up and I was privileged to communicate with Jesus Christ and the living God directly. Since then I've received many astonishing revelations.

Sun Moon continued to pray often weeping as he did, which would actually later become the norm for prayer and unification in church. A lot of weeping and that sounds absolutely terrible. A giant room full of grown- A lot of weeping. And that sounds absolutely terrible. A giant room full of grown-ups praying and weeping. I think I'd rather take my chances in a giant room full of clowns or wasps. Moon supposedly wept a lot. Like the most anyone has literally ever wept. One day, allegedly, he wrote that water began to come through the ceiling of the family house on the first floor. So Sun Moon's dad went upstairs to investigate what was going on, found his son in his room weeping copiously

in prayer. His son was literally flooding the house with tears shed for God. That's what Moon claimed. And I'm going to call a bullshit on this one too. This shit kills me. If you just apply the tiniest bit of critical thinking not magical thinking to this is one claim You know, he's full of shit Right with this one claim, you know, this guy's a phony full of shit dirtbag I mean, let me throw some tear stats at you. The average human produces 15 to 20 gallons of tears a year That sounds like a lot right? But it's not what you might think That's not 15 to 20 gallons of tears running down your cheeks. It's just overall moisture

created by glands above your eyes, almost all of which is reabsorbed by your body, draining into tiny holes in the quarters of your eyelids, then emptying into your nose where it is then reabsorbed or evaporates. But this motherfucker allegedly cried so much. Apparently gallons were just like sprinkling out from his eyes onto the floor at a rate that caused the water, like so much water in his bedroom, he flooded his bedroom and to the point that it leaked through the ceiling down into the first floor. If he could cry that much, why didn't he ever do anything like that on tape? Right? Have someone record it. Why didn't he ever do anything miraculous in a place where it could be witnessed? I mean, well, because he's a

phony and his religious teachings are all nothing but bullshit. During the summer following his Easter crying to the floor and ruining his family house never happened experience, after Jesus personally asked him to do what Jesus couldn't do, that kills me, this guy undertook a pilgrimage around the country which confirmed to him that Korea was a crucible of tears. And he redoubled his determination towards future work as he would write in his autobiography. He didn't do that either. There's no way his parents would just let him wander around the entire country one summer while he's in high school. He testified to having more meetings with Jesus and he started to separate himself from conventional religious practices and became more ardently anti-Japanese. You know, because Jesus fucking hates Japanese people. We

all know that. In 1938, when he's 18, on the day of his graduation from Jongju Public Normal School, he delivered a student address in which he referred to each of his teachers by name, criticizing them and pointing out the problems in the way they ran the school. Or he never did that. Again, this is just according to him. I bet he didn't say shit. But he supposedly declared Japanese people should pack their bags as soon as possible and go back to Japan. And quote, from that day, the Japanese police marked me as a person to be tracked and began watching me, making a nuisance of themselves. He would then continue on this strange, very brave and courageous path. From 1938 to 1941, Moon attended Kyung Song Institute of Commerce and Industry, a school for boys, ran by a Japanese headmaster in Seoul, adopting the model before seeking to dominate the universe,

first perfect your ability to dominate yourself. He ate two meals a day, lived in an unheated lodging, cut the hair of beggars under the Han River Bridge, and prayed for hours in his lodging and on a small hill nearby. I'm not sure how cutting the hair of beggars living under a bridge lines up with perfecting your ability to dominate yourself. Know thyself! Cut the hair of people sleeping under bridges! But that's what he said. He attended a Pentecostal church and then he went to the Myung-Sudae worship hall, the

sole branch of the New Jesus Church. The Myung-Sudae worship hall had been founded by the noted Korean mystic and revivalist Young Do Lee, who was expelled from the Methodist Church in 1922, for being a fucking nutjob, and Nam Joo Baek, who'd been expelled from the Presbyterian Church for messianistic teachings. So that's cool. More dudes who think they're talking to God, directing away the rest of us or not. Sun Moon served as a Sunday school teacher, taught Bible lessons, evangelized, witnessed a couple of other con artists he adored, or excuse me, BE adored by the congregation and thought, I can do that. And spoke to his peers about Korea as the second Israel.

In 1941, he would begin studying at Waseda University in Japan. It's still there. It looks like a really nice school actually. Where he studied engineering. Feeling that he quote, could not establish a new religion philosophy or a new religious philosophy, excuse me,

without knowing modern engineering. I'm not sure how much sense that makes. He was twisting theology, not building a fucking bridge or making transits or radios. He traveled there under a Japanese name, Rumi Imoto, and while there he would claim his religious studies were never far from his mind. I should hope not. I mean, he's talking to Jesus directly. Trying to finish what J.C. started. said he always had three Bibles, not one or two, three, open on his desk. Always. One in Korean, one in Japanese, one in English. He'd pour over them, making notes in the margins

until the pages became difficult to read through the scribbles. He also researched books on religion, brought home philosophy books, argued with Korean communist students, and began organizing his ideas. He became active in the Korean Student Underground Independence Movement, which got him arrested multiple times. Due to the Second World War, Moon graduated six months early, September 30th, 1943. As an engineering graduate, the now 23-year-old was exempt from active military duty, but was required to find work with the company contributing to the war effort. And maybe that is the real reason. He studied engineering, so he wouldn't have to fight in the war. That would track.

I took a job back in Seoul, Korea in the electrical department with a Kashimi Gumi construction company, and he got married. He married 17-year-old Choi Soon-kil on May 4, 1944. In his autobiography, Moon notes that he married her because he came to feel intuitively that the time had come for me to marry. And I'm surprised he admitted to marrying her considering what he does later. Other writers who have studied this guy say that one of the reasons Reverend Moon's first wife Choi Soon-Kil accepted to be matched to him in December of 1943 was

that he told her he was a graduate from the prestigious Wisseta University. She likely thought he would have good prospects in electrical engineering, having no idea that he planned to dedicate his life to religion. They began married life in his boarding room at Huisokdong and Moon continued his church work with Myeong-Sudae Jesus Church. But soon things would change. In late 1944, Sun Moon was arrested after a friend from Waseda was accused of being a communist and over the course of his interrogation mentioned that soon Sun Moon also was a communist. As a result, Moon was beaten while hung from the ceiling, then forced to swallow water

until bloated while laying face up on the floor with police stomping on his stomach with their military boots. He was released in February of 1945. Japan's surrender marked the end of World War II later that year, August 15th, and it also marked the beginning of Sun Moon's public ministry. Over the next nine years, when he wasn't imprisoned, he would seek to gain followings in Seoul, Pyongyang, and Busan. During this period, he only had marginal success in gaining following, but succeeded in consolidating his teachings and setting the foundations for what will later become the Unification Church. And his marginal success in gaining followers probably wasn't all

his fault. After the war, Korean Christianity was weakened by rifts over Shinto shrine worship and rival political factions, with the whole country now allowed to worship, think, and speak as they pleased. And power grabs for the authority that once belonged to the Japanese were frequent. Sun Moon would make one of his own, or at least try to. In late 1945, he connected with the Israel Monastery, an offshoot of the New Jesus Church. It was a small group, but included among its congregation the wife of the owner of Korea's main daily newspaper, the Chosen Ilbo, and the wife of Lee Bom-suk who became South Korea's first prime

minister in 1948. Apparently they were not won over by him. In his autobiography he would write that he made the decision to end the partnership declaring I had to go my own way. Or they didn't like him, didn't want shit to do with him, and booted him. Following this party, instead of courting a general following, he decided to turn to spiritual groups who expected God's return in the flesh. So he finds some fellow extremists. You know, of course he is believing that he is God's return. But he wasn't telling anyone about that just yet because that would not be a good business move. Moon arrives in Pyongyang June 6, 1946. In his

autobiography he describes his departure from Seoul as a result of a sudden revelation. We ran out of rice in our home so I set out for a community north of Seoul and just south of the 38th parallel to pick up some rice that have been purchased previously. On my way though, I received a revelation that said, Go across the 38th parallel. Find the people of God who are in the north. I immediately crossed the 38th parallel, headed for Pyongyang. It had been only a month since our first son was born.

I was concerned for my wife. I knew she would be anxiously awaiting for me, but there was no time for me to return home before going north. God's commands are very serious and they must be followed without reservation or hesitation. He had to abandon his family who were clearly hungry because he was going to get rice. It was God's will! God wanted his fucking family to starve. Don't judge him. And yes, he does have a kid now, a son, Sung Jin Moon. He will later divorce his wife and not be present in his son's life at all. God's will again, of course. I mean, God could have

chosen some other creation of his who didn't have to abandon his family, but why? Why do that? You can put some mother and her son through unnecessary trials and tribulations. He'll say later that churches in South Korea had turned his wife against him. As he explained it, she and her mother united in their opposition, saying, whoever says the Lord will come in the flesh is an enemy, the Antichrist. Apparently, Choi Soon-kyeol just didn't buy his bullshit. She didn't think her husband was the God in the flesh, and that's why they parted. It would now be more than six years before Sun Moon will see his wife and child again. In Pyongyang, he'll preach his word to whoever will listen, but the combination of aggressive tactics and noisy services leads to complaints. The communists are on to him.

On August 11th, 1946, North Korean police take Moon into custody, charge him with being a spy from the South and using religion to deceive people. Nailed that second part. In prison Moon met members of the Inside the Belly Church messianic sect whose female leader's womb supposedly shook when receiving revelations indicating that Christ would return in the flesh. For fuck's sake. Moon was released November 21st 1946, nursed back to health by some followers he made before getting locked up. Ho Bin Ha, the Inside the Belly church leader, refused to disavow her revelations

and later died in prison. Sounds like she wasn't actually a grifter. She was legitimately insane. Son Moon got back to preaching, but a little more quietly. 1947 he attempted without success to convert Yul Yong Pak, who referred to herself as the wife of Jehovah and led another messiah. Oh my god, messianic, messionic, messionic. There we go, group. Called the Wilderness Church in Pyongyang. So there's all kinds of people going around pretending to be God. He also may have dabbled in a bit of blood sex magic around this time that was popular in these circles. Hail Lusifena! Critics claim that you're in this period and afterwards Moon engaged in a practice called blood separation or cleansing of the womb,

a form of ritual sex alleged to be practiced by Korean messianic sex in the 1940s and 1950s where dudes would claim to fuck women's wombs clean. Letting those clean weens do a little bit of the Lord's work. It's like a Roto-Rooter for your uterus. What a world! Moon now getting a taste for all the hot ritualistic sex being a cult leader can get you. Moon is arrested again February 22nd 1948, charged with disrupting the social order, tried on April 7 before both communist officials and Christian pastors. He mockingly asked questions about how he came to be here on Earth, and he is sentenced

to five years imprisonment at the Hungnam labor camp. Moon arrives at the Hungnam labor camp May 20, 1948. It was located on Korea's east coast to minimize escape attempts and visits from relatives of prisoners from western provinces. Hungnam's nitrogen fertilizer factory provided fertilizer to the Soviet Union in exchange for weaponry. Grouped into teams of 10, prisoners were required to fill 1,300 bags of ammonia sulfate daily, each weighing almost 90 pounds, from 60 feet high solidified mounts. The ammonium sulfate in the fertilizer burned the skin on his hands. Obviously there was no gloves.

Unsurprisingly conditions were atrocious. Starvation diets, unheated barracks, tattered clothing, lack of sanitation, rampant disease and death, and compulsory propaganda sessions. Then things would get worse. Following the outbreak of the Korean War, June 25th 1950, massive sorties of B-29 bombers pounded Hungnam, the industrial complex there, in late July and early August. Moon survived a sea of fires and executions of prisoners. On October 13, 1950, having previously retaken Pyongyang, the United Nations ground forces advanced on Hungnam. Guards abandoned their posts. the gate was left open. Moon noted, at around two o'clock in the morning on the next day, I walked calmly out. He later claimed that

he was slated to be executed on the day he would end up getting released, but no records speak to that fact. I'm guessing this is some more bullshit, some more myth building. Took Moon 10 days to make his way across the peninsula of Pyongyang. There he would say he spent 40 days recovering and searching for members of his congregation, most of whom were scattered by the war or had lost confidence in him. During this period, the Chinese Red Army entered the war, began driving U.N. troops south, closing in on Pyongyang. The city was ablaze with ammunition dumps being exploded, record, you know, and all kinds of stuff being burned. Orders came to evacuate and on December 3rd, 1950 Moon departed with just one disciple from before he was sent to camp. One Pil Kim and a follower from Hung Nam, Chung Hwa Pak. Abandoning the main

roads, which were blocked by retreating troops and military equipment, they traveled by a narrow path and waded through abandoned rice fields. Making matters worse, Pak had previously sustained a broken lake, which required Moon and Kim to take turns pushing and pulling him on a bicycle. Staying in abandoned houses, scavenging for food, they made it to Seoul December 25, 1950, Christmas Day. Once there, there was a little bit of time to rest. Chinese and North Korean armies were approaching though. Moon, Kim, and Pak continued their journey south, careful to avoid village patrols searching for communist infiltrators. Pak, who'd almost recovered, accepted an offer to stay in Gyeongju. Moon

and Kim continued, traveling the last 20 or so miles by train from Ulsan to Busan at the southeastern tip of the Korean Peninsula. As there wasn't any room in the passenger coaches, they rode up front, claiming to cling to the front of the engine, the warmth of the steam engine supposedly scorching their backs and freezing wind in their faces. They arrived at Chor Young Station in Busan, cold and hungry, January 27, 1951. Just a few weeks earlier, Sun Moon had turned 31. In Busan, he was effectively a refugee struggling to find food and shelter. Moon worked on the docks for a little while.

Later in 1951, he moved to a hillside district on the edge of the city where he and Kim constructed a primitive hut with the roof literally made out of cardboard boxes. Moon would later describe it as, quote, the worst house in Pusan. But what about his wife and son? Is he desperately trying to find them, reconnect, make sure they're okay? No. One evangelist, a woman who became his first new convert, later remembered her reaction on visiting his cardboard house. I thought that if anybody had to live in such a house,

he would be filled with resentment for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, it was there that Moon completed the original text of the Divine Principle. He began working on the text in May of 1951, but the laborer's quarters where he was staying were loud, not conducive to writing. He undertook the task seriously, finished the manuscript May 10, 1952, despite the noise, despite the cardboard. The manuscript's organization, particularly its later published version, greatly resembled another book, The Fundamental Principle, a religious text written by Bakmun Kim, the

leader of the Israel monastery where Moon had served for six months. That book would be published in 1958. So did Moon plagiarize that book? Yeah, yeah, probably. However, teachings of messianic spirit-led groups in the 1930s and 1940s in Korea were pretty similar across the board. And these new books came out of those.

They taught that the Lord would return to Korea as a man in the flesh, that original sin was fornication, that Jesus should not have been crucified, and that the returning Lord would establish a new blood lineage. So most of Moon's teachings were not unique. This guy was a hack on top of being a con artist. On the day that he finished his manuscript, Moon declared that the time had come for him to now evangelize his new religion, and so he began. Converting followers would be a slow-going affair for the first few years.

Curious people made the trek up the hillside to hear the young man making preposterous claims, but after they would leave, a few would return. Still, Moon was able to reunite with several grandmothers who had been with his ministry in Pyongyang, a classmate from his student days in Japan, and the daughter of his former landlord in Seoul. Hyeon Shil Hong, the evangelist who visited his hut, became a follower as did Yohan Lee, a former Presbyterian minister. A turning point of the formation of the Unification Church came with the signing of the Korean Armistice, July 27, 1953. Despite the war's lingering effects, the end of hostilities introduced a feeling of optimism, which benefited his tiny group.

A week before the signing, Moon sent Hyun Shil-hong to Tae-gu, 60 miles to the north of Busan. He sent Yo-Han Lee to join her in August. They are able to establish a beachhead, on September 17, 1953 Moon moves to Seoul. Hyo Won Yoo, who later became a Unification Church president and three of his brothers, joined Moon's group in Busan. And Song Chul Kim, a South Korean government official, became a member in Taegu, both joining Moon in Seoul. Suddenly his little group? Not as little. But now Moon is facing some new problems. His group is pursued by opposition from Christian churches and the family members of converts

who claim that Moon is a heretic who is practicing a made-up bullshit religion and brainwashing people. There was one month in Taegu in which Moon had to move 13 times to hide from what he called critics or people justifiably mad that he was grifting their grandparents or some shit. In March of 1953, Moon formally changed his name from Young Myung to Sun Myung, because Christians were using the name Young, which means dragon. Excuse me, as evidence that Moon was the Antichrist.

And Sun Moon, you know, just kind of has a nice ring to it. Then on a cold windy day in November of 1952, his wife and now six and a half year old son arrive at the door of his little cardboard hut. Actually, this is not the cardboard hut. This is his new hut. This is a slightly better hut. She had acquired directions from one of Moon's cousins while working in the Busan International

Market and Moon not happy to see her. That shitty fucking weasel was hiding from his wife and son, shirking his responsibilities in true cult leader scumbag fashion. And now before we see how Sun Moon treats his wife and child, and we witness his meteoric rise as a cult leader, time for today's second of two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thanks for sticking around. Now we start to truly get culty with all this as we see what Choi Soon-Kil learns about the husband who had abandoned her. Choi Soon-Kil neither understood nor accepted Moon's new ministry.

Also upset that Moon could not provide for her or their son. But she still moves in. And she curses out Moon and his followers several times. And has good reason. On one occasion, one follower would claim she found Moon doing what was called picarum sex with two young women at the church in Seoul. As defined by British religious scholar George Crisides, this practice consists of quote a female neophyte engaging in ritual sexual intercourse with the messianic leader of the movement in order to restore either literally or

symbolically the sexual purity of the woman. Yeah, that's how you get to be a virgin again. You have the cult leader. Fuck you. Why? All around the world, every generation, people fall for this kind of stupid shit. If I was a sociopath and just didn't have a conscience at all or care about anyone other than myself, maybe I'd stop podcasting and just become a cult leader. Memorize a bunch of scripture, twist it to serve my dark selfish purposes, and con people out of their money and have a ton of cult sex. No one has magical answers. No one. We're all just guessing at best what happens

when we die and how to earn favor from God or the gods or nature while we're still alive. There is never a good reason related to salvation or the attainment of holy favor or secret knowledge to literally let somebody fuck you. So don't get fucked, meat sex. Nimrod does not approve this. After catching him do this shit, after catching him fuck his sub follower, Choi Soon-Kil smashes up Moon's church sign with a baseball bat. Not long after this, Moon sneaks off to Seoul. He's kind of going back and forth between Seoul and Busan.

He sneaks off to Seoul and his wife and son remain in Busan. So he abandons them once again. He and a handful of followers now move into a ramshackle house with two tiny rooms in a small kitchen that'll come to be known as the House of Three Doors. And not long after moving into this house, more reports of sexual abuse in the Unification Church spread around regarding these sexual rituals. Some followers claim that the name House of Three Doors had a different meaning. Some former followers now, they will say this later, uh, rumored that the first door was where you took off your jacket. The second door, your outer clothing,

and the third door where you took off your underwear to prepare for getting your womb cleansed. Sun, Young Moon loved to wash up women's bikes, really clean them, really shine them up all nice like. Leave no crevice dirty and untouched in this three door house. There was even a story of a woman who went to a church wearing no fewer than seven layers of clothing hoping to thwart attempts to undress and cleanse her.

In 2013, Annie Choi, a soft-spoken 77 year old Korean woman with ruddy cheeks and thick silver hair, would allege that she was one of the women who engaged in numerous sexual rituals with Sun Moon. Some involving as many as six women, these orgies, beginning when she was 17 with Moon and others. This dude loves a 17 year old by the way. His first wife 17 when he married her. Next wife will also be 17. Like a true cult leader, he likes his women young and unsure of the world. Right? Supple breasts and even more supple minds ready to be bent to his will. She claims she became pregnant with the child but that the world never found out until 2013.

Thanks to Bo-Hai Pak, Moon's second-in-command, who had his wife stuff her midsection with cloth diapers and pretend she was pregnant at the same time that Annie was pregnant. When the time came for Annie to give birth, Pak passed her off as his wife at the hospital. The following day, he allegedly dropped her off at an empty apartment and took the baby back to his home. Holy shit. Back to Moon. He would soon start to formalize his new ministry.

Sun Young Moon and four followers founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity in Seoul in 1954. And immediately they ran into some problems. Setting up a separate organization ran counter to Moon's initial vision of uniting all of Christianity and the world religions. In his autobiography he refutes the idea that he ever wanted to found a new church. He wrote it was necessary to hang out a church sign but in my heart I was ready to take it down at any time. As soon as a person hangs a sign that says church, he is making a distinction between church and not church.

Taking something that is one and dividing it into two is not right. This was not my dream. It is not the path I chose to travel. But it was what I had to do, get more money in my pocket, and get more young pussy more often. So, you know, fuck it. It gets me a church. Something like that is probably what he thought. May 2nd, 1954, Moon shared a plan of world domination with his handful of followers.

According to one document, its objectives were, "...to unite all the scattered Christian denominations throughout the world without initiating a new Christian denomination, and based on the unification of world Christianity to bring unity among all past and present major religions to build the kingdom of heaven on earth. So he wants to take over the world absorb all religions into one where he is God on earth. Got it. They hung a sign the next day outside the house of three doors. Now Moon would begin a different strategy. His idea of getting followers from other Christian leaders to nominations, who he called first generation Christians, wasn't working.

Instead, he now decides to focus on what he called, or who he called, second generation Christians, aka the unconverted. He decides to hold lectures on college campuses, first at IWA Women's University, of course, and also at Yon C. University, then a Christian school. And of course, of course he chooses a women's university as one of the first places to recruit, and then also a co-ed Christian school. He's a 34-year-old dude who just wants to pray on and fuck college girls. To give his campus talks, he needed to adapt his handwritten principle book,

text, excuse me, into a three-day cycle of lectures, which his underlings immediately did for him. They also started to court some members of the faculty at these campuses. Young-Yang Yun, a professor of music at Ewha, joined in April of 1954. Six months later, offered her home for lectures. Chung Hwa Yeon, Ewha's dormitory master, Wan Pak Choi, Dean of Students of the Faculty of Law and Political Science, and Young Sun Kim, a professor of religion, all joined and began to actively recruit for this church or cult. Soon there were 400 students regularly coming to services and some began to join the church as well. Others would come out against the Unification Church. In December of 1954, a university pastor preached against the UC stating,

Church. In December of 1954, a university pastor preached against the UC stating, These days a heretic sect, so-called Holy Spirit Association, is running wild like a ghost. Regrettably, some 20 students at IWA have been infected by it and even come to a point of abandoning their school. The three professors who had gone there to rescue them also got infected. How lamentable. The IWA administration acted decisively, firing five professors and expelling 14 students, all of whom refused to disaffiliate from the UC. Yancey fired one professor, expelled two students. The students went to newspapers arguing they were victims of religious discrimination. Opponents effectively counted this by branding the UC as a sex cult, spreading rumors, or probably truths, that members danced in the nude and participated in sex ritual orgies.

Cult! Cult! Cult! We're having some fun. Officials at Ewha had close connections with the South Korean government, and on July 4, 1955, police raided the cult, arresting Moon and four other leaders. Moon was charged with draft evasion during the Korean War, and with the unlawful detention of students. He was convicted of the former, sentenced to two years in prison. According to one of the IWA students, Christians come in droves to watch his trial, and Moon is subjected to jeering and mockery, as he had been in Pyongyang. The draft evasion conviction did not stand, as Moon was already beyond the age of compulsory

military service at the time of the Korean War. Nevertheless, he will serve three months at Sodom and Prison in Seoul before his conviction is overturned and then released October 4, 1955. And then his fledgling unification church sadly rebounds pretty quick. A year after Moon was released from prison, the group had 400 members. On October 7, 1955, three days after Moon's release from prison, the UC purchased its first building. They took out a loan of two million won and purchased a house on a hillside in Seoul that had been vacant since the Japanese left, making it a so-called enemy property.

So they got it for a deal. Moon worked with church members to repair, scrub off the dirt for days, exposing a Japanese-style temple with a moderately large hall, meeting, and sleeping rooms. It would serve as the UC headquarters for the next two decades, delivering regular worship services at 5 a.m., 11 a.m., evenings on Sundays, and evenings on Wednesdays. There would also be daily lectures and a magazine printed there called the Sung Hwa. In August of 1957, the UC published Explanation of the Principle. The text enabled followers to better comprehend and articulate church teachings. The UC also implemented semi-annual

examinations of its contents and developed training sessions for leaders. So they're really organized. Things are looking good for Moon professionally. Not as much personally. Back in 1955, he had agreed to a divorce which had been demanded by his wife and her family. According to 1955, he had agreed to a divorce which had been demanded by his wife and her family. According to Moon, she subjected members to horrible abuse, storming into the church at all hours to curse them, destroy church property, take items belonging to the church, even throwing water containing human feces at members. And all this discord undercut the very things Moon was trying to teach by getting into new pussy. So he simply adapted his teachings.

Moon taught that Jesus as the second Adam needed to take a bride as the second Eve so they could together serve as the true parents to humanity. He believed he inherited that role, but his romantic relationship since his divorce had not been conventional. He had started seeing a woman named Myung-hee Kim, but they were not legally married when she gave birth to a son of his, Hur-jin Moon, on August 17th, 1955. Moon would recognize his son as his own but also quickly abandon him. Because how this relationship would look to people skeptical of a new Christian leader, he abandons his second child and second mother of his child. Then on April 11th, 1960, when son Moon is 40, he marries Huk-cheock Chahan another 17 year old. This righteous

patriarch, oh this messiah, oh god in the flesh, marries a 17 year old school girl. This was a shock to many in the UC particularly other older women who had viewed themselves as potential marriage candidates but come on wake up your fucking bikes are too old right the tires are flat the chains are rusty. And being full adults, you got fully developed minds, which will surely resist submission much more than a child. Sun Moon wanted someone young and impressionable. Given his previous marital experience, Moon's primary concern was that his wife should accept

his mission. Hak Ja Han had been raised by a single mother, Su-ne-hong, from the North, who was successively a member of the New Jesus Church, the Holy Lord Church, the Inside the Belly, what the fuck is going on with those crazies church? All forerunners to the UC. So her mom was like a cult groupie. Just balanced from one cult to the next, doing whatever the current cult leader told her to do.

That's how she's raised. This kid is raised to be handed over to somebody like Sun Myung Moon. Hock Ja Han later wrote, I was molded from my conception to be the true mother who would devote her life to God's purposes. She'd been primed to accept Moon's teachings essentially since birth. Moon would make a point of telling followers that the fact that she was only 17 did not bother him. Of course not. Come on. He's a fucking pervert and predator. Like 99% of cult leaders. Moon would teach his followers that youth did not need to be a barrier to marriage. Like a true pedo. He wrote, if there's grass on the playing field, you gotta fuck that pussy. That's actually kind of what he wrote. He just made it sound more eloquently.

He wrote, as soon as you notice your child is an adolescent and aware of sex, they are blessed in marriage. Fucking boom! Why should they fall? God or heaven is responsible to each person on earth to feed, to educate, and to marry. Nowadays people work hard and yet do not have enough food. People are ready to marry but they cannot. Why should someone be left after one has started to have the impulse of love? It is the parent's responsibility to determine the proper time. He makes it seem like as an older guy praying on a teen, you're doing him a favor.

Come on, you're saving their soul. Son Moon met with a daughter and mother for nine hours, February 26th, 1960. An engagement ceremony followed at the UC headquarters at their main church, March 27th, and then a wedding on April 11th. And then they would not wait for three years to have sex. Now he started fucking his teen bride immediately.

And he also essentially imprisoned her. Moon's wedding would be referred to as the marriage supper of the lamb. Oh how cool. He claimed that their union marked the beginning of the completed testament era, in which Moon would reverse the fall of man by making his wife pay penance for Eve's sins. For the first three years of their marriage while he lived normally, he stashed Hakja Han in a rented room, kept her in bitter poverty, and forbid her from ever seeing her family. Cult! Cult! Cult! Yeah, and he's living in a much nicer place from this time. He said the goal of all this is to rid her of her Eve-like defiance and cultivate quote

Absolute obedience. He's not even hiding it so that she could bear children free from original sin. Fucking submit lady! I wanna see if I can trick Lindsay into living in the shed this summer. She can come inside when she's ready to submit and not before! She can come inside when she's ready to submit. And not before. The goal was clearly to crush her spirit, to brainwash her, to turn her into his teenage fuck toy and broodmare. By the winter of 1960-1961, early in Hak-cha Han's captivity, the first of their perfect children had arrived.

Now Sun Moon would have another new idea. During the 1950s, the UC's focus was entirely religious. In the 1960s, it became a more broadly based movement incorporating economic, cultural, and educational components with the church as its core. It became more of a healthier cult, right? A bigger cult built for explosive wealth attainment and growth, at least for the leaders. How did Sun Moon blend these cultural elements with a religious underpinning? With his marriage blessings. A week after his own marriage, the Reverend Moon joined his three closest disciples in

marriage to churchwomen he had selected as brides for them. Guessing those women could also probably be described as girls due to their ages. But maybe not. He would bless 33 couples the following year. Ceremonies included elaborate ritual elements, notably the reception of Holy Wine, which was understood to cleanse partakers of original sin. Moon matched and blessed 72 couples in 1962, 124 in 1963, 430 in 1968. We don't have numbers for each year, 777 in 1970, and then way more after that. Is blessed a nice word for trafficked here? He trafficked a bunch

of teens to older men is probably what he did. He wouldn't stop at marriage blessings. Indeed, if you can make up one elaborate ritual, why stop? Why not make up more? Make a whole calendar. The UC did develop a ritual calendar which established four major holy days, cult, cult, cult. There was a Parents' Day, Children's Day, Day of All Things and God's Day which was of course Sun Moon's Day. They also published Divine Principle in 1966 for a wide release. It was the group's official text now and they would translate it into English in 1973. Back in the 60s Moon's new church started making some real money. The Korean UC had been impoverished during

the 1950s. The only organized economic activities of note were the reselling of cancelled postage stamps and the sale of hand-tinted black and white photographs of famous places or popular entertainment personalities, like touristy shit. But then by 1962, some sources say, as early as 1959 actually, the U.C. purchased an abandoned lathe used by the Japanese during their occupation, placed it in a storage room and called it Tonial Industries. It would later become the Tonial Group. This was their first company technically and they're still around. Check out this creepy

promotional video for English-speaking markets released in 2019 or 2019. They still sound culty. or 2019, they still sound culty. We are creating peace for everyone to enjoy together. Leave the city behind and spend some time in nature. Okay, come to the compound. Live a healthier life today as you prepare for tomorrow. We want to give you and the people in your life a comfortable place full of hope. This is from their YouTube channel. Tongil Group is pursuing a harmonious community for humanity with mutual prosperity, interdependence and shared compassion. The Dramatic. Peace Pioneers, Tongil Group.

And all the pictures they were showing behind that music are just like of people working at this huge industrial complex like way out in the woods. Where they were making peace of course. How fun. Who doesn't want to go work for a company that makes peace and builds mutual prosperity and shit? This business would be far from their last. The following year the UC launched its first boat Christian Victory of Heaven. They do a lot of fishing, get into the fishing

industry, machine tool production, and fishing became the first two staples of the church's economic enterprises. By 1972 the UC had even established a pharmaceutical company specializing in the production of ginseng. They owned two titanium factories. They owned two titanium factories. They owned other factories that produce paints and coating materials. They somehow obtained a tax exemption for their manufacture of Yiwa air rifles designed for hunting birds and small animals. Craziest of all, Tonyil Industries will even become a South Korean defense contractor, like military defense contractor. In addition, the UC acquired real estate, notably acreage bordering Chongpyeong Lake, northeast of Seoul, where

Moon envisioned the eventual creation of a model international village. Also, they got land on Yodo Island, Seoul, which later becomes South Korea's administrative and financial center. This is where he envisioned the future site of the Unification Church World headquarters to be. So he got some very valuable real estate. And where did the seed money for all this real estate come from? Well, from donations, from members, of course. And just because they're now making a lot of money from various businesses, they don't stop taking donations from members. They take more donations now.

Members will reportedly end up giving this church billions and billions of dollars. We don't know how much, but many billions, not millions, billions. Simultaneously, Sun Moon was starting many public facing initiatives to make his church look better, like they're very humanitarian, very philanthropic. 1962 Moon founded the Little Angels, a Korean children's dance troupe that still exists as a way of introducing Korean culture overseas. Led by Bo-Hye Pak, an early missionary to the US, the troop would obtain financial backing from none other

than Lilla Wallace, the founder of Reader's Digest. By 1971, the Little Angels had performed on US national television at the Mexico Olympic Games, the Nixon White House, and in a Royal Command performance before Britain's Queen Elizabeth II. So that's cool. I wonder how many of those little angels went on to become teen brides, highly pressured to become completely obedient fuck toys for their husband masters. Backing up a few years in 1966, the church established the Collegiate Association for

the Research of Principles, CARP. Too bad it couldn't be crap. In 1966, and then the International Federation for Victory over Communism in 1968. Sounds cool. So many companies and associations, so many places to hide money and avoid paying taxes on that money. That's what a lot of their critics will claim this is all about. Following the infiltration of 31 armed North Korean commandos into South Korea, bent on

assassinating the South Korean president, unification VOC lecturers will even conduct trainings for police and municipal officials to keep South Korea safe. So they're getting, you know, their tentacles and all sorts of government officials or in, you know, government areas. Unification Church now closely connected to the South Korean government. And with all this Sun Moon star right shoots higher than ever and people either overlook or don't care about his shady past. Back in 1965 Moon describes how he envisions his group well reforming all of society. He says, we would like to see a boarding house for the children of our members where some responsible

persons could raise them and educate them at least for a few years. This would release you for your necessary witnessing, you know doing missionary work. We have people in our group who are well qualified and willing to conduct such a boarding house in school. This is in the future where we have more money to support such a house and the children. It will be very good for the children, good for the parents, and very good for the movement. No one can enter the kingdom of heaven as an individual, but only as a family. No one can enter the kingdom of heaven as an individual. Holy shit, that is a culty thing to explicitly state.

You cannot get in without us. And also, give us your fucking kids. We want to start brainwashing them as early as possible. We would like to raise them, not you. And I guess a lot of proper religions do version to this as well. From the believer's perspective, I can understand the logic of wanting to raise children in the faith. From a non-believer's perspective, it comes across as just indoctrination, indoctrinating people before they're old enough to decide for themselves, you know, if they feel called to the faith or not. It's all, you know, planting these emotional seeds in their heads that will call them, you know, pry at them later.

Moon urged his disciples to find people who have the wealth to help us finance such a school. I've seen that exact move so many times before. Go get us some money! Go pray on some rich people! With these new ideas, the UC was sufficiently developed for Moon to embark on world tours to spread his faith in 1965 and 1969. Just before dawn on February 12th, 1965, Sun Myung Moon shuffled off a plane at San Francisco International Airport carrying a suitcase of Korean soil. Uh-huh. Literally he was carrying a suitcase full of dirt. As God willed him to carry, you simply cannot grow your religion overseas unless you first bring over some magic dirt to nourish your new souls in. Definitely wasn't

doing this for any showmanship, dramatic, or theatrical reasons. No way. No, he's a great guy. He's a holy man. His disciples later drove him to the hills overlooking the city of San Francisco as a strong wind blew. The wiry 44 year old buried a clump of his precious Korean soil and declared that spot holy ground, quote, a place where you can come to pray and not be bothered by Satan. Oh, fuck yeah, that's how you get rid of Satan with the right dirt. Get out here, devil! Go on, get! Not here! gonna say it with the right dirt. Get out here devil Go on get Not here not today not with my dirt

Your dominion is lost Beelzebub I see your evil powers and I defend this land from them with my magic Korean soul shield Soul Shield. By the power of Grayskull. I have the power. I have the magic dirt. Moon spent the next month touring the continental US in a blue Plymouth Fury station wagon. All told, he and his followers staked out 55 plots of holy ground. Sprinkle a little bit of that magic dirt on each spot.

I fucking hate these guys, including one in front of the White House. While Sun Moon was excited to conquer America with his soil, soil, excuse me, soil, soul, sorcery, the country most wanted to establish a thriving mission, the country he most wanted to establish a thriving mission, excuse me, might surprise you and that would be Japan. Several attempts to establish his church in Japan had failed prior to the work of Bong Chun Choi who successfully established Unification Church in Japan in 1958, would lead the church there until 1964 when he was taken away by immigration service officials and deported. Known as Reverend Nishikawa there, he was raised

in Japan from the age of two through his college years, repatriated to Korea only after the Second World War. There he converted to Christianity, smuggled himself back into Japan, and entered a Christian holiness theological seminary. He then converted to the Unification Church in 1957. Obtaining approval from Moon, Choi again smuggled himself into Japan but was arrested by port authorities near Hiroshima. June 21st, 1958. He then fasted to make himself appear sick, very clever, then escaped to Tokyo from a sanatorium where he'd been sent, then founded the first UC outpost on the second floor of a watch shop October 12th, 1959. Choi didn't have much luck recruiting until he met Michiko Matsumoto in April of 1960, a Korean Christian whose Japanese husband had died.

She became a very devoted disciple and with her help the Unification Church in Japan would spread like wildfire. A big breakthrough occurred in 1962 and 40 young leaders of a neo-Buddhist sect converted. These converts quickly moved into UC properties where everyone lived and worked communally, as newspaper, magazine, bottle, and old clothing collectors who then resold that shit to junk dealers. Then soon there were enough members for the church to become highly organized. Japan was then divided into 11 districts, which in turn were separated into prefectural churches.

There were 36 churches by 1966. The headquarters in Tokyo was organized into bureaus, departments, divisions, committees. There was also a systematic training program since many of the converts were also students, always focusing on the students, right? Young, curious minds seeking their path in life, strongly assuming that male church leaders

worked a little harder to persuade hot college girls to join their cause That they could then you know used to recruit disillusioned middle-aged or elderly folks Also moon as much as I hate to say it had a very impressive business mind. He's not fucking around He is incredibly organized methodical entrepreneurial Do you see put a ton of effort into week-long recruiting festivals that would take place on or near Japanese college campuses? put a ton of effort into week-long recruiting festivals that would take place on or near Japanese college campuses. According to a 1966 report, the UC's national student movement, later known as the Collegiate Association for the Research of Principals, right, CARP,

mentioned them earlier, comprised approximately 350 active members in 60 universities throughout Japan. Then after 1966, the Japanese UC faced three decades of escalating opposition. However, they also made a fuckload of money in Japan during that time and gained hundreds of thousands of followers. Also, pissed a lot of people off. The backlash truly began in 1967 with an article in Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan's most influential newspapers at that time, titled The Religion That Makes Parents Weep. Fueled by deep-rooted suspicion or even shame of anything closely connected to Korea, families of converts were particularly concerned because unlike other Japanese new religions, the UC

removed young adults from their jobs, from their colleges, from their families, right? Because they're a f**king cult. Routinely sent them overseas as missionaries to further separate them from their prior social circle. And selected marriage partners, regardless of family preference. Total control. They should have been concerned. This organization is shady as fuck. Like a true cult, they did all this separation and isolation.

The first significant anti-UC organization, Parents of Victims of the Unification Association, coalesced and UC members were subjected to forced confinements in mental hospitals. In the 1970s, the UC would find itself banished from numerous college campuses in Japan. During that same period, anti-UC parent groups invoked brainwashing theories and adherence and adherence continued to be committed to mental hospitals or confined to makeshift cells in parents' or relatives' homes for cult cult D programming. They tried. They tried to stop the spread of the shit. Despite those measures, the Japanese UC would still grow and money they made would be funneled into the next expansion area

for the church which was the United States. The UC had actually begun its first missions to the US years earlier in 1959 with missionaries that headed out to the Pacific Northwest. Young Eun Kim, one of the Ewha University professors who converted in 1955, was the first to arrive in the U.S. in Eugene, Oregon, January of 1959. She would incorporate the church as a California corporation on September 18, 1961, in an effort to stabilize her residency status in the U.S. Four years later, in 1965, repeal of the Asian Exclusion Act that severely restricted Asian

immigration to the U.S. Significantly aided the Moonies, aided the admission of Koreans and all Asians to the U.S. David Kim was the next Mooney to arrive in Portland, Oregon in September. Bo Hy Pak, organizer of the Little Angels dance troupe and a military officer arrived in 1961 serving as assistant military attache at the Korean Embassy in Washington DC. They got connections to the South Korean government, used those to connect themselves to the US government. And Song Ik, Papa San Choi, who had successfully established the UCM in Japan, was the last of the

original missionaries arriving in San Francisco in late 1965. All these people would work tirelessly to set up churches, foundations, associations, some of which claimed to be about Korean heritage or freedom from communism, and they would set up elaborate tours of the country to evangelize. Papa San Choi even tapped into the communal ethos and utopian idealism of the 1960s, fashioning a communitarian experiment in San Francisco that included an international ideal city project on 600 acres in Mendocino County. Man, 600 acres, Mendocino County. That's worth a lot of money. Clearly they're taking their new followers for all their worth, getting plenty of wealthy recruits trying to set up

compounds. However, as things are ramping up in Japan, core membership of their separately incorporated groups in the US stood at only around 300 after more than a decade of effort. But soon, during the 1970s, a time and place we know so well here in the suckers, due to this decade being quite the cult incubator, their growth will accelerate rapidly. Alienated youth, disillusioned with American society, political protests, the drug culture of the 60s, the Vietnam War. All of this contribute to a broad group of religious seekers who joined the UC. The UC takes advantage of the market opportunity

by transforming itself from loosely organized, low impact missionary groups into unified, tightly organized, high demand new religious movement. 1971, eager to take advantage of this new cultural shift, Sun Moon moves himself and his family to the US for their primary residence, though he will remain a citizen of the Republic of Korea. He settles with his growing family into this big fucking mansion in the quaint village of Tarrytown, New York, in the Hudson River Valley. In 1972,

he purchases a mansion on 22 acres in Westchester County for $850,000. That's slimy fuck is making so much money. I've tried to figure out how much this property is worth today. And I can't find information for the specific address of this property, which is 723 South Broadway, Tarrytown. But looking at the value of comparable estates in the area that are either up for sale or have sold recently, this property known as the Belvedere Estate, it's gotta be worth at least $25 million

and probably close to 30 or 35 million. The Belvedere Estate is one of the area's architectural gems. The Stucco Mansion was built in 1920 with 16 bedrooms, six large public rooms for living and dining, 10 full bathrooms, a commercial sized kitchen and a full basement. The mansion looks out over these massive rolling lawns, ancient trees, an artificial one acre

pond complete with a wooden bridge and a waterfall. There was, probably still is, this huge swimming pool, tennis courts, breathtaking views of the Hudson River from the quarry tile, second floor sundeck. Five other buildings stood and likely still stand on the property, including the carriage house that was only slightly smaller than the fucking mansion with 10 bedrooms there, three full bathrooms, 10 public rooms. There's a five-bedroom wood-framed cottage that was built back in 1735. There's a gardener's cottage, an artist studio, a recreation building, a 4,000 square foot garage, and three large

greenhouses. This property has its own fucking website, thebelvedereastate.com. Looks like today it's getting rented out for super expensive weddings, big corporate retreats, etc. And just a year after he uses followers' money to buy that property, Moon purchases a second 18-acre estate not far from Belvedere for another $566,000. This is another property easily worth above 20 million today. The centerpiece of this property a three-story brick mansion with 12 bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a living room, dining room, a den, a kitchen, an enormous tile solarium on the west side of the

house. Moon Christians this place East Garden and this is where he and his family will take up residence and will live for decades. This will be their headquarters. Several additional small buildings dot the rustic East Garden estate overlooking the Hudson River. There's a security booth guarding an entrance on Sunnyside Lane. Nearby is a gate house with two bedrooms, bathroom, living room, kitchen, plus a small basement. Just up the hill from the mansion, another lovely stone house with two bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, dining room, den, kitchen, called the cottage house. This motherfucker truly has a cult compound now, a little country inside a country where he reigns as king.

1973, the Unification Church now publishes the Divine Principle in English for the first time. It pretty much declares Sun Moon as the Messiah. With the fullness of time, God has sent his messenger to resolve the fundamental questions of life in the universe. His name is Sun Myung Moon. For many decades, he wandered in a vast spiritual world in search of the ultimate truth. On this path, he endured suffering unimagined by anyone in human history. God alone will remember it. Knowing that no one can find the

ultimate truth to save mankind without going through the bitterest of trials, he fought alone against myriads of satanic forces, both in the spiritual and physical worlds, and finally triumphed over them all. Bum-pum-pum-pum! He is the best ever! By the power of Grayskull! I am the Greatest! the best ever by the power of grayskull i am the greatest human ever hopefully some of you are amused by me associating son myung-myun with a he-man uh i really hate this walk-and-shit sandwich of a human being

he endured suffering unimagined by anyone else in human history. The fuck he did. He didn't even endure more suffering than a lot of his fellow Koreans did during World War II. What about the Koreans used as human guinea pigs by Japan's Unit 731? Remember that early horrific episode when innocent civilians were raped by other prisoners infected with syphilis? Other STIs just to see what they would do to them, where prisoners, many of them Korean, were subjected to air pressure experiments, would literally bleed out of their eyeballs, where people had their arms and legs cut off just to see how long they would live before they bled to death, where other people had other people's limbs

grotesquely sewn onto their bodies to see what would happen, find out how long it would take them to painfully die of infections. These people were subjected to the worst shit you can literally have done to you. The Unit 731's experiments were arguably even more gruesome than what Dr. Mengele did to Jewish medical experiment prisoners in Auschwitz. But you know, Moon suffered more than that. Oh, and he wandered the earth for many decades. What? He's 53 years old. He's been running the cult for 20 years and living in luxury. The only real wandering this fucking charlatan did was wandering away from taking care

of his first wife and son and then his mistress and son. The Divine Principle also shares a story of Sun Moon marrying a perfect woman to restore mankind to the state of perfection that existed in the Garden of Eden. Leaves out the part about her being raised in his cult and then him marrying her when he was 40 and she was 17 and then forcing her to live in a fucking dick turd shed room for three years while he impregnated her. The book discusses how Moon and his wife would be the world's true parents, capital T capital P. How they are sinless as are their children. Great way to make sure that the Iron Throne stays in the family, right? The kids are holy too. And the book states that only couples blessed by the Reverend Moon become part of his pure blood lineage and are assured a place in heaven.

The book emphasizes that as individuals, we all have an active role to play in a big restoration drama. Before the Messiah can fully establish heaven on earth, mankind must make amends for the sins of the past. In unificationist terms, they must pay indemnity to compensate God for humanity's past failures. The Unification Church's strict rules of behavior, no smoking, no drinking, no gambling,

no sex outside of marriage, designed to help individuals in that task. It is written, the conclusion of the principle is that you must make up your own mind to love true parents more than your own self, spouse, or children. Love the fucking cult leader more than your self, spouse, or kids. Ultimately, the true father is the axis around which all children and posterity are centered.

Bow down to Sun Myung Moon. Also in 1973, the UC circulated full page advertisements placed in most of the nation's major newspapers. In these advertisements, Moon asserted the crisis for America is a crisis for God and stated God's command at this crossroads in American history is to forgive, love, and unite. That sounds so nice publicly. UC also supported President Nixon and this support got them a lot of exposure. Moon secured an invitation to the 1974 annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast, got a 20-minute audience with Nixon, reportedly telling him regarding the Watergate scandal, don't knuckle under the pressure.

Stand up for your convictions. Ah, that's great. February 1, 1974, Nixon actually publicly thanked the Moonies for their support. But this had the unintentional effect of drawing widespread criticism, particularly from institutions Nixon had previously gone after, like the IRS and the Democratic Party. New York City now denied Moon's church tax-exempt status. Senator Bob Dole, an anti-Nixon Republican, convened two informal information sessions regarding the cult, one billed as a day of affirmation and protest for UC critics. Democratic

congressman Donald Frazier pursued the Moon organization in a congressional probe for our of Korean-American relations focusing on the UC in an intelligence report on the Unification Church. It was discovered that the church had paid influential people in farming villages in South Korea to join the church like bribe them to join in order to use these bought and paid for shills to recruit other members. Also was revealed that Moon had made connections with South Korea's Central Intelligence Agency, had basically bought various politicians over there at all levels of government. Frazier's and others now worried that the U.C. is doing shit like that

in the U.S. What the U.C. was doing in the U.S. for recruitment was conducting a series of Day of Hope Evangelistic Crusades in all 50 states. These culminated in a highly publicized overflow rally at Madison Square Garden. Yep, the Moonies packed out the garden in New York City. September 18, 1974 featured Moon with a translator speaking on the new future of Christianity. Pre-rally preparations included a massive poster campaign with ads proclaiming September 18th could be your re-birthday. 80,000 2x3 foot posters with a portrait of Moon wallpapered Manhattan. As reported in the New York Times, his face is everywhere.

How many people did that freak the fuck out? Skull's not messing around. February of 1975, Moon announced his intention to send missionaries to 120 different nations. They were to be three-person teams consisting of a Japanese, an American, and a German or Austrian. That is, missionaries from former enemy nations that had prospered after the Second World War. He and his wife had just set a Guinness World Record with their 1,800 couple marriage blessing

in Korea. 1,800 couples. And many of the missionaries were drawn from these newly married couples. Missionary trainings began in March and in late April and May approximately 270 missionaries left for 95 mission countries with 30 national missions already in place. The new wave met the gold moon set a decade earlier when he blessed 120 holy grounds worldwide. Fucking moon, he's dominating in the 70s. 120 holy grounds worldwide. Fucking Moonies dominated in the 70s. Members of the missionary trinities did not know one another prior to arrival. Most did not speak the other's language. My god. And in most cases, they were unfamiliar with their mission nation. A later report wrote,

Most of these men and women had never been to the part of the world where their assigned mission country was located. Some had never heard of the country. They were the pioneer. Most could not speak the local language well and many not at all. Most even had no idea where they would stay for their first night. But holy shit, just sending them over there with nothing. Go figure it out. Fucking bring me back some followers. Don't come back. Despite the challenges of language, culture, disease, material deprivation, and deportation, many teams did win converts, would establish centers, and would set up cottage industries in these other countries to finance their activities. And as they gained more members and more publicity, the UC gained more critics as well.

In 1984, Yoshikazu Sojima, a top church official who recently left the church when he realized Moon was a fucking charlatan, a cult leader instead of a savior, said in an interview with the Washington Post, By the end of 1975, the main activity of the church was collecting money, buying lots of real estate in Korea and in the United States and starting a lot of businesses. He added that Moon is not working for the world but for himself. Yeah. Indeed, by that time, the church owned four South Korean manufacturing companies, tuna fleets and fishing processing plants in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Norfolk and in Alaska.

They own newspapers in Montevideo, Uruguay, Cyprus, Tokyo, New York City and Washington, D.C. Some would say about the fishing, the United States has three of the world's four largest fishing grounds. Three quarters of the world's fish population live in waters near the United States. Yet the United States has relatively few people to catch fish and its fishing industry is extremely underdeveloped. I mean this guy was a fucking good businessman. Check this out. True World Foods, a UC related company, eventually becomes the leading supplier of raw fish to sushi restaurants in the nation. This cult was expanding

faster than Scientology was. If they wouldn't have gotten caught up into so many scandals in later years, they would have become much bigger than Scientology. While true membership numbers have never been made public, many believe at their height they had about 10 million members worldwide and that now they still have around 3 million. However, only a few hundred thousand are probably dedicated, many of them in South Korea. Still, this cult was big. Still is fairly big, even though it's splintered.

Later in 1980, Moon gave a speech to key followers in the Moon-owned New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan, a huge hotel he had bought in 1976 that would go on to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, about how getting Americans to eat more tuna was the best way to introduce them to sushi. And now many do credit Moon more than any other single person for sushi's current popularity in the US today. Fucking crazy. That is the one thing I can be thankful about regarding Sun Moon. I do like some sushi. So thank you, you slimeball. Moon was making so many shrewd business moves. In Washington DC area alone the church owned a downtown

construction firm Monumental Construction and Molding Co. An Alexandriabased television production firm, Telecolor Studio, and a number of other companies. The UC also owned 1UP Enterprises, which in turn owned News, World, Communication, which in turn owned the Washington Times. Another UC subsidiary, U.S. Foods Corporation, collected almost half a million a year from the D.C. government for office space, rented to the Department of Human Services and other agencies at 605 G Street, NW according to city records. 1980, the UCM now began a clandestine underground mission to infiltrate the Soviet Union and

communist nations of the Eastern Bloc. Remember, this dude legit wanted to take over the entire world to have every citizen of every nation see him as the new and improved Jesus. Jesus 2.0. A Jesus who gets shit done, doesn't fuck up his mission. Begun by the Austrian national church leader Peter Koch, this project was referred to as Mission Butterfly. Koch insisted that the missionaries publicly renounce their church membership to protect themselves and work independently of one another in these communist nations. Nevertheless, many were subjected to surveillance, arrest, and deportation.

30 members in Czechoslovakia alone were taken into custody, one of whom at least died in prison. In his writings, Moon referred to the pain of sending members to, quote, places where they would be watched and possibly executed for their religious activities. But you know what? It had to be done. You can't take over the whole world without shedding a little blood. In 1982, the UCM conducts a record-setting wedding or blessing for 2,075 couples at Madison Square Garden, which eclipsed the previous record of 1,800 couples. And again, these are people getting married for the most part who they've never met each

other before. They're that brainwashed. He's just slapping total strangers together who think that it is God's will for them to be married to whoever they're meeting in these weird Ceremonies and the more people he gets married the more money he makes every followers expected to tithe at least 10% of their earned income and Also 10% of whatever profit they make from like random dealings You know if they sell a house 10% goes. They sell stocks, 10% goes to the church. And there's all kinds of stories about church officials, you know, constantly asking members for more donations. You know,

more affluent members would give millions and millions to the church, way above 10%. An untold number of members would leave everything to the church in their wills. Others would give the church everything while they were still alive. Handwritten notes that Yoshikazu Sojima, that higher up who defected, whom we heard from earlier, made it some church finance meetings indicate that the Japanese church alone was taking in more than $100 million a year in 1981 and 1982. And was transferring that money without paying taxes to church headquarters in New York where the money was also untaxed. One set of notes based on a church financial report from June 10th to September 10th, 1981 stated that the Japanese church raised about $54 fucking million dollars in that three-month period of which $38 million was sent out, a term Sojima said meant sent abroad eventually

ended up in the U.S. His notes would record that from January through August of 1982 the church earned monthly profits of between 6.8 and 14.2 million for a total of 81.4 million for the year. Similar amounts earned during the last four months of the year this would mean that the church earned, oh yeah excuse me, was more than 81.4 million for the year, 122 million in 1982, of which 90% was shipped abroad. These transactions were usually made through international bank transfers, but large amounts of cash were carried into the U.S. by church members because Moon wanted the money right away.

They would take like whatever was the limit, I think it was $20,000 a person where it wouldn't be checked. Confidential financial statement would be distributed to 10 to 12 Japanese top officials each month. Each month, figures on actual spending would show the previous month's target had been met. Senior officials would then deliver pep talks on the respected father's need for a better showing next time. Finally, the shit hits the fan about all this money with the IRS. October 15th, 1981, Moon is indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with three counts of willingfully filing false federal income tax returns for the years 1973, 1974, and 1975.

And one count of conspiracy to file false income tax returns, obstruct justice, to make false statements to government officials, and to make false statements to a grand jury. And there were allegations that Moon was involved in efforts by the South Korean government to bribe members of U.S. Congress to support President Park Chung-hee in South Korea. Also, a congressional subcommittee investigation found that Moon's organization was likely a political tool of the Korean spy agency and had systematically violated U.S. tax, immigration, banking, currency, and Foreign Agents Registration Act laws. In 1982, Moon was convicted on three counts of willfully filing false federal income tax returns and then those convictions

were upheld on appeal. New Jesus was given an 18-month sentence and a $15,000 fine. Give me a fucking break. $15,000 fine? Get out of here. Takaru Kameyama, Moon's aide and co-defendant in the trial, was convicted of conspiracy obstruction of justice and perjury and sentenced to six months in prison. Moon would serve 13 months, not beginning until July of 1984, of the sentence at the Federal Correctional Institute in Danbury, Connecticut. And because of good behavior was released to a halfway house before returning home. While serving a sentence, he worked in the prison kitchen and was apparently popular.

Ed Farmer, that's a great name, a fellow inmate said, the Reverend Moon had a very good sense of humor. It's hard for me to think of a person as being mean or brainwashing people with the sense of humor he has. He truly loves people. I mean, he likes being with them. He likes being kidded. He likes being teased.

I never saw a mean act on his part. He never asked for special treatment. He likes being kidded. He likes being teased. I never saw him mean act on his part. He never asked for special treatment. He mopped floors and clean tables and he helped other people when he was finished with his job. It's funny. Funny for him, like he having a hard time, though, thinking like, oh, this guy is so nice here in prison. How can he do these other things? That's kind of a weird mentality. I mean, that's like thinking about like with the pedophile prison.

I mean, when he was in prison with me, I didn't see him unless a single kid. I don't know how he could do it. Yeah, people act different in different places. Sun Moon's time in prison did not stop his expansion projects. His interest expanded into film when a church-linked company backed the 1982 movie Inchon, a $42 million Korean war epic,

notable for terrible reviews, and the casting of Laurence Olivier as General Douglas MacArthur. Okay backing up a bit. This is so worth it. Enough talk of financial expansion. Let's get weird. Let's get very weird. So much insanity coming at you in the following few minutes. Right before he went to prison. This is my favorite part coming up here. This and then what will happen next episode. Right before he went to prison on December 22nd 1983 Moon's second son with Huk Chau Han, Young Jin Moon gets into a car crash with a tractor trailer on State Route 9 in Hyde Park, New York. He's only 17. Two weeks later, January 4th 1984, he was taken off a

ventilator and passes away. And that's not the weird part. That's the sad part. But the weirdness is going to center on this deceased son of a cult leader. Julia Moon, the woman who had been arranged to be Moon's son's wife, said, I will never forget in my whole life and for eternity this great honor of being Hyeong-jin Nim's bride, which I do not deserve. Sun Moon taught his followers an interesting pseudo Jesus narrative that his son was taken on the same day as an assassination attempt on Sun Moon's life by leftist terrorists that was foiled. He would write, if the sacrifice of Young Jin Nim had not been made, either of two great calamities could have

happened. Either the Korean nation could have suffered a catastrophic attack such as an invasion from the North or I myself could have been assassinated since special indemnity was paid that protected me in Korea at the Gwangju rally, Satan's specific target day. He hit Hyunjin Nim instead at the exact same hour. By the power of Grayskull. You cannot defeat me, Satan! I sacrifice my son, in my service! A week later, Sun Moon taught that Young Jin Moon had a new mission and was free to travel between his spirit world and our physical world. He also proclaimed that Young Jin became a leader to Jesus in the spirit realm. Ho-ho!

His son is now Jesus' leader up in heaven. Wow, that's big. Good for him. God, he must have been so proud of all that his dead son is now accomplishing. Young Jin would now be officially regarded by the UC to be the king of the spirits in heaven, ranking higher than Jesus. This is hilarious to me.

Like Jesus needs a mentor up in heaven. Like he's been strained from the path up there in the spirit world. Poor Jesus. He's been getting slapped around a lot by this cult. I picture Sun Moon breaking this news to him. You know? Let me get this music going again. Behold sun moon desire Jesus. I heard you calling me. Hello Jesus. I hate to remind you again but

could you please also call me Jesus since I am also the Messiah. Oh, oh yeah, about that. Wouldn't it get confusing if we were both Jesus? How about you call me New Jesus? Or Better or Improved Jesus? Okay, yeah, let's just go with just Jesus. So, other Jesus, what's up? Well, Jesus, it's about my son, Hyeong-jin. I wanted to let you know that he is... well, he's your boss now. Oh! Oh, okay, wow, seriously. Dad approved this. He did. You are now third in command. There's God, and then my son, and then you. And of course, when I shed my immortal coil, it'll be God, then me, then my son, then probably some of my other sons,

maybe a few friends, and then you. Or it'll be me, then God, then my son, then other sons, friends, maybe a wife, couple mistresses, and you know, then you. Ah fudge! Gosh dang! How am I supposed to be heavenly? Why do I feel like I'm in some kind of Korean horror film now? Some kind of hell up in heaven. Moon now teaches that Hyeong-jin is leading Ah, this fucking kills me. Moon then teaches that Hyeong-jin is leading these workshops in the spiritual world in which the spirits of deceased persons are now being taught UC teachings. Why the fuck are they up in heaven taking classes? Imagine, just think about how insane this is.

Imagine that the Christian heaven is real. You die and you make it. You make it into heaven. Eternal salvation is yours. You're up there having the time of your immortal life. Then you hear, I don't know, over some kind of celestial intercom system, everyone please report to the Moses auditorium immediately. Unification church classes began in five minutes. I repeat classes began in five minutes in the Moses auditorium. Anyone not

marked as present will be sent to hell. Even you, Jesus. No, just kidding. But if you are marked absent, you will not be allowed into tonight's Roy Orbison concerts and all-you-can-eat king crab and prime rib buffet in the Ezekiel amphitheater. This is so fucking crazy. Longtime president of the Korean Unification Church, Young Wee Kim wrote, They all refer to Young Jin now as the new Christ, Young Jin Nim. They also call him the youth king of heaven.

He is the king of heaven in the spirit world. Jesus is working with him and always accompanies him. Jesus himself says that Young Jin Nim is the new Christ. Oh, Jesus said that. He is the center of the spirit world now. This means he is in a higher position than Jesus. Well, there you have it. Both Sun Moon and his son fucking taking Jesus down a peg. At least Jesus seems to be taking his demotions well here. Almost immediately, videotapes now begin to arrive at Moon's East Garden headquarters slash home from around the world. Unification church

members in various states of entrancement are pronouncing themselves as the medium through which Young Jin is speaking from the spirit world now. None of them offer any profound religious insight. No one displays anything confirming familiarity with Young Jin's life in East Garden, but all, of course, praise the True Parents and reinforce Moon's revelation that Jesus has bowed down before Young Jin in heaven. This was the approach, obviously, that was most likely to win Sun Myung Moon's affection. But there was one problem with this deification. Young Jin was never actually married, and Moon had been teaching for years that only

married couples are free from Eve's original sin and allowed into heaven. So how could someone with the stain of the sin upon their soul even get into heaven, let alone rank higher than Mr. Christ? And please, church-going Christian meat sacks, can you please start referring to Jesus as Mr. Christ? There's no rules against this as far as I know. I just want to hear about how your fellow prisoners react to this. Bonus points for any pastor meets ex. Just try it. Just toss it out to your congregation a few times. And only through the blood of Mr. Christ can we be saved. Why is that so funny to me? Anyway, Sun Moon came up with a way to fix things for his dead son's soul. He

conducted a spiritual wedding ceremony three months after his son died, February 20th, 1984, where his dead son is now wed to living ballerina Julia Pak, whom we just met, daughter of Moon's interpreter, Bo-Hai Pak. Not sure if he insisted they consummate the marriage. Oh, what? Just because my son technically died three months ago, you think you're too good for him? Just picturing like a team of high of high ranking Unification Church members is handling young Jin Nim's body so they can have intercourse with Julia Pactis fucking moving him back and forth. Then if she gets pregnant, oh, now we got a real deity of some kind in our hands. Some kind of level six zombie demon god. Marrying living followers to dead followers was not new in the Unification Church.

Older living single members were often matched to dead followers was not new in the Unification Church. Older living single members were often matched to dead single members who had already moved on to the spirit world in order for the single members to be able to get into heaven. Right? Helps the living people, helps the dead people. And then in what must stand as his ultimate act of arrogance, Sun Young Moon actually went on to match Jesus Christ to this random elderly Korean woman. Ah, fucking I love how crazy this is. Behold, Sun Moon, I mean Jesus, it is I, oh gee Jesus, I heard you calling me again. Yes, Jesus, I come bearing wonderful news this time. I have found you a wife

And they just point to some deaf half-blind just fucking barely breathing human raisin just some 105 year old great great grandma Dandelion poof hair spine so curved. She's not just looking down. She's looking like downy behind her just arthritic raccoon claws for hands Jesus just throws his hands in the air. Are you freaking kidding me? Her? It'll literally take a miracle for me to get it up. That's not even a bicycle. That's not fit to ride. That's a trash can full of old bicycle parts somebody found at the dump. I know I'm supposed to love everybody, but come on. I'm trying to fucking hate you, Korean Jesus! This is so crazy that they did this and people are like, oh, okay. Because the Unification Church teaches that only married couples connect to the Kingdom of Heaven, now Moon's preaching that Jesus himself needs the intervention of Reverend

Moon to move through the gates. Like he's been hanging out in purgatory this whole time. Wow. Also, what happens to children who die before they can get married? As far as their salvation is concerned, does Moon marry living single adults to dead kids to make sure they get into heaven? Some kind of fucking weird spiritual pedophilia. I hate that I gave them money, but I did buy their Moons. I bought his book,

divine principle. I bought the E version. So I could use a keyword search to look for answers to questions like this. There is no answer. I looked at all the verses about kids and it seems like if they do not get married in the Moon's spiritual family, i.e. his church, they don't get salvation because they're stained with original sin. So I'm guessing he would just marry them when they were dead or you know they were just fucked. Anyway, back on the day that Sun Moon's second son is married in death, he decides to do a two-for-one special.

Julia's brother, Jin Seung-pak, was married on the same day to In-jin Moon, the eldest Moon daughter. She was furious. She couldn't stand him. She was infatuated with a boy from Virginia that she had met at a unification church conference. What she didn't know at the time was that that boy was Sun Moon's illegitimate son. Oh, fuck yeah. The boy she had a crush on had been born of an affair between the Reverend Moon and a woman named Annie Choi.

Remember her from much earlier? From the sex rituals back in Seoul? The womb cleansing? The roto-routering? This baby hiding would actually happen fairly often with the Moonies. The placement of a baby in the home of an unrelated church member was not an isolated occurrence. Happened all the time. Infernal couples in the church simply would just be given babies by other members who had several kids. Since they were, you know, believed that they all belonged to the same family of a man, and, you know, only the true parents are the Reverend and Mrs. Moon, what difference did it make? Who actually reared a child, right?

Yeah, just fucking toss babies around, like it doesn't matter who the parents are. Also, a few years after their holy wedding Julia Park now Julia moon and her long dead husband young Jin moon Jesus's superior celestial teacher Became earthly parents. Yeah. Mm-hmm. She didn't actually give birth Unfortunately to a zombie baby that would be pretty fun. There was no weekend at Bernie's porn edition situation happening Hyunjin's younger brother young Hyun Jin and his wife, simply gave Julia their newborn, Shin Chul, to raise as if that child was some miraculous zombie baby. Yep! Shit just keeps getting weirder. Meanwhile, things in Japan are getting crazier. A 41-page report issued by the Japanese Bar

Association in 1987, railed against the Unification Church's so-called spiritual sales method, a practice that influenced buyers to high-pressure sales tactics and fortune-telling to purchase marble vases, ivory seals, and miniature pagodas, said to possess supernatural powers. What is happening? In one case, the woman whose husband had just died in a car accident was being sold one of these objects. The salesman told her that the evil spirit of a samurai ancestor who had killed with his sword was tormenting her family. And that this sale would solve that.

He said if you don't buy it, the same evil spirit will continue with your children and they will meet the same fate. My god! Concerned about salespeople praying on religious anxieties was first voiced by the Japanese Consumer Information Center with more than 2,600 complaints between 1976 and 1982. The implication of UC-related businesses in this practice reinvigorated anti-UC efforts, resulted in litigation and financial settlements, even increased abductions of church members by enraged scam victims' families. In the face of public disapproval, the UC now opened video centers and introduced theological teachings only after completion of a non-theological preparatory video course, a practice that was also

criticized as being deceptive. Apparently, Japanese UC leaders accepted public stigmatization UC leaders accepted public stigmatization and deprogramming as an unfortunate but unnecessary price to be paid for substantial monetary and membership gains. And there was a whole lot of money to be made. By the mid-80s, church officials claimed the Unification Church was pulling in 400 million dollars a year now through fundraising in Japan alone. Holy shit! The Reverend Moon would use that money for his, you know, personal comfort. It takes a lot of money to be comfortable! Also, to invest in businesses in the U.S. and around the world. In addition, the church owned many profitable enterprises in Japan itself, including the trading company, computer firm, and jewelry company now. Moon explained Japan's crucial

financial relationship to the Unification Church in theological terms. He said that South Korea is Adam's country and Japan is Eve's country and as wife and mother Japan must support the work of father's country, Son Myung Moon's Korea. There was more than a little vengeance in this view. Few Koreans in the 1980s including Son Myung Moon and his followers in the Unification Church had forgiven the Japanese for their brutal 40-year occupation of Korea. Now let's talk about something else that happened in 1907 that I enjoy so much. This is weirder than the stuff I've shared so far. This is so great. The UC Reverend Chung Hwan Kwok heads to Africa to investigate some reports that Moon's fucking zombie son doesn't stop with his zombie son. H. Hyun Jin has now taken over the body of a young

Zimbabwean man named Kundiani and is speaking through him. Oh, he's back! You heard right. Moon's zombie son, Jesus' superintendent in heaven, has just demonically possessed a dude in Africa. Newspapers in the United States like the LA Times and the Washington Post have a field day with this. The Reverend Kwok returns to Moon's New York headquarters, and you know, his home, East Garden, professing certainty that this possession is in fact genuine. Whatever Koon Deyani told him, it was a dead giveaway that he was the real deal. Kundiani is young Jim. Oh hell yeah! By the power of Grayskull!

I have risen in Africa this time! Well the Moon family gathers around the table to talk this over. In the end, this gaggle of geniuses decide that the Zimbabwean is older than Hyeong-jin was, so therefore obviously he could not be the reincarnated son of Sun Myung-moon. Also, the Unification Church rejects the theory of reincarnation, but this African man never claimed to be reincarnated. He presented himself to the Reverend Kwok as a physical embodiment of Hyeong-Jin's spirit. Interesting. The Reverend Kwok had asked him about what it was like to enter the spirit world.

And Black Hyeong-Jin, and that is literally what he'd become known as, Black Hyeong-Jin, said that upon entering the kingdom of heaven, he immediately became all-knowing. Oh, hell yeah. And Reverend Moon is cool with all this. Not just cool, he's thrilled. He's thrilled with the news from Africa. The Unification Church had been concentrating recruitment efforts in Latin America and Africa

recently. Black Young Jin would be great for that mission. And without even meeting the man who's claiming to be possessed by the spirit of his dead child, Sung Young Moon authorizes Black Young Jin to start traveling the world, presenting himself as the physical embodiment of his son's spirit, preaching and hearing the confessions of any Unification Church members who have gone astray. Just stacking crazy on top of more crazy on top of more crazy. This episode has actually been making me feel great about my mental health.

Sometimes I feel crazy. And maybe I am. But I am not this crazy. Confessions soon became central to Black Young Jin's mission. He went to Europe, to Korea, to Japan, elsewhere, listing confessions. And by listing to confessions, I mean beating the shit out of fellow Moonies. Oh yeah. And that, dear Meadsacks, is the cliffhanger I am going to leave you on. But don't worry.

The conclusion of this topic wraps up when the next episode drops tomorrow at noon. Oh, you're going to find out so much more about Black Young Jin. What he gets up and do. And since this timeline really isn't over, how about I get out of this with this button? No takeaways or recap today, saving that for part two tomorrow. Also saving the updates. For now, I'm just gonna wrap up. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team,

helping make time suck, such as queen of bad magic, Lindsay Cummins, running operations around here, doing all the stuff at home so I helping make time suck such as Queen of Bad Magic Lindsay Cummins Running operations around here doing all the stuff at home so I can have time to focus on this weird shit Thanks to Logan Keith recording this episode designing merch for the store at badmagicproductions.com got some new stuff Uh just dropped talk about tomorrow and thanks to OG researcher Sophie Evans yet again doing a great job providing the initial research this week Thanks also to the all-seen eyes moderating the Cult of the Curious private Facebook page, the Mod Squad making sure Discord keeps running smooth, and everyone over on the Time Suck subreddit and Bad Magic subreddit. And now let's get out of here.

Thanks for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast. Scared to death and Time Suck each week short sucks and nightmare fuel on the Time Suck and Scared to Death podcast feed some weeks. Please don't start telling people you're new and improved Jesus this week. And also making people think they can't get into heaven unless you marry them to a stranger. Just call your Jets. Keep an eye out for Black Young Jin. So you don't get beaten. And keep on sucking. I can't stop talking. I know I know more about him that I've already told you so far today,

but I can't stop thinking about Sun Moon telling his followers that this random Zimbabwean, this maniac, Kundioni, sources say he was in his early twenties, is actually his dead 17 year old son. And then he allows this guy to start beating the shit out of his followers. It makes me want to like just do something crazy. It makes me want to find, I should find a random elderly man this week. Someone from any other country than this one and just bring him to my grandma Betty and tell her that this guy, just I don't know just some random Chinese or Spanish

Shooter some is pop award He's new pop or he's pop award 2.0. He's the new patriarch of our family and he is gonna fucking take over her house Right. He's he's gonna be the one carving turkey, but he's he's in charge now. She better listen to what he has to say Because his pimp hand is strong and she will submit to his rightful authority Moon actually did something that crazy. Got away with it. Wild!