Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 404 - The Moonies Cult 2: Empire in Decline
Episode Date: May 28, 2024Today we conclude yesterday's wild exploration of the cult Sun Myung Moon founded in Seoul, South Korea, in 1954. Moon's corruption and insanity finally begin to catch up with him before his death sen...ds the empire he built into chaos. Also - Black Heung Jin may be the most entertaining character I've ever come across in any of these episodes. I wish we knew SO much more about his crazy ass. Hail Nimrod! Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/2KdsEm3TdIkMerch 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: store@badmagicproductions.com (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.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
What shenanigans will Black Young Jinn get into this week?
How many people will he beat the shit out of?
How many times will I hit this button?
By the power of Grayskull!
I have the power!
That's so satisfying.
Today I resume our investigation into the Unification Church, aka the Holy
Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, aka the Family
Federation for World Peace and Unification, aka the Moonies, a
manipulative controlling cult founded by charismatic scumbag, son Myung Moon, the
True Father, aka new and improved Jesus. A cult currently led by his former teen bride, the now 81-year-old Huk Jehan Moon, the true
mother, a totally stable woman who seems to believe she's a living deity and that it's
totally normal to share a meal with her dead husband.
A woman still carrying on the tradition of marrying total strangers together in mass
wedding blessing
ceremonies according to the cult's website you can sign up right now for a newsletter at familyfed.org
and find out how to attend the next ceremony. Oh how fun go get married. Let this cult marry you
so you can send in the best time sucker update of all time. This is still a cult you can definitely
join. According to their Instagram profile for the
U.S. branch of their church, at Family Fed USA, they just had a blessing ceremony in April.
They post pretty frequently. And if you want, you can follow them and you can leave lots of cult,
cult, cult comments under their posts like I've been doing. We'll see if they get removed.
How fun would it be to see so many of those comments under their posts? Will they
delete them? I'm pretty sure but not totally sure that it doesn't violate any
Instagram rules. We'll see if my account gets deleted. If it does, oh how
completely worth it. Now let's get going. If you haven't listened to yesterday's
episode, episode 403, you should do that because if you don't a lot of this will
not make very much sense.
This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck.
Happy Tuesday and welcome back to the Cult of the Curious.
So strange to say that.
I'm Dan Cummins, the Master Sucker, guy who never gets to have any fun, heavenly visions
where Jesus tells me I'm New Jesus, Black Young Jins biggest fan, and you are listening
to Time Suck.
Hail Nimrod, hail Lusifena, praise be to good boy Bojangles, and glory be to Triple M.
And now for a new merch announcement, and then we're back into the story of the Moonies.
Starting this June, so just a few days,
we're going to start dropping new merch designs
the first Monday of the month in the store.
The store now located at badmagicproductions.com
along with some time capsule designs from the past.
We dropped most of the first June batch a bit early.
The first Merch Monday Mania,
brought to you by Kellogg's Frosted
Cockcages. Hungry and in a bind? Well, they're for you. Improve your mental and gut health
with a Kellogg's Frosted Cockcage. And introducing the Dick Bird Collage tee featuring Nevada's
creepiest killer, the Pride of Winnemucca. This design showcases real newspaper clippings
and very real police photos of the real infamous Las Vegas strip strangler and
Yes, that is the real hairbrush
He used that has shown if you haven't heard of Richard Byrd yet highly recommend checking out episode
394 to learn about one of the world's deadliest very real killers
Even AI knows this motherfucker existed for real and we all know that we can trust AI
just you know explicitly. Next up, are you looking for a lawyer? Is life bending you
over and fucking you again and again and again with legal troubles? You need a
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Call the law offices of A cock and butts.
A law firm too hard for your enemies to fully handle.
And now next up, we're gonna keep this going. Oh another fun one. There is a fourth dimension beyond that which is
known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground
between light and shadow, science and superstition, between smelly hairbrushes, questionable peanut butter,
and it lies between the pit of man's fears
and the summit of his knowledge.
This is the dimension of imagination.
It is an area which we call the Time Suck Zone.
And not done.
You know, another dimension you might wanna find yourself in,
my Only Dance page. That's right.
My secret collection of steamy banana related picks are only available at OnlyDance.com.
And if you missed the last drop, check out Colonel Dander's Wheel of Suck, Dead Giveaway,
Twin Flames merch, and more.
Check out all these new designs, as well as a bunch of new Scared to Death merch only
at BadMagicProductions.com.
Thanks everybody. My battery's getting more and more
recharged this year and I'm having so much fun. I hope it shows and more
importantly I hope it's contagious. You're having more fun listening. Let's
fucking go! Let's get into this weird shit!
Very excited to pick back up with our timeline with Koon Deoni, aka Black Young Jin. The man described in a 1988 LA Times article as follows,
The Zimbabwean, described as a baby-faced black man of medium build in his early 20s,
was a Unification Church member for three years when he began making claims last year
to hearing the voice of Young Jin.
He has been embraced by the cult leader as actually being his son returned to the flesh.
Like he's a fucking demon possessing someone now. And Moon does this before ever meeting him.
And he's been given an assignment by Moon.
Go take confessions. Go find out what sins his followers have committed. Some of his highest ranking followers.
go find out what sins his followers have committed, some of his highest ranking followers, and fucking punish them for those sins. So now everywhere BlackYoungJin goes, he administers
literal beatings to those who have violated church teachings by using alcohol and drugs,
engaged in premarital sex, etc. This dude spent a full year on the road dispensing hardcore
physical violence as penance for anyone who
wished to repent. Why would you wish to repent? Or people pressured or forced to repent.
UC has a new sheriff in town and he's not fucking around and he's batshit crazy. Yeah!
After finishing his ass-whooping world tour, Sun Myung Moon now summons him to his East
Garden home in New York. At this meeting Moon asked him some standard theological questions that any member who has studied the divine principle could have answered.
And Black Young Jin offers no startling revelations or religious insights.
However, while Black Young Jin can't remember any details from the real Young Jin's life,
he can quote from Moon's own speeches. And that makes the narcissistic Moon very happy.
And so Black Young Jin's convenient memory loss, you know, regarding like the real Young
Jin's life is interpreted as a sign of his having left earthly concerns behind
when he entered the kingdom of heaven. Everyone in the East Garden household now
has to embrace him because Sun Moon has embraced him and they have to start calling
him by their dead son or dead brother's name and they have to act like he's just a regular
member of the family.
Why is this happening?
Maybe this was all some fucked up game for Moon.
Is he getting a kick out of this?
I think he was.
Sun Myung Moon seemed to take great pleasure in the reports that filtered back to East
Garden of the continued beatings now being administered by Black Young Jin.
Oh yeah, Black Young Jin not done. Dishing out some pain.
Moon would allegedly laugh rockously if someone out of favor with him was dealt an especially hard blow.
You know, if they took a solid punch to the face or a swift kick to the nuts or ribs or whatever.
I mean, if he was just making all this shit up and had not deluded himself into believing his own bullshit, I can understand how darkly amusing this would be. Just thinking like,
I can't believe I'm pulling shit off! Oh my god! These dumb motherfuckers are letting this random
crazy guy from Africa, pretending to be my dead son, beat the shit out of them for not following
my teachings! And they're just taking it! They're apologizing to me for having to go through the
trouble of me sending a violent lunatic to beat their ass.
Holy fuck, I should be in the Grifters Hall of Fame. I am very good at this cult shit.
No one outside of the True Family was immune from these beatings.
Leaders around the world who try to use their influence to be exempted from the Black Young Jin's confessional, but exemptions were not given.
exempted from the Black Young Jin's confessional, but exemptions were not given. Anyone outside of Sun Myung Moon's direct relation through blood or marriage could face this dude's wrath.
Is Kandiyoni insane? Or also is he a good con artist?
Like is he laughing his ass off about pulling this shit off?
Maybe he should also be in the Griffiths Hall of Fame.
But soon, the mistress's moon has been acquiring, have become so numerous,
that I mentioned he's fucking an untold number of young female members
He is and the beatings black young jinn are administering are so severe that members do start to complain
For example, Mrs. Moon's personal maid some poor woman named one Jew McDevitt a Korean who married an American church member
Appeared one morning with a black guy and a body covered with purple bruises.
A black young gin had beaten the fuck out of her with a chair.
He also beat the shit out of Bo-Hye Pak, a high-ranking church member in his 60s, beat him so bad
he was hospitalized for a full week.
Told doctors he fell down a flight of stairs.
This dude later needed surgery to repair a broken blood vessel in his head. This is crazy.
And I kind of love it.
I know it's sad.
But this is so entertaining.
Once it became clear that he had to disassociate himself from the violence he had let loose
on his membership, ease up on the affairs he was having to keep some sort of revolt
from happening, Sun Myung Moon now simply announces that Young Jin's spirit has left
the young Zimbabwean's body and has
ascended back up to heaven.
So fun time's over.
Black Young Jin was no more.
He was just Kundione again.
But the Zimbabwean not quite ready to get off the gravy train.
Sources say he now returned to Africa and established his own cult, the breakaway cult,
where he is the Messiah.
Which sounds right.
Like, once you get a taste of being able to slap around whoever the fuck you want to with
impunity, be worshipped as some sort of deity, step above Jesus, it's gotta be hard just
to go back to like a regular nine to five.
But you'd have a tough couple of years on your resume to explain.
Oh, what did I do the past few years?
Well I traveled the world for Reverend Sun Myung Moon
after allowing his dead son's spirit to take over my body and working as young
Jin now. Well, as black young Jin is what they call me. I beat the shit out of
somewhere between 500 and a thousand people for not following Reverend Moon's
teachings. And then his spirit left me and now here I am at Jimmy John's hoping
to make some sandwich coin. I wish I knew more about Kundyoni's adventures but he
seems to have fallen off the historical record. He's probably out there to beat
the shit out of me right now. Now we head into the early 90s. Moon is bummed that
he's not being entertained by black young Jin anymore but he's hungrier than
ever for world domination. He abandons his identification with being anti
communist and now coins the term headwing. He's neither right-wing nor left-wing
to identify his movement's
political slash ideological stance.
He's opening himself up to a wider audience now.
The UC's World Media Association and the Soviet Novosti Press Agency jointly sponsor a 1990 world media conference in Moscow,
which includes a private meeting between Moon and his wife and Mikhail Gorbachev.
He's now met with the President of America and the Soviet premier. Via this
meeting in Moscow, the UC subsequently obtains clearance to educate Soviet
youth about his ministry and he convenes some of the largest religious workshops
in history. In December of 1991 Moon then
meets another communist leader, North Korean President Kim Il-sung, an
encounter that the UC interpreted as quote a meeting between the world-level
Jacob and the world-level Esau. To make some biblical references there. 1991
North Korea had yet to test its first nuclear weapon and Moon claimed he
proposed that North Korea agreed to a declaration of denuclearization.
Kim quote responded with candor wrote Moon quoting the North Korean leader as saying think for a moment
Who am I going to kill by making nuclear weapons kill my own people? Do I look like that kind of person?
According to Masul II who was the public relations director of the Unification Church at this time,
when Moon said to Kim Il-sung in a meeting,
please be my brother, Kim Il-sung replied, sure, why not?
And so, one god makes an alliance with another.
Kim Il-sung, we went over some of the crazy claims he made back in episode 45.
Remember how he won a hundred thousand battles against China?
Never lost one. Or how he could control the weather? How he actually willed the
Sun to rise in the morning? How he literally never took a shit? Not ever. Not
even one time. Also, it was taught in North Korean schools for a while that he was an
almighty God who created the world in seven days as a divine spirit millions
of years ago, then returned to earth as a human in 1912 as
a messiah. I wonder what those two dipshits talked about. I feel like, yeah, me too, was said a lot.
Did you know that I can control the weather with my mind? Yeah, me too. Did you know I can time
travel? Yeah, me too. Did you know that my battle record is 100,000 wins, zero losses? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, me too.
Did you know that my dead son took over the body of an African man,
spent a year in chains, beating the shit out of people all around the world?
Uh, yeah, me too. Moon told his believers after this meeting that he, the Messiah,
had brought Satan, Kim Il-sung, to his knees with the power of love.
So that's pretty cool.
Also this meeting led the way for Moon to open Pyeonghwa Motors, North Korea's only
joint venture automobile factory, and he was even allowed to put up billboards in Pyongyang.
So he did make some progress there.
This pairing was watched carefully by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
According to their later reports, Moon donated 450 billion yen to Kim Il-Sung
during his stay in North Korea from November 30th 1991 to December 7th 1992
in exchange for something. Access to helping build up an industrialized
economy it seems. That's a big donation. That would equate to around 3 billion
US dollars based on exchange rates at the
time. That seems like fucking way too much money to me. But that's what the reports
say. Those same DIA reports explain that an economic cooperation for the reconstruction
of North Korea's economy was in place. Most of the money was said to have been donated
to the Unification Church by Japanese believers, then taken to South Korea, money laundered,
then transferred to Hong Kong, and finally taken to North Korea money laundered then transferred to Hong Kong and finally taken to North Korea
But instead of being poured into industry the money got poured into nukes and intercontinental ballistic missiles
That's cool. Sounds like Reverend Moon got swindled ended up helping beef up North Korea's military
Also in Korea August of 1992 the UC convened a world culture and sports festival in Seoul, South Korea, conceived of as an Olympics of culture, at which Moon declared that he
and his wife were, quote, the true parents of humanity, the Savior, the Lord of the
Second Advent, the Messiah. Cool. 1994, Moon began the process of reinventing the
Unification Church as the Family Federation for World Peace and
Unification, right? That's the name the church currently goes by.
So if you're part of that church, well, you're a Mooney.
The vision for this rebranded church was to create a religious but non-sectarian membership
organization for people of all faiths and good contents. But it's actually just the same shit
it was before. Also in 1994, Moon sent 1,600 Japanese female missionary volunteers in teams of 10 to 160
countries throughout the world.
Many left their husbands and children behind.
In 1996, he called on 4,200 Japanese female volunteers to undertake missionary work exclusively
in South America.
It was suggested the Japanese followers were especially devout, motivated to quote, compensate
for Japan's 36 year colonization
of Korea.
In 1997, the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification officially opened a new headquarters
in Washington, DC.
An opening ceremony included speeches by former US presidents Gerald Ford and George Bush.
They were paid a lot.
Former President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, and former prime ministers Edward Heath from the UK and Brian Mulroney from Canada.
I wonder how much those guys did get paid. I'm guessing seven figures each.
Despite being conceived of as a broad-based organization, the inauguration of the FFWPU
led to increasingly frank expressions of the UC's messianic premises.
led to increasingly frank expressions of the UC's messianic premises.
Premises, premises, premises, premises.
God, I hate the plural of that word.
In one speech, Moon declared,
prominent Christians and other leading figures of the world
have only a faint idea of the forces that shape the future.
I know the direction that humankind must go.
And I, with the help of God, will lead the world there.
By the late 1990s, the UC had established a dozen or more federations such as the
Artist Association for World Peace, the Federation of Island Nations for
World Peace, the Federation of Peninsula Nations for
World Peace, the Federation of Continental Nations for
World Peace, and the Martial Arts Federation for
World Peace. So much peace all around the world. Moon viewed all of these as
potential successors to the UN, to the United Nations totally. He also decided
to double down on his ideas about arranged marriage, incorporating them into
his new world peace schtick. Moon encouraged so-called exchange marriages
between partners from former enemy states, created situations in which
followers from adversarial nations worked together, excuse me, and sent them
out on missionary
teams to the field.
Out into the field.
During the mid-1990s, the Women's Federation for World Peace sponsored a series of sisterhood
ceremonies in Washington, D.C. that brought 4,000 Japanese women to be matched with an
equal number of American women in eight separate sisterhood ceremonies 50 years after the end
of the Second World War.
These culminated in bridge crossings in which a
Japanese delegate crossed over a bridge of peace, so much peace, and met her American counterpart
in the middle where each bowed to one another, then embraced the other, then walked down a stairwell
together hand in hand, and then at the bottom of the stairs they would lick each other's bicycle
seats clean. Hail, it's Athena! I'm not sure what they did after walking down the stairs.
As with the family federation launch, the sisterhood ceremonies included appearances
by high-profile public figures, notably George and Barbara Bush, who were beaten half to
death by the return of Black Young Jinn!
Oh, fuck ya!
By the power of Grayskull!
I'll beat the shit out of you!
Or they just said a few words.
International marriage blessings were the third component of FFWP's program of world
peace and unification.
Whereas the first two components dealt with conflict resolution, the sanctification of
couples to the blessing was believed to eradicate the root cause of conflict and division.
Its centerpiece was the drinking of Moon's holy wine,
which in conjunction with other elements was understood to eliminate original sin. Oh, how sweet. That's some nice wine.
Prior to the mid-1990s, the blessing was a narrow gate,
restricted almost exclusively to UC members. During the mid and late 90s, blessings were open to anyone willing to participate now.
Members would go door-to-door into the streets and late 90s, blessings were open to anyone willing to participate now. Members would go door to door into the streets
and parks on beaches, go to state fairs,
go to other venues to pre-bless married couples
whose unions would then be sanctified later by Moon
and his wife at international marriage blessing events.
The FFWP, who sponsored five international marriage
blessings between 1995 and 2000 in major arenas,
three in Seoul's Olympic Stadium
and one each in RFK Stadium, Washington DC, and Madison Square Garden in New York.
My god. With satellite links to blessing venues worldwide, the movement claimed to have sanctified
more than half a billion couples. Yeah, they can now bless couples into their holy family
via satellite TV. Moon's magical powers are growing.
Also, this is way more efficient
than making people show up in person.
However, the continual changing of the rules
for marriage blessing would end up backfiring.
Rather than holy wine,
enterprising members soon began distributing holy lemonade
to random thirsty beach goers or downtown pedestrians
with little or no explanation
that they were being preblessed.
Just giving somebody some lemonade and that bap you're one of us now.
Want some free lemonade?
Sure, proceed to drink lemonade.
Gotcha!
You're Mooney!
Make sure you follow the rules or Black Young Jen will find and beat you.
Others distributed holy candy, sometimes on automobile windshields with printed blessing
affirmations.
By the end of the decade, the UC had reached the outer limits of what was achievable or
believable. Moon himself now started to refer to the
devaluation of the blessing.
There was another problem with Moon's credibility. News is getting out of all the women he's been fucking who aren't his wife.
1995 as these new global programs are ramping up. Chonghua Paul, an early follower,
publishes an especially lurid account in Japan titled The Tragedy of the Six Marys,
which alleged Moon's participation in ritual sex and asserted that his mission was to cleanse the
wombs of six married women in this orgy. This account would later be verified by some of his
own children. And then soon another explosive story would hit the news. In 1998, Nan Suk Hong,
the recently divorced ex-wife of Hyyo Jin Moon, the Moon's eldest
son, published In the Shadow of the Moons, My Life in the Reverend Moon's Family.
Let's check out her story now to get a first-hand account of the inner workings of the true
family.
She was elected to be married to Hyo Jin at 15 years old.
She lived at the Irvington, New York, U., UC compound for the next 14 years, practically as a prisoner. I was born to my faith, she writes. Just
as children of more mainstream Christian religions are reared to believe that
Jesus Christ is the Son of God, sent to earth to redeem the sins of mankind, I
was taught in Sunday school that the Reverend Moon had been chosen by God to
complete Jesus' mission to restore the Garden of Eden. That Reverend Moon was his second coming.
With his wife, the Reverend Moon would sire the first sinless true family of God.
His children, the true children, would build on that flawless foundation.
Members of the Unification Church would be grafted onto the true family's pure blood
lineage and wedding ceremonies arranged and blessed by the Reverend Moon, the massed nature
of which
has attracted so much attention around the world.
From birth, Nan Sook was taught that Sun Moon was not just a holy man or a prophet, he was
anointed by God.
He was the Lord of the Second Advent, the Divine Guide who would unite the world's
religions under his leadership and establish the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth personally.
Her parents were often gone doing missionary work as Moon had instructed them. They believed Moon's paradoxical teachings to have as many kids
as possible, but also to travel all the time. The Reverend Moon taught his followers that
God would take care of their children if his followers took care of him. The urgency of
the Reverend Moon's mission superseded the personal bond between mother and child. Instead,
her grandma raised her, along with an assortment of aunts and women called the Sisters, who were unmarried church members who served Moon by babysitting.
For most of her childhood, she lived in a series of single rooms in a slum in Seoul
known as Moontown, not because of Sun Moon, but because it was located on a treeless hillside
and hence closer to the Moon.
It was a ghetto of small, dilapidated houses packed closely together on narrow winding
streets. The houses were all the same, single-story structures heated by coal stoves.
Every house was topped with a tiled roof and surrounded by a gated stone wall,
the top of which was typically embedded with shards of broken glass
to discourage thieves who roamed the area. There was no indoor plumbing,
so they used outhouses that were rarely emptied. Nansuk went to a school in an overcrowded
elementary school where she was too shy to
ask to go to the bathroom and often made fun of her having accidents.
The church seemed like a safe place compared to all that.
Every Sunday they went to a 5 a.m. service, where they bowed three times and recited their
pledges of obedience and submission to Moon's vision to begin.
Every Sunday Nansuk also watched the Moon children descend from their fancy apartment
wearing designer clothes.
Then Sun Moon would preach at 6am, sometimes talking for as many as 15 hours.
Cult, cult, cult!
Keep the people tired and confused!
There was also Sunday school.
In all these services, there was no teaching of Jesus as the central religious figure.
There was only Sun Moon. His children were also literally
worshiped with their academic and artistic accomplishments touted as
proof of their superiority, their celestial powers. Nan Sook then entered
the Little Angels Art School in sixth grade. Like the church that ran it, it was
pretty harsh environment. A tardy student would be forced to sit on a
concrete bench outside the principal's office with her arms raised above her head for 30 minutes straight.
She would then be required to write a letter of apology to her teacher and classmates for
the disruption her late arrival had caused.
At Little Angels, the students were thought of as clay to be molded, sculptures to be
shaped.
The teaching emphasized rote memorization and repetitive drills, never critical thinking.
All of this would prepare Nansuk to eat whatever bullshit the moon decided to feed to her.
Meanwhile her future husband, Hyo Jin, was living a very different life. At home
with the big family palatial estate in Tarrytown, New York, the moon children
were left to the care of church elders and babysitters. At school there were the
ultimate outsiders. They were sent to the private Hackley school where their identities as Mooney subjected them to teasing or outright scorn.
Hyojin was expelled from Hackley in middle school for bringing a BB gun
to class and shooting several of his classmates. Shooting at them at least.
He was not punished at home for this.
Sun Moon proclaimed that his son was just a victim of religious persecution. How dare his classmates not acknowledge that his dad is a god.
That he is a god.
It's good that you shot him.
Next time bring a real gun.
After Hyojin was expelled from Hackley, Moon sent him to live with Bo Hi Pak, one of his
original disciples.
Pretty sure that guy was one of the dudes that got fucking his ass beat.
Black Young Jin and McLean, a wealthy Virginia suburb outside of Washington DC.
Moon believed that his followers are responsible for rearing the Messiah's children.
But Hyojin's behavior only deteriorated in Washington, D.C. In a large public school,
there were fistfights and more. He was in Washington where he started doing drugs for the first time.
Going to Washington was a great excitement for me to leave East Garden,
Hyojin later told church members in an apologetic speech in 1988.
Father told me not to associate with outside kids, but I wanted to associate with outside people. I felt this was a chance for me to seek friends.
I didn't think, didn't care about what Father wanted.
I wanted my own friends.
After I went to Washington, I started getting into drugs.
I didn't want to be pressured by bullies anymore when you're in high school, fist work.
I started taking martial arts.
I didn't want to take anything from anyone. In school, they go around in packs. But
kids who had control were the strongest. When they saw me, they saw gooks. So I
had a lot of fights. The more I fought, the more I won. The kids wanted to become
friends. My name was notorious. So I don't know. Was he all this? Was he such a
badass? Or is he kind of doing some myth building himself here? Moon sent Hyojin back to Korea for high school, but it didn't work.
Back in Korea, he started a rock and roll band.
He had a reputation of being a bad boy, smoking cigarettes, drinking whiskey,
having girlfriends he had sex with.
Little Angel School would simply mail him a diploma.
Contrary to his father's wishes,
Hyojin wanted nothing to do with being matched for spiritual reasons.
He confessed in that 1988 speech, When I went to Korea, I started going with many girls. to his father's wishes, Hyojin wanted nothing to do with being matched for spiritual reasons.
He confessed in that 1988 speech,
When I went to Korea, I started going with many girls.
I really loved one in particular and wanted to marry her.
Her parents liked the idea.
They thought father had a lot of money.
Well, yeah, he did.
They encouraged both of us, invited me to their home.
They were nice to me.
We became very close, almost lived together.
I had sex with her.
I wanted to do everything in my power to stay with her.
I wanted to be matched with her or nobody else.
After school, I would sleep over at her house and
she at my house, all through high school.
I drank a bottle of whiskey a day.
If I didn't have money, I would buy corn whiskey, cheap and potent.
I had to be drunk all the time.
I touched bottom.
I was listening to my heart cry.
I started suffocating.
I wanted to kill myself.
How could I face father? I thought the best way was to disappear. Then I started suffocating. I wanted to kill myself. How could I face father?
I thought the best way was to disappear. Then I would have no burden. Many times I sat with
a gun pointed to my head, practiced what it would be like. I only cared about my physical
body. I was worse than other kids. I was so physical and selfish. I didn't care how I
affected other people. That's how I grew up. Maybe that was how I grew up.
Nansuka never thought about him. She knew
that Moon would select a match for her and she'd have to accept it. What was the
point of having crushes? But when Nansuk was 15 everything changed. There were
whispers that Moon was looking for a match for his eldest daughter Ji-jin or
Joo-jin, excuse me. Everyone expected the groom to be chosen from amongst the
sons of his earliest disciples, Young-Wi Kim or Hyo-Won Yoo. Their sons, Jin-Koon Kim and
Jin-Soon-U were friends of Nansuk's older brother. But it was going to be her older
brother Jin. He was to be married to the daughter of the Messiah. He was to become a member
of the true family of God. Jin was 17. When he got word that he got matched, he was also
informed that his wedding would be the next day. And this was the first wedding of a true child of the Reverend and Mrs. Moon.
At the ceremony, Nansuk spotted Hyojin Moon, the bad boy with the long hair.
After the wedding, a dinner reception was held in a large ballroom at the Palace Hotel,
but Nansuk and her siblings were not invited.
Soon after the wedding, the Moons and Joojin flew back to America.
Joojin was a student at Smith, the women's college in Massachusetts.
Jin moved into Moon's house in Seoul with Hyo Jin and a large household staff.
Jin still had a year of high school left, though Hyo Jin spent most of his time having
sex and smoking cigarettes.
But then one day Nansuk was called out of school.
She was brought to an enormous private residence where Moon sat at the head of a table, his
wife next to him, Nansuk's mother next to her.
But they all just had dinner and Nansuk had no idea what was going on. Next day, Nansuk's mother sent her to a beauty parlor, have a new dress spot. They returned to the Moon's house where Nansuk was
instructed to kneel down on the floor. Then Sun Moon asked her parents to give her to the One True
Family. And they said yes. She would of course be Hyojin's match, meant to steer him towards a more righteous path.
And I'll share more details regarding this arranged marriage that is doomed to be a trainwreck
of course, right after today's first of two mid-show sponsor breaks.
And I'm back.
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And now we return to the arranged marriage of Hyojin and Nansuk.
Hyojin was waiting in an adjoining room.
Nansuk had never been alone with the boy.
He sat on a couch and held hands.
Then he said that they better return to his parents.
She was now officially engaged.
The next weeks would be spent shopping and having dinner parties thrown in her honor.
Whenever she was alone with Hyojin, she was nervous. Alone in his sole residence,
he tried to have sex with her. But she said that she wouldn't have pre-marital sex.
Because that sent you to hell as your dad teaches. Within a matter of months, she would leave for
the U.S. with Hyojin in order to obtain a visa. The Unification Church lied, said Nansuk was
performing in a piano competition.
Nansuk spoke no English, and this was because of one of Moon's teachings.
English is spoken only in the colonies of the Kingdom of Heaven. When the Unification Church movement becomes more advanced, the international and official language of the Unification Church
shall be Korean. The official conferences will be conducted in Korean, similar to the Catholic
conferences, which are conducted in Latin.
Still, she went through customs, and then a car whisked her away to the East Garden.
There, she was alone with the Moon family for the first time before a driver took her
back to the Belvedere estate with her parents.
She'd be shocked by what she found out over the next few weeks, like that the Moon children
did not have breakfast with her parents, but began each day by bowing to them.
Then they were led away to the kitchen to have a separate breakfast.
On the day of her wedding ceremony,
when she's still 15, she's led down a long hallway
to the library, a Korean woman whispered to her,
"'Don't smile or your first child will be a girl.'"
That was easy for Nan Sook.
She didn't feel like smiling.
She wasn't happy about a lot of this.
Moon was dressed in long white ceremonial robes.
Nan Sook and Hyo Jin, he was 19,
stood before the true parents at an offering table laden with
food and Korean wine. Afterwards, the new couple were delivered to the cottage house where they
would live to get dressed for the reception which would be at the ballroom of the Manhattan Center.
Immediately Hyojin insisted they have sex. Nansuk begged him not to, they only had an hour,
but he insisted. He was rough, excited at the prospect of deflowering a virgin.
For hours afterwards Nansuk said she burned with pain.
At the reception, which was in English, Nansuk laughed when everyone else laughed, smiled
when everyone else smiled.
She didn't understand what the hell was going on.
She didn't understand a word that they were saying.
The celebration didn't end even after they got back to the East Garden.
It's a Korean tradition for wedding guests to strike the soles of the groom's feet with
a stick for his symbolic
thievery of taking his bride. Back in cottage house, Hyojin put on several pairs of socks,
I guess, in preparation for this ritual assault. Moon and Mrs. Moon laughed as church leaders now
tied Hyojin's ankles together so he could not escape. Excuse me. Every time they hit Hyojin's
feet, Moon would express mock outrage. Stop. I will pay you not to hit my son
Those wielding the stick but then take his money and go back to beating him
I'll give you more money if you stop Moon would shout and again the laughter would begin as they stuffed his money into their pockets
And began hitting Hyojin again
But then they got a little less funny because black young Jin showed the fuck up and he wasn't playing around with that stick
He grabbed it hit Hyojin so hard he fractured both of his feet. Then he
started hitting him elsewhere as his dad cried tears of laughter. He broke his arms, fractured
his skull. Moon finally stood up and applauded,
Ho ho, Black Young Jin, you are my most humorous son. No one makes me laugh like you.
Of course that part's not true. Black Young Jin was too busy beating followers of his
own cult probably to attend the wedding.
Nan Sook quickly learned that everything to do with her marriage, including the honeymoon, was going to be supervised either by the Moons or by assistants. However, even though she was
carefully controlled, the family couldn't stop Nan Sook from noticing certain things like how
Hak-Cha Han, the mother of the True Family, was a gambling fiend. Moon also liked to gamble. He liked to play blackjack.
He would give instructions to an assistant named Peter Kim.
So he wasn't gambling directly. That's fucking weird.
He'd send Peter to the casino and instruct him on how to bet, I guess.
Moon's rationale for this. He had to mix with the sinners, just like Jesus did.
And everyone knows that Jesus loved blackjack.
No one likes to split on a pair of aces or double down on 11 more than the Messiah.
Nansuk also noticed the family's secrecy when they enrolled her in public school, not private like they did for their kids.
They did it under a pseudonym. At the age of 15. Yeah, she's still 15. Nansuk was waking up at 6 every morning to attend her
sophomore year high school.
It's crazy. Exhausted from the night before as Shoujin would come back late and demand sex. Nobody at the school was supposed to
know about any of this though. She wondered if it was all so godly, why was it a secret?
Where did all their money come from? Why was the answer she was given always just to pan?
And if the moon children were so godly, why were they spending almost every night hanging
around and getting drunk and Manhattan nightclubs? And if Sun Moon was Jesus, why was he beating his
kids and insisting it came out of love? Why would he do things like slap small children in the face
when they wouldn't be quiet for church services? There was nobody to answer her questions. She
cried herself to sleep most nights, her knees raw with carpet burns from having to constantly kneel
before the moons and worship them as deities. What an odd reality she was living in. The one
time she did try to report her husband's infidelity to Mrs. Moon, she told Nansuk that
she was failing as a wife.
It was her job to make Hyojin want to stay home and not go out.
And Injin, the eldest Moon daughter, was constantly telling her mom lies about Nansuk, making
her out to be a troublemaker.
Soon, Nansuk grew wary of trusting anyone.
The one exception was Eunjin, a Moon daughter a year younger than Nansuk.
While the other kids would go out clubbing, Eunjin and Nansuk would stay up late baking, chatting.
Eunjin was a wonderful cook, generous spirit, sharing her chocolate chip cheesecake and homemade
cookies with the security guards who had an office in the basement of the mansion. There was a whole
ecosystem of attendance and employees here. The kitchen sisters and the babysitters would sleep
six to a room in the attic. They were given a small stipend but no salary, kept totally dependent on
the church. Situation was a little better for security guards, gardeners, and handymen who took
care of the Moon properties. The Moon's attitude was that church members were privileged to live
in such close proximity to the true family. So they didn't really need much money. Besides Eun-jin,
her only other respite was math class. There she was in 12th grade algebra,
practicing concepts she'd already mastered way back in fourth grade in Korea.
But mostly her life felt hollow.
She would describe it like this. I was beginning to see the truth. Our marriage was a sham.
Hyojin had gone through with the wedding, but he had every intention of living the life he had before.
I suspected that Hyojin was having sex with the hostesses at the Korean bars he frequented,
but I had no proof.
When I would ask him what he did when he stayed out all night, he told me that it was impudent
of me to question the son of the Messiah.
I would lie awake in our bed, imagining that I heard his car when it was only the sound
of the wind.
Within just a few weeks of their wedding, she had proof of his infidelity.
He gave her an STD.
By then, she also knew that he still had a girlfriend
back in Korea and no plans to break up with her.
Soon he left for Korea, not to return for months.
During that time, Nansuk learned
she was pregnant with his child.
After hearing about the pregnancy,
Hyojin returned from Korea and without a word of apology
or explanation moved out of Cottage House.
He apparently realized he wasn't actually legally married to Nansuk and planned just to leave his life in the church and abandon Nansuk and their
baby. When his dad's son Moon found out he was furious with Nansuk, berating her for not being
a better wife. And he said that if Hyojin returned she had to forgive and forget. She had no choice.
Soon the Moons would pay Hyojin's girlfriend off in Korea to leave him, and then Hyojin
with no GED, no degree, no job, and no money aside from his parents had to return home.
Also her mother-in-law, Huk Jeon Moon was pregnant again with her and Moon's 13th kid.
Her obstetrician had warned her after the birth of their 10th child that another pregnancy
could endanger her health if not her life, And then Moon just had her change doctors. He was determined to bring in as many
sinless true children of the Messiah into the world as possible. More
tumultuous was coming. Sun Moon in 1982 was being indicted for tax fraud, which
went over in the previous episode. He'll go to prison. Nansuk would later note
that Sun Moon didn't seem worried about his conviction. It was almost like he
welcomed it. You know, he was able to carve this narrative out that he was being persecuted for his race
and religion.
Nansuk, meanwhile, was now a little more than Mrs. Moon's lady-in-waiting, accompanying
her on walks on the beach, even to the bathroom.
And at night, Hyojin demanded sex as he berated Nansuk for her changing pregnant body.
Soon it was February 1983 and the baby was due.
She'd
be born February 27th after a day of labor. She was just under seven pounds.
Nansuk named her Shin Jun. Because she wasn't a boy, everybody was disappointed
except for her. Hyojin now left again for Korea. Wouldn't return until late
summer. Soon Nansuk would begin her junior year at a private single-sex
school. Yeah, she's still a young teenager in high school.
Thankfully, there were several other Korean girls there she could speak to.
During her junior year, she had a miscarriage.
Hyo Jin berated her for looking ugly when she cried about it.
God, these fucking monsters.
Her senior year, Nan Sook learned to drive.
After her graduation, Vice President George Bush gave the commencement address.
Nan Sook got ready in her bathroom, or excuse me, got ready in her bedroom as her toddler played on the floor. Year
later after his release from prison for tax fraud the Reverend Moon's hubris
culminated in a secret ceremony. Oh my gosh which he uh I sorry I thought this
was a different thing for a second but this is still pretty funny. He actually
crowned himself and Huk Jahan Moon as Emperor and Empress of the entire
universe. Oh, fuck yeah!
By the power of Grayskull!
I have the power of the Emperor of the universe and the coolest guy that ever lived!
Preparations for the lavish clandestine event at Belvedere took months cost hundreds of thousand dollars.
This craziness marked a turning point for Nansuk and her parents.
It was the first time that they confided in each other that maybe they weren't so sure
about this whole thing.
Maybe the moons weren't so great and holy.
Maybe, just maybe.
They were narcissistic, power hungry, insane, sadistic grifters.
But Nansuk had so much on her plate already to worry about, including her toddler and becoming a freshman at New York University, she didn't want to deal with
the thought of having to start a life over again. So she pushed her concerns down and tried to ignore
them. Her freshman year, she was also pregnant again. And when she visited Hyojin in Seoul the
summer after her finals, he started to beat her. Once when she locked herself in the bathroom to
avoid his wrath, he broke down the door using his guitar as a sledgehammer.
Meanwhile, at least her studies are going well.
In 1988, after earning high grades at NYU, she transferred to Barnard.
A security guard from East Garden would drive her to and from class.
Not even the professor who served as her advisor knew who she really was.
Over the ensuing years, sometimes Nansuk would flee for Korea with her children. She had another girl, then a boy, which had always
returned, partly because of her faith and her inability to question Sun Moon, and
partially because she knew that Hyojin would always find a way to
track her down and get her back. For sheltering her own soul, Nansuk's
parents were punished. Her father mocked during business meetings, humiliated in
public. Nansuk ended up being cut off from her parents completely, started having her
calls monitored, but at least she'd given birth to a boy and that made the Moon
family a little bit kinder towards her. In April of 1988, Hyojin made what was
billed as a dramatic confession before a church gathering in the grand ballroom
of the World Mission Center, the old New Yorker Hotel in New York City. It was
Parents Day, a church holiday. I listed some of his quotes from
the speech earlier. He also said, many blessed members blame father for my
wrongdoings. It is not father's fault. It is my fault. It wasn't easy for me to come
to America. It was a spawning ground for my hate and misunderstanding. People
tried to explain but I never listened. I had a lot of anger in my heart. I hated
almost everybody. He went on to deal with escapades, drinking, romances, as though that was all behind him now.
I want to do everything right from now on. That was the past and it comes and haunts me many times.
I have told you everything. That I slept around, that I had many women. I have nothing more to tell
you. Please, forgive me." He finished. But you know, that speech was a sham. It was just given
to a dude to parental pressure. His behavior did not change a bit.
He kept going out, kept fucking mistresses, wrecking some cars, even wound up in jail a couple times.
He also cut his first album.
Hyojin Moon recorded Rebirth at Manhattan Center Studios, which was another church-owned facility
next to the church-owned Old New Yorker Hotel.
Hyojin would sell CDs
and tapes of his music to his only audience, the Unification Church, which
included the Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles, right? CARP. I
think we mentioned them last episode, which he served and he served as their
figurehead president. Rebirth, the first of many albums for Hyojin. Here's a
little clip from a concert Hyojin Moon put on in Osaka, Japan in 2003.
This song is called I Love You from his 1990 album Star Songs, one of 16 albums of original music he
cranked out before he died in 2008. He performed this track as the encore for the show in front of
about, I'm guessing, 200 people. All church members, I'm sure.. Oh get ready to be blown away.
Can you turn that one up a little bit Logan? I'm gonna experience this. Oh god yeah.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, that's good. What a talent.
I mean, I can't speak the language, so I don't know what he's saying, but I don't think it
would make the song better if I did.
Nan Sook gave birth to the couple's third daughter, Shin Ok, in October of 1989.
She was 23
years old, now had four children. Then in 1992, Mrs. Moon demanded that Nansuk
accompany her on a 10-city tour of Japan even though Nansuk was pregnant again.
It was an extraordinary scene to witness. Church members truly treated Mrs. Moon
and Nansuk like royalty. Church members brought her stacks of money. At one
juncture, a member was
styling Nansook's hair and noticed she had misplaced her watch. Within the hour,
a jeweler was in her hotel room with trays of expensive watches for her to
choose from as a gift from her Japanese hosts. On her way home, she was given
$20,000 in cash to smuggle back into the U.S. A couple months later, in January of
1993, she would find out that the daughter grown inside of her did not
develop a brain, would not survive outside the womb when she had
an abortion and kept that to herself just to have some privacy while she mourned.
Mrs. Moon found out berated her for untrustworthiness, saying she was trying to undermine the holy
work of the True Parents.
They would take their anger out on Nonsuk's parents as well.
In 1993, her father was removed by the Mo's from his position as president of the Unification
Church in Europe.
He went home to Korea, where he was ostracized by the religious movement that he and Nonsuk's
mother had helped Sun Moon build.
And Hyojin's abuse was escalating.
He chased her around the house one night in a paranoid, coke-fueled frenzy.
When Nonsuk shouted for help, nobody came, and then he beat the shit out of her.
By 1994, her only dream was that she and Hyojin could someday live apart.
She was just 28 years old but felt so much older.
That March, she learned that she was pregnant again.
Hyojin was now recording more often than ever and supervising the audio and media
productions of the church.
His new job simply meant more money to finance his co-cabin, his growing arsenal of guns,
his alcohol b of guns,
his alcohol binges, and I'm sure taking his mistress out.
He now kept a loaded machine gun, a gift from his parents under his and Nansuk's bed.
Once when Nansuk was seven months pregnant, he beat her when she caught him doing coke
in the bathroom.
He also embezzled millions from his company, Manhattan Center Studios.
November of 1994, Nansuk gave birth to their fifth child, a boy named Shin-hun. Hyojin said he was too tired to drive to the
hospital to witness his son's birth. Turns out he was busy fucking and employed
at the music studio. A lady named Annie. Adultery was a single worst sin in the
Unification Church since so much emphasis was placed on these marriages.
But Hyojin said to Nansuk that the rules did not apply to him. His dad, Sun Moon, was unfaithful, so why couldn't he be?
He said his sexual liaisons were providential or ordained by God.
God wanted him to ride as many bicycles as possible!
Why can't you get that?
I have to put my dick in every hole I can!
God's telling me!
Sometimes I'm like, God, I'm tired!
I'm exhausted!
Get to fucking!
Go get some more puss! Nonsuke went directly to Mrs. Moon with Hyojin's claims. She was both furious and tearful.
She said she hoped that such pain would end with her and that it would not be passed on to the next generation.
She disagreed with Hyojin's claims that he had the same authority as his dad.
She said no father is the Messiah not Hyojin. What father did was in God's plan
My god the mental hurdles people jump the rationalizations. What my son is cheating on you. Oh, that simply will not do
He blamed it on his father. Well, yeah his father cheats. Of course. He does he's new Jesus
He can do whatever he wants, but Hyojin. He's not even like new Abraham. He's not even like new Job.
This is not okay.
She said that her husband's infidelity was just part of her course to suffer to become
the true mother.
But there is no excuse for Hyojin to do this.
Sun Moon would also reiterate to Nonsuke that his own infidelities had been providential,
but his son Hyojin's weren't.
Yeah, totally. I mean, God wanted him to put his dick in a bunch of wet holes,, but his son Hyojin's weren't. Yeah, totally. I mean, God
wanted him to put his dick in a bunch of wet holes, but not his son. What? Not my son!
Now things were starting to make more sense for Nonsuke. The constant
adoration of the true mother, all the money she got. Was it to make up for
Sun Moon's constant infidelity so that she wouldn't expose him? She started to
see the truth, she said, that this family was fucking rotten to the core. Now it's January of 1995.
Nansuk finally decides it's time to go. She can no longer see Moon or Mrs. Moon
be any kind of Messiah type figures if everything, literally everything about
them is so fucked up. She now believed that God, whatever he was, had given up
on this family and therefore spiritually she was free to go. So she starts to make
a plan.
Her ally would be an unlikely one, Madeline Hyo-jin's assistant.
She was also planning to leave her husband, an Australian she had been matched with.
Meanwhile Hyo-jin has been banned from the recording studio by his parents, then refuses
to go to rehab, then is reinstated at the recording studio despite the protests of many
who worked there and he was still abusing Nansuk. In fact, the abuse got worse. One night he took a tub, excuse me, tube of
lipstick, held her down, and just scribbled stupid all over her face. Another time he
forced her to stand naked while he walked around her mocking her and spitting on her.
Started to literally spit on her any chance he got. By June, Nansuk is packing. Her brother
Jin had called to say that there was a house for sale across the street from him in Massachusetts. He and his wife had
been exiled for years at this point. Chung Sook, one of Nansuk's sisters,
was living in the area as well. Having escaped the match Moon made for her back
in Korea, she bought the house. Her parents too were out of the cult making
it easier for her to leave. She didn't have to worry about them getting punished
for what she was doing. Over the ensuing months, she sent her staff, babysitters, helpers back home for quote,
visits that she extended, hoping they would stay until she was gone and have protection
by virtue of distance from the Moon family.
She started moving furniture out, praying that security guards wouldn't tell anyone.
Finally, she asked her kids if they wanted to leave.
They said no, she knew she was going to stay, but instead they exploded into happy, excited
giggles.
All right, the kids wanted to leave this shit show behind as well. They're probably sick of having to constantly bow to their grandparents
Maybe also scared of the boogeyman black young gin returning to lay down some hurt on him
On August 18th 1995 it was time with their kids Nan Sook met Madeline on an isolated street corner where they loaded their suitcases into a van
They would stay in a motel that night arranged arranged by Jen, Nansook's brother,
then move into Ahmaud's house in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Once in her new home, she met with the police, followed an order of protection
from the Moon family. She now had to learn to cook, clean, do laundry,
all the things that servants had done for her for basically her entire life.
She didn't know how to run a dishwasher, how to mow a lawn, how to operate a washing machine.
The first time the toilet overflowed, she completely panicked. But she was happy. Her struggles were completely
worth it. Her kids started to learn basic life skills. They made friends as equals,
not as the grandkids of the Messiah. The moons, of course, were furious. They tried to hide
their fury in their letters and audio tapes that they sent to Nansuk, beseeching her to
come home. In a custody proceeding that would follow, Hyojin insisted that he had always been a present father,
but could not tell the court the ages of his own children
or what grades they were in at school.
This guy is such a douche.
Early December, despite the Moon's wealth and influence,
Nansuk was awarded full custody until such a time
as Hyojin demonstrated himself to be sober
for at least two months,
he would literally never complete that task.
He would however be jailed for failing to pay child support. Jailed as Sun Moon did a lecture tour around the country preaching about the lack of family values in the media and in the culture.
And now let's check back in with the true father. See what Papa Grift is up to right after today's
second of two mid-show sponsor breaks.
And I'm back.
It's late 1997.
The leader of the Unification Church is still going strong, but maybe not quite as strong
as he was a few years back.
You might not know it, but his church is past its prime.
November 29, 1997, Sung Myung Moon presided over a mass wedding at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium
in Washington, D.C.
It was a far cry from a similar event in Madison Square Garden in 1982.
For this latest gathering, the Unification Church had to beat the bushes to fill the
stadium.
The church had peaked, membership was now declining.
Most of the 28,000 couples who attended were already married and members of other religions.
Most accepted free tickets passed out at suburban shopping malls and in supermarket parking
lots to attend what Unification Church
built as a world culture and sports festival.
1998, Nan Sook and Eun Jin, who claimed her husband had abused her as well,
go on 60 Minutes and unleash a flurry of allegations about sex, drugs, and violence inside Moon's supposedly holy and ideal family.
Moon was still reeling from this bombshell when the following year his second youngest son who was given the Americanized name of Philip
hurled himself from the 17th floor of a Harris Casino in Nevada and died.
Philip also had been trapped in an unhappy marriage. It's almost like the
premise of marrying strangers together like he'd been doing for decades is
really fucking stupid, unnecessary, and damaging. Luckily, Philip Moon quickly returned in the body of a 52-year-old Brazilian named Fernando,
aka Brown Philip.
And soon Brown Philip would right the Mooney ship through another whirlwind ass-whoop-a-tour.
I wish.
Now he just stayed dead.
He didn't even get to teach special classes in heaven or make Jesus run errands for him
or anything.
All this family turmoil was making a mockery of Moon's family first teachings. Moon had
already lost some of his political leverage during the early 90s as
communism crumbled and Democrats, he was in bed with mainly Republicans for a
while, seized control of Congress and the White House. Now many disillusioned
followers began turning their backs on the church. Moon, who now espoused that
America's culture was of what he called moral degradation, had caused his children's downfall,
not his shitty parenting and ridiculous co-beliefs.
He grew bitter towards his adopted country, which he branded Satan's Harvest.
Totally. This is all Satan's fault.
But he didn't give up on the U.S. entirely.
Instead, he began courting new groups such as socially conservative black churches, democratic politicians.
The church also launched the Women's Federation for World Peace, which
packaged his theology as a tool for the liberation of women. Okay. Mrs. Moon,
whose role in the church had been mostly ceremonial up until this point, was named
the new president. She began traveling the world proclaiming herself a co-messiah.
Oh, that's cool. Urging women to devote themselves to their families. She told a
conservative crowd in Seoul, we must spread to the whole world a model movement in which we embrace our husbands and raise
our children properly. On several occasions, former President George H.W. Bush, a major beneficiary
of Moon family donations over the years, we don't know how much they gave him, but I'm guessing
millions, appeared alongside her as did his wife Barbara and in a major departure from his previous teachings Moon
formally declared Mrs. Moon to be his equal and promised she would inherit everything from father.
Despite these changes Moon still has not given up on his dreams of world domination.
In the spring of 2000 he invited 120 American ministers to South Korea, gave him diamond studded gold watches in a blatant attempt to bribe them into joining his movement. Then just after the
9-11 attacks Moon convened a summit in New York City of religious and
political leaders including Jerry Falwell, Dan Quayle, Richard Holbrooke,
Dick Quota met and acknowledged and the Nation of Islam's
President Louis Farrakhan whose Million Family March Moon had supported the
previous year.
They stated goal of this gathering was to find solutions to global violence.
But the mood was fractious, especially after Farrakhan suggested that Osama bin Laden had
been wrongly scapegoated. Instead of uniting behind Moon as he had predicted, the post-Cold War world
was growing more divided. However, with every setback, Moon's plans only grew more grandiose.
more divided. However, with every setback Moon's plans only grew more grandiose. Later that year he made an announcement by February of 2013 all humanity would
join hands under the banner of a global nation of cosmic peace and unity called
Chun-ul-guk. Do you remember when that happened back in 2013? God that was a great
day back in February 2013 when literally all of us held hands and just you know
everything was peaceful and there was a lot of cosmic unity.
Moon and his followers began preparations in Korea,
launching a police force, commissioning an anthem,
which I'll share later with you, and adopting a flag.
They also literally built Moon an elaborate castle
shaped like the U.S. Capitol building.
If Moon couldn't actually spiritually conquer America,
he could at least do so in symbolic form.
Around this time, In Jin was living in Boston
and pursuing a doctorate in divinity at Harvard. Her dad
who was split in his time between New York and his kingdom in Korea no longer
kept close tabs on her. Over time, she shed her sense of familial obligation and
started writing and recording romantic pop songs. So much music in this family.
You see how I burn beneath your steady gaze. You see how I yearn to be a meadow where you graze."
One went,
Hey, Elustifina!
Sadly, I can't find any recordings on the web of her early work, early solo work, but
I will share some of her recent hit music a bit later.
March 23rd, 2004, at a ceremony in the Dirksen Center Building in Washington, D.C., Moon
crowned himself with what was called the Crown of Peace.
Republican lawmaker Roscoe Bartlett oh what a fucking great
name that's not a guy who'd show up at a crown of peace event I'm Roscoe Bartlett
let's get this shindig go haha yeah this fucking douche literally bowed down
before the couple and then Democrat Danny Davis another douche carried in
one of two golden crowns her replaced on head. How embarrassing!
Ah, fucking stereotypes. These politicians acting like fools to grab, I'm sure, fat paychecks.
Handed their way. Moon then informed the audience that kings and presidents had declared him humanity's
savior and that Jesus, Buddha, Hitler, and Stalin had been reborn as new persons through his
teachings. Yeah, totally. That's not a reborn as new persons through his teachings.
Yeah, totally.
That's not a crazy thing at all to say publicly.
And I'm sure this politician just nodded like, oh yeah, no, that's great.
Around that same time, In Jin Moon began having an affair with a keyboard player named Alastair
Ferent.
Her husband, James Park, was crushed.
Park now started binging on Coke, and paradigm global advisors, his financial company, suffered.
According to
people with inside knowledge one of Park's business partners began angling
for control of the company now and Park began hunting for a buyer friendly to his
interests. And as luck would have it he found one in an unlikely quarter then
Senator Joe Biden's family. Story just keeps getting weirder. James Biden, Joe's
brother approached a business associate named Anthony Lotito who connected him with with Parks Camp and the three men began negotiating to buy Paradigm.
They signed an agreement that gave them a controlling stake in the company
in return for $21 million in cash to be paid in six months.
Hunter Biden, Joe's son, who had no financial industry experience, was named CEO and given
an annual salary of $1.2 million. All fun. I love that Hunter Biden has now randomly appeared in this story. If only Donald Trump was part of this business deal.
Trump was paid $2 million by the Moonies in 2022 according to 2023 tax filings for appearing and
speaking at two church events with Mike Pence. Must be nice to make a million bucks for an
appearance. Back to the paradigm situation. I wonder how much coke Hunter and James Park
snorted together. How many escorts were there to snort it with them? Did Black Young Gin show up,
snort a little coke, fuck some escorts, and then beat the fucking shit out of everyone in the room.
Soon it became clear that paradigm had 200 to 300 million under its management, not the 1.5 billion
it claimed. Now the Biden's main financier backed out, but the Biden's found a way around their
sudden lack of capital. According to court documents and people close to both sides
of the negotiations, they approached Park, who was still in treatment for coke use,
and cut a new deal. Instead of 21 million cash, they would fork over an 8 million
dollar note. People close to Park say he was emotionally fragile, felt indebted to
the Bidens, which put him in a vulnerable position. Finally in 2008, the economy
collapsed with the housing market crisis, after which it
emerged that Allen Stanford, whose firm was soliciting investors for one of Paradigm's funds,
was running a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme. Ah sweet this is all connected to a Ponzi scheme
as well. Awesome. While the Paradigm fund itself was solid overall, investors were spooked and in
2010 Paradigm folded, filed for voluntary liquidation. Park was never able to collect on the $8 million note,
found himself faced a mountain of debt.
The little dance with the Bidens was over.
Park and Injun were saved though from financial ruin
thanks to Moon family ties and Moon family money.
And Jin's younger brother Preston,
a Harvard grad, former Olympic equestrian
who controlled most of the family's American enterprises,
he agreed to bail the couple out with several million dollars, a decision he would later regret because of
the family fracturing. March 17th 2008, Hyojin Moon dies of a heart attack at
the Moon family home in Seoul, South Korea. He'd remarried to Yoon Ah-choy and
had four more kids. He completely abandoned his original family, you know,
like father like son. His death
raised the question of leadership succession and Moon was in his late 80s now, needed an heir.
This left an opening for NGIN who maneuvered her way to the helm of the Manhattan Center,
the only one of Moon's daughters, to assume a leadership role. She immediately gave her lover,
that previously struggling musician Alistair Ferrante, a top position, fired half the staff,
many of them long-standing church members.
She's also began courting new talent including a 30-something rock musician named Ben Lorenzen.
She will soon leave Alistair for Ben. These two are still together and making the best music.
Their most recent release, a cover of Fleetwood Mac's Dreams, lighting up YouTube right now.
It has 63 views in the past four months.
Several of those are mine. Here's a little taste of more Moon Family music. Players don't let the field when they're playing
Say women, they may come and they may go
When the rain washes you clean, you'll know.
You'll know.
I mean, that rendition would for sure be better than at least some of the other cover songs
sung in random karaoke night in just any bar.
Ben actually releases a fair amount of songs on his own. In 2022 he released the track
Second Man on the Moon. Get it? Because he because his wife oh yeah they're gonna get married.
I'm jumping the gun a little bit. But she's a member of the Moon family and some other dude
rode her bicycle before he took his band. I think that's what the title refers to. I'm not sure. Yes! Sounds like it was released in 1996?
No, it was released in 2023.
It's doing a lot better than the other song.
267 views in a year.
Actually, it's not as bad as I was hoping. He is talented.
I wish I hated it. That summer, Helicopter Reverend and Mrs. Moon were traveling aboard,
crashed into a South Korean mountainside, and unfortunately, they both survived.
But while they recovered, their children began squabbling over the only major piece of Moon's
empire that remained up for grabs. The Unification Church of America, which oversees
the movement's US congregations, along with hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps more
than a billion dollars in assets. Preston saw himself as a natural heir, but Ngin spotted an
opportunity. Her family hadn't fully recovered from the paradigm debacle. According to people
close to her, she was hungry for additional income.
Clearly her music alone, not quite paying the bills.
When Justin Moon approached her about staging a takeover, there's so many Moon kids, she agreed.
The American church then convened a board meeting led by In Jin. Most of the existing board members were pressured to resign, were replaced with In Jin's allies,
after which In Jin was formerly elected chair. Bitter family feud ensued.
The True Family is experiencing civil war.
Preston later staged his own bedroom coup at Unification Church International,
the holding company for the Moon family's US business,
giving him unfettered control over billions of dollars in assets.
He uses the proceeds to fund an offshoot movement that drew on his father's
teachings without deifying the Moon clan.
NGIN meanwhile assumes the role of Chief Pastor of the American Church in 2009, begins
using it as a vehicle for her own passions.
Her aim, she said, was to transform the Church into one that people, especially young people,
were dying to join.
She renamed the Church Loving Life Ministries, shelved the old hymn books, launched a rock
band, an offs yeah, an off
street of which played New York clubs under the moniker Sonic Cult.
Here's that band playing a little Beach Boys, fucking rocking out with some Beach Boys at
the Bitter End Club back in March of 2013.
Ben Lorenzen on vocals and lead guitar. Finally now he's one I've been looking to get
If you should ever leave me There's at least 30 people here
Life must be gone, I'll believe me
This world could show nothing to me
So what good would living do me?
Come join my cult with my wife.
There's money my father-in-law's a fucking lunatic.
Uh, again, it's not bad.
He's got a nice voice.
And probably a lot of cult money in his bank accounts now.
Now rather than adhering to the church line on arranged marriage, Injin encourages young
people to play a role in choosing their own spouses.
How very progressive.
They're the new Moonies.
They're the cool Moonies who play Beach Boy covers at bars.
Her affirms were met with heated resistance though.
Across the country, Moon's disciples took to the internet to denounce InGen's bling bling style.
Whatever the fuck that means.
One online critic dubbed her ministry the Mushroom Church.
Because all you do is sit passively in the dark and are fed bovine excrement.
BOOM!
Mic drop!
Yeah, go eat your bovine excrement!
I can't respect people who say excrement in slams like that.
Just say shit, you fucking douche.
Some were already leaving and following their siblings into the splinter groups.
The eldest, Yeon Jin aka Preston, broke from the church in 2009, refused to give up major UC assets he controlled in Korea and the Americas. Eventually set up the
Family Peace Association as an alternative. The youngest, Hyeong Jin, aka Sean, broke away from
the church, continued using the UC logo for his services, set up the World Peace and Unification
Sanctuary, aka the Sanctuary Church in Newfoundland, Pennsylvania as an alternative.
We'll check in with Sean a bit later.
Main church struggled in the face of all this division.
Within two years nationwide monthly attendance in the U.S.
plunged from roughly 26,000 a couple of years before to less than 7,500.
According to internal church documents, yet Injin persisted confident that with time
she could win over the doubters and bring her father's church into the modern era. But she was now facing some personal problems reminiscent of
her father's. In late 2009, Patricia Lorenzen, wife of the musician who we've sampled, Ben,
did I mention her new boyfriend was married and had a family? She traveled to New York with her
two young sons to visit her husband for Christmas. And while they were standing at the moon-owned New Yorker
Hotel, she borrowed Ben's laptop, found his email inbox brimming with fucking
pussy photos from Injun. Not kidding. She confronted Injun over email, after which
she says, uh, Lorenzen and another man turned up at her room, delivered an ultimatum.
She and her kids had to be out of the hotel by the next morning or they would
be tossed out by security. That's right, Ben Lorenzen.
Fucking Mr. Beach Boy.
The vocalist shows up to threaten his own wife and kids with being tossed out onto the street on Christmas no less.
If she won't shut the fuck up about his affair.
It's harder to enjoy songs now.
A family feud now erupts an open view.
The siblings now spar over billions of dollars in international assets and court.
One of Injun's deputies traveled the country delivering a PowerPoint presentation.
The castor brother Preston as a fallen Adam being controlled by Satan.
Lovely to do that on PowerPoint.
Anyone in her father's church who would listen?
If you'll just bear with me for a second.
And then just showing slides.
And you see here, this is a picture of the devil.
This next picture is of Adam. You can
see the resemblance. They look very similar. This is Adam smoking a cigarette.
Something very satanic. Early 2012 Injin gave an upbeat sermon about music,
motherhood, and true love. This is an incredible year and I feel so many
wonderful things are going to unfold, she said. This is about you and me. This is
about America. This is about our future. But after the service was over, Injin
disappeared from public view. She stopped delivering weekly sermons. She was broadcasting
online. They weren't getting very many views. Even quit showing up all together at the church's
Manhattan headquarters. Just got to focus on her music now. After several months passed with no
sign of her, some parishioners began pressing for information about her whereabouts. They were
blocked at every turn. Even the highest circles of church leadership couldn't or wouldn't say what happened to In-Jin Moon. We'll meet her again soon, find out why she
disappeared. September 2nd, 2012. Sun Moon. True. Father. Dies of pneumonia. Like a fucking weak
little bitch. At age 92. Ugh. Two weeks later, some 15,000 people packed into a Moon-owned stadium
outside Seoul for the memorial.
Mrs. Moon vowed to continue her husband's quest to build a world where all people live
as one great family under God.
Hmm.
But she won't need to take on that quest on her own, because at the service in front of
everyone present, Sun Moon reanimates comebacks to life in the body of Cundioni.
Oh, fuck yeah, bro!
The Zimbabwean ass-whipper is back.
Now Sun Moon is taking over his body. He grabs a chair, beats the shit out of all 15,000 people present, takes days, has to take breaks to eat, drink, sleep, get some massages. But he gets the
job done and restores order to the one true church. By the power of Grayskull.
of Grayskull. He did it! Congratulations!
Back to reality now. Back to the true father being truly dead and gone. After the service true mother and some of her kids knelt above his burial vault, clasped hands and prayed.
Injun remains conspicuously absent.
Around the time that a birth certificate
for a four month old boy began circulating on the internet,
to the astonishment of Moon's followers,
the child's parents were none other than Injin Moon
and the married musician she was fucking
and sending pussy pics to, Ben Lorenzen.
That's why she disappeared from public view,
because she was pregnant.
Now on top of mourning the Messiah,
Moon's American disciples have to digest the news that their his supposedly sinless daughter
was tramping upon his tramping his most sacred teachings. And Jin Soong Pak, son
of Bohai Pak, the second-in-command husband of In Jin, had actually helped
In Jin and Ben find a house on Cape Cod where she could hide and write out her
pregnancy. Mrs. Moon was furious. Or maybe she saw an opportunity.
She demanded that In-jin resign. In-jin issued an apology to members of the church. It was
never our intention to hurt anyone. All we wanted was to love and to be loved. It's almost
again like these arranged marriages are terrible. Next, Mrs. Moon moves to claim the inheritance
her husband has promised her. She rests control of the international church from Sean Moon,
her shitty son, issued a memo saying everything that is carried out in Korea from this day onward will be centered on true mother.
It's fucking the bitches back in town. She later ousted her son Justin,
who controlled most of Moon's Korean enterprises. After five decades spent in Moon's shadow,
the kingdom was in her hands. She wasn't gonna let her shitty kids fuck it up.
She was gonna banish her brood. I actually kind of feel sorry for Mrs. Moon. She was raised in cults, right?
She didn't pick Sun Moon.
She was given to him.
Yes, she's lived in luxury for a long time, but also who knows what kind of abuse she
suffered privately at the hands of Sun Moon.
I found this video of her from just a few years ago.
She's sitting at this small table in one of her South Korean residences and she's
having dinner with her dead husband.
Not quite weekend of Bernie's style. His corpse isn't there, which is a bummer.
But in her mind she is.
As in the staff has set out two servings of food and drink.
One for her, one for someone not sitting in the empty chair next to her.
She eats her food, talks to the air as if Sun Moon is having dinner with her and responding.
In all seriousness, she asks her dead husband, like,
dead husband, what do you think's the meal?
How he's feeling about this or that?
Like, she has been in this super strange echo chamber her whole life. I think she has no concept of
what it is to live a sane normal life.
Interestingly though, despite Moon's views on wifey subservience, it soon becomes clear that Mrs. Moon doesn't share all of her dead husband's opinions.
She began speaking out in surprisingly critical terms about Moon's preoccupation with America
During a trip to New York in late 2012. She complained that he squandered 40 years in the US for little such little return
late February 2013 the matriarch celebrates the arrival of
Chun-ul-guk right Moon's global kingdom of peace and unity, before some 15,000 devotees who packed this Moon-owned stadium in Korea.
They had a stadium all wearing identical wedding garb. The crowd sang the
Chun-ul-guk national anthem and then Mrs. Moon swept into the stadium wearing a
jeweled crown and a purple robe, festooned with gold embroidery. This is
the day where everyone in the world is supposed to hold hands. Check out an English and Korean hybrid rendition of this very powerful, just moving
inspirational anthem.
Good morning! I hope you're all doing well. It's going to be a wonderful, beautiful Sunday morning.
We're going to start off our Sunday by singing the Chellogook anthem as usual. Here we go!
Here we go. Here we go.
One, two, three.
The budding rose of love will bloom with new tidings of hope.
May the world live in freedom.
Earth and heaven rejoice.
O day of yukjejuwa. This is the turn. Oh, the young, you did do well
Son ju, kya, chai, do
Oh, my dear, you don't someday
You'll be the same
You'll try to do good
The lily beads in heaven's light
By red colors abound
And the goodness of the spirit
Your new love I see
Okay, I can't take anymore.
This is a collage of lots of photos of like flowers and sun, moon and stuff in the background of the video.
While this anthem is sung, Mrs. Moon marches slowly up along stairway to a giant replica of the Moon family palace.
She takes a seat on a white throne.
Next to her is an identical throne reserved for her dead husband who sits there in spirit. She acts like he's there. An attendant hands her a heavenly scepter. Oh hell yeah, you gotta
have a scepter. She climbs to her feet and says, I proclaim the first year of Chun-ul-guk. Trumpets
blare. Stadium fills with mist. Ah, so much pageantry. Afterwards several of Moon's old friends give
congratulatory, oh you did it! You did it! Literally nothing's changed but you did something!
Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert is there. What the fuck? He lodged the festivities
as an affirmation of marriage and family. Fuck another twat politician. Just shameless.
Bought and paid for with Moon money.
On the occasion of the third anniversary of Moon's death in 2015,
having concluded a traditional Korean three-year period of mourning,
the now 72-year-old Mrs. Moon presides over the Soon-Hak Peace Prize Awards ceremony.
That's great.
2016, she launches the International Association for Parliamentarians for Peace.
So much peace and associations with these shitheads. She does that at the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea. No one has
loved to launch associations more than these fuckers. For the remainder of the year under the
auspices of the UPF, the FFWPU inaugurated regional chapters in Nepal, Burkina Faso, oh how great,
England, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Zambia, Japan.
All this was intended to further her goal of having a global ministry,
which she described as a cosmic march to Canaan with the stated purpose of
consecrating seven nations as models of national restoration.
Shockingly, some countries do agree to be part of this,
but they don't have to actually do anything.
The first to do so, Saulteaux-Mé and Principe.
Saulteaux-Mé and Principe.
It's more of a town than a nation. Technically, it's a nation. The first to do so, So-To-Mei in Principe. So-To-Mei in Principe.
It's more of a town than a nation.
Technically it's a nation.
I could fucking take over this nation if I wanted to.
A tiny equatorial island nation in the Gulf of Guinea,
off the coast of Central Africa in September of 2019.
Mrs. Moon declared the nation to become heavenly.
So-To-Mei in Principe.
By the end of the year, she had consecrated a heavenly Albania, Cambodia, Taiwan, Niger,
Palau, and the Dominican Republic.
Seven nations.
Oh.
Then, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Mrs. Moon convened rallies of hope, beamed from a giant
jumbotron from the UCM's World Peace Center at Cheongpyeong Lake, Korea.
Now let's fast forward to yet another and final for this timeline crazy story to come out of this group. On the morning of his, on the last morning of his life, July 8th, 2022, Shinzo Abe, former
prime minister of Japan, arrived in the Japanese city of Nara, famous for its ancient pagodas
and these cute sacred little deer they have growing there.
He would, growing, living, they grow them.
They have growing there. He would, growing, living, they grow, they have deer farms.
He'd be given a speech to endorse a lawmaker
running for reelection to the national diet,
which is Japan's parliament.
Abe had retired two years earlier,
but because he was Japan's longest serving prime minister,
his name still carried enormous political weight.
And photos taken from the crowd,
Abe instantly recognizable by his wavy sweat back hair,
charcoal eyebrows and fo folksy grin.
Can be seen stepping onto a makeshift podium at about 11.30am, one hand clutching a microphone.
A gaggle of supporters surrounds him, knowing the photos, or the video.
Seems to notice a youngish looking man about 20 feet behind Abe, dressed in a gray polo
shirt and cargo pants with a black strap across his shoulder. Unlike everyone else's dude, not clapping. Abe starts to speak and
moments later his remarks are interrupted by two loud sounds, followed by a burst of white smoke.
Abe collapses to the ground. His security guards now run towards the man in the gray polo shirt
who holds a homemade gun. Two 16-inch metal pipes strapped together with black duct tape.
The assassin makes no effort to flee. The guards tackle him, sending his guns
skittering across the pavement. Abe's been shot in the neck and he'll be dead within hours.
Later, at the local police station, the suspect, a 41-year-old Zimbabwe man,
Zimbabwe man, Kandioni, aka Black Young Jan, teleports out of the interrogation room after loudly proclaiming I have the power!
I have the power!
Sorry.
I love that sound so much.
Now the suspect is a 41 year old man named Tetsuya Yamagami and he fully confesses to
the shooting barely 30 minutes after pulling the trigger. So why did he do it? Because he saw Abe as an ally of the
Unification Church. Yamagami said his life was ruined when his mom gave the
church all of his family's money, leaving him and his siblings so poor they often
didn't have enough to eat. His brother had already committed suicide over this
ruining and he had tried to. He said, my prime target was Unification Church's
top official, Huk Jahan, right? True mother, not Abe. But he couldn't get to Mrs. Moon, so he
decided to shoot Abe instead. Investigators looked into Yamagami's wild sounding claims and found
to their alarm they were true. Yamagami was associated with the church and his mom, this
dude's mom, had been swindled. But they would not publicly admit to any of this right away.
At a press conference on the night of the assassination, a police official would say only that Yamagami had carried out the attack because he harbored a grudge
against a specific group and he assumed Abe was linked to it. When reporters clamored for details, the official said nothing.
But only a few days later, the Unification Church confirmed press reports that Yamagami's mother was indeed a member.
And the association now becomes big news.
In the ensuing press, it was revealed that the Moonies had a volunteer army of campaign
workers who had long been a secret weapon, not just for Abe, but for many other politicians
in his conservative, liberal, democratic party, which remains in power under Prime Minister
Fumio Kushida right now. Later that month, the Japanese tabloid Nikankande published a list of 111 of the total 713 members
of parliament who had connections to this church. Then in early September of 2022,
the LDP announced that almost half of its 379 parliament members admitted to some kind of
contact with the UC, whether that meant
accepting campaign assistance or paying membership fees or actually attending church events.
They still hold sway in Japan.
290 members of prefectural assemblies as well as seven prefectural governors also tied to
the church.
These numbers exposed a scandal hiding in plain sight.
An insane Korean cult was still powerfully connected to the political party that had governed Japan
for most of the past 70 years. Many in the Japanese general public were
outraged. Abe was a fervent nationalist eager to rebuild Japan's global standing
and proudly unapologetic for its imperial past but now he and his party
had been caught in a secretive electoral alliance with a cult that, it soon emerged, had been
accused of preying on Japanese war guilt and guilt over the occupation of Korea to squeeze
billions and billions of dollars from its Japanese followers.
Apparently, one of the things that made Japan such a cash cow for this church was charging
members over $5,000 each to liberate their ancestors in order to get them into heaven.
No other nation's members were ever charged this.
The Japanese were charged more to atone for their sins against Korea.
In just a few months, the entire narrative of the assassination inverted.
Well-wishers now began sending Yamagami, the assassin gifts.
He was now seen by many as the real victim in all this.
Thousands of people protested the decision to grant Abe a state funeral,
and a hastily made feature film portrayed Yamagami as a tragic hero,
and it was shown all over the country.
The Liberal Democratic Party's poll numbers, already falling, continued to drop,
and a cabinet minister was forced to resign
after he failed to adequately explain his ties to the controversial cult.
And now story after story starts to emerge about all sorts of people in Japan
who've been fucked over by the UC. People spoke of being sold
useless trinkets and insane markups to quote save their dead family members
from an afterlife in hell. We talked about that in the previous episode.
People were told that Japan was considered an Eve nation, that it had to
be brutalized because of its government's colonialism in the early 20th
century for the brutal occupation of Korea.
UC victims spoke of having been probed for personal information and then having that personal information used against them, blackmailing them for loads of money.
People shared stories of family members who had committed suicide out of despair when they went broke. People who left their families destitute.
In one instance, a 26 year old woman who had grown up in the Unification Church
gave an emotional press conference in which she described the fear of damnation to hell that the Church
had instilled in her as a child, and the people she knew being pressured into marrying strangers
during the cult's group weddings, with many of the couples quote, now living a life of
regret.
As she spoke, a hand-delivered message arrived unexpectedly from the Unification Church.
The message, read aloud in front of the
cameras by her husband declared that she suffered from psychiatric issues, which she didn't, that
she had a tendency to lie, and that the press conference needed to stop immediately. It didn't.
The note was signed by her parents who were still church members. Also thanks to the stories
surrounding this assassination, news of years of litigation against the church became public knowledge. One law firm alone, not Acock and Butts, sadly, had brought 35,000 claims against the church
since 1987. That firm claims that the church illegally solicited about a billion dollars
from those 35,000 people. November of 2022, the Koshida government, the current government eager
to clear its name, opened an inquiry that could now threaten the Unification Church's legal status in Japan as a religion.
A Reuters article from that month states that Japan still has about 100,000 active followers
and that 600,000 are still affiliated with the church in some way, and that 10 million
worldwide were still somehow connected to this church.
As he waits trial in the solitude of his prison cell, the assassin Tetsuya Yamagami can console himself that he may be among the most successful
assassins in history. Now, almost two years after Abe's murder, his assassination has come to be
seen as less a random act of some unhinged loner and more of a righteous vengeance following a
tragedy that unfolded slowly over decades. Finally, in October of last year, Japan's government asked the court to order the complete
dissolution of the Unification Church in Japan following a government probe.
Japan's education minister, Mashiro Moriyama, said the probe had found that the Japanese
branch of the church has long restricted many of its members' ability to freely make decisions
and forced them to make donations and purchase goods while they were not in a condition to make sound decisions.
A dissolution ruling against it would strip the Church of legal status and tax breaks
but allow it to continue to operate business-wise in Japan.
Unsurprisingly, the Unification Church in Japan has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing,
pledging reform, and labeling the news coverage against it as biased and fake.
Fake news?
Uh-huh.
Of course, yeah. There has been no word since October about when the government may make its
ruling. The church is still active in America as the family federation for
world peace and unification, as I mentioned. They make no attempt to hide
their past, still selling Moon's divine principle as their core text. On an FAQ
list in the About Us section of their website, one of the questions is, is the
Unification Church a cult?
And here's their answer.
No, the Unification Church is not a cult.
FFWPU is a duly registered religious nonprofit organization.
We began as a new religious movement
that expanded rapidly and called for radical change
and whose members lived their beliefs.
The establishment felt threatened
and responded by labeling
it a cult. Our organization strives to promote world peace, always the peace, and
unity as one family under God. Uh-huh, the establishment felt threatened. Uh, yeah,
they did for good reason, you culty fucks. Large part of their website is
dedicated to donations. The minimum donation is $40 US defaulted to be a weekly donation.
They have a new podcast. If you need a new podcast, the UC has one. They promoted on their
website. It's called Why I Joined. You know, just stories from members about how great it is.
On the podcast page, the first sentence is, here are the, all caps, real stories
of the Unification Church.
Following that, they write, you've probably heard us call it a cult.
Some people say we're brainwashed.
Is that even a legit thing?
But despite that, this movement has grown all over the world, attracting people from
across cultures, nationalities, and races.
Was it just people falling for a charismatic leader?
Or is there something more?
Listen in with us as we hear from people from all walks of life share their spiritual journeys and tell us why I joined. The tone of their
entire website is very defensive. A lot of effort trying to persuade readers
that they're not a cult. We're not a cult! Stop it! Which is exactly what a cult would do.
Yeah brainwashing is a real thing. You guys know that. I looked their podcast up
on Apple Podcasts since people can write, reviews there. Only one person has left to review so far.
One star has a subject line of, feels like a cult.
And then it states, they don't go into the labor trafficking or poverty faced by their
members.
It was left January 16th of this year.
According to the most recent articles I can find, ex-members are currently worried that
the church facing more and more bad press and accusations of being a cult being targeted by the government in
Japan the country that has long been its cash cow might force the cult or push
the cult into doing something drastic you know they might get real doomsday
one ex-member referenced the people's temple mass murder and suicide in
Jonestown and now that we are caught up to the present with these shitbags let's
bounce on out of this timeline.
Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely.
So, the Moonies. Definitely not your average cult story, right? You've covered so many cults here that, you know, by now they seem to follow a pretty
specific pattern with a few variations, especially cults of the conservative Christian variety.
There's a heavy focus on a quickly approaching doomsday event.
You know, a compound of some sort where the leader lives with the majority of his followers.
Once the prophesied doomsday begins to draw near with a small cadre of core followers
having long cut off all their social ties and sold off their belongings,
this leader begins to emasculate the male followers,
manipulate his female followers, leave some of them into servicing him sexually while he forces the other members to work for him day in day out,
providing him with a life of comparative luxury while the rest suffer.
The Moonies certainly exhibited some elements of this, but on a scale that's almost unimaginable. The compound in the woods would actually be many, many palatial estates,
beautiful mansions, New York, South Korea, high-rise Manhattan buildings. The preacher
who prophesied the end of the world, well, doesn't in this cult, actually. Sun Moon, not a doomsday,
false prophet. He was smarter than that. He was a false prophet, but he didn't make the mistake of adding a ticking clock
to his celestial plans.
He didn't make it a secret
that he wanted to take over and rule the world,
but he also didn't give himself a time limit to do that.
Not really, he just said he would do it.
And then, you know, he died and he didn't do it,
but what does he care at that point?
And with all his talk of his son being able to bounce back
and forth between the physical and spiritual worlds,
you know, he paved the path for his family to be able to say the same about him.
They could have a fighting chance of keeping his grift going after he died.
Also, since his cult's focus was on remaking the world according to Moon's vision and not needing to wait for Jesus's return to Earth,
to have Jesus fixing since Sun, young Moon claimed to be Jesus already returned to Earth, more powerful Jesus even,
Moon opened the door for his returned to Earth, more powerful Jesus even.
Moon opened the door for his cult to get real industrious, make a ton of money.
They didn't have to sell all their shit and just kind of wait somewhere.
If the Unification Church was going to change the entire world, convert followers in every
single nation, every corner of the Earth, they would need a lot of money.
They need billions.
They'd need not to just rely on donations, but instead to get entrepreneurial.
Funnel donations into lots of profitable business ventures and into politics. Make powerful friends. Create profitable enterprises all around the world.
Make enough money to be able to grease enough palms to push the righteous agenda on every citizen
of every nation of the world. Moon by making no secret of his cults, you know, lofty plans for
world domination, well he made it okay for him and his family to openly live in opulence. That was
good for his cause. good for his brand.
He wasn't pretending to be some pious prophet who needed to live humbly and await the return
of an angry god.
No, he was a fucking king who was already a god.
He needed an army to build a righteous empire.
And armies are expensive.
I gotta say, Sun Young Moon ran a much better grift than just about any cult leader I can think of.
I mean not even L. Ron Hubbard of Scientology got to enjoy the type of wealth Sun Moon did.
When L. Ron died in 1986 he was worth around 26 million dollars and that is a lot.
But Sun Young Moon? Oh my god according to media speculation at the time of his death in 2012?
Worth somewhere between 900 million and a billion dollars.
For a guy who started with nothing. A dude living in a fucking shack with a cardboard roof worth somewhere between 900 million and a billion dollars.
For a guy who started with nothing, a dude living in a fucking shack with a cardboard
roof when he kicked off his cult, I mean, he became fabulously wealthy.
How he did that, you know, disgusting, just like it always is with these assholes.
You know, he first preyed on fellow Koreans already suffering under Japanese imperialism,
then later preyed on Japanese guilt, then rode a wave of the counterculture of the 1970s in America to try and gain followers, declaring
himself and his wife the true parents, he argued, for an interpretation of the Bible
that placed him in the Messiah role, coming to earth to establish the first sinless lineage
since Eve ate that apple, or as he put it, fuck the devil, and as whole, you have to
get married to go to heaven and I have to marry you.
Man, what a genius, controlling, cult leader move.
What a great way to control your congregation.
You choose all of your followers, romantic partners.
And now the very core of their existence
has been guided by you.
If they renounce you,
they also have to perhaps renounce their own marriage.
A marriage that has likely produced many children.
They have to admit that even their family is a lie. They have to renounce their whole life. That gives them a lot of incentive psychologically
to stay in his cult. To keep believing that letting him control their lives so deeply
was the right call. And the more marriages he creates, the more kids his followers have,
the more moonies there will be to grow up, pay him tithes, do missionary work, start new businesses,
solicit donations, etc, etc, etc brilliant
And while all this was going on he was also according to the rumors of former followers
Fucking the shit out of a lot of followers. I had a lot of young female members
You got to get rich live a long time have decades of cult sex
As far as the cult game goes he kind of won. I mean he spent some time in jail here and there but overall he did it
He kind of won. I mean, he spent some time in jail here and there,
but overall he did it.
He pulled his shit off.
Darkly impressive, disgusting, deplorable, disturbing,
but darkly impressive.
Dude had so much control over his cult,
even put up with him sending a lunatic from Zimbabwe.
That's one of my favorite things so far
that we've ever talked about.
Send this dude around the world
and kicking the shit out of his most devoted followers mission
for a year and change. So what now with the Moonies? Well I imagine
they're on their last legs. None of his children splinter organizations, other
than one I'll talk about in the takeaways seem to be growing, but even that one I
feel like is gonna have limited growth. And from what I can tell online, reading
the musings of former members and critics of Moon, the new Unification
Church led by his widow, the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. It's dying. She doesn't have the same charisma. Most members are
elderly. The majority of the younger members have left without Moon's leadership. The current church
seems pretty lost, paranoid, defensive. And at least in Japan, their main source of income,
they're under attack. They may be on the hook for hundreds of millions in legal fees over there.
The government wants to strip them of their religious status, right?
All those lawsuits.
You know, do they even have hundreds of millions of dollars anymore?
Who knows?
Some sources say that they're going broke.
They no longer own the New Yorker Hotel.
They've sold all their palatial estates in Tarrytown, New York.
They've sold most of their real estate and businesses in the Washington, D.C. area.
That active member tithings have apparently dwindled
down in the US to now be coming in from less than a thousand people.
Will we witness the end of the moonies in our lifetime, or will they just be driven
further underground into smaller and smaller splinter groups to take on new lives, hang
on in the shadows, and perpetuate more cult abuse on more spiritual seekers?
And most importantly, where the fuck is Black Young Jin right now?
And what the hell is he up to?
Number 1.
Sun Moon was born January 6, 1920, in a remote village in Korea, one where your bloodline
determined everything.
In spite of that, he would rise to enormous heights surviving being imprisoned in both
Japan and North Korea,
before he began his ministry out of a sad little dirt hut in Seoul.
Number 2. Sun Moon advocated for an elaborate, many would say completely baseless, reinterpretation of the Bible.
In his interpretation, he was the true Father, come to earth with the express purpose of wedding the true Mother and producing the first sinless people.
He would then continue to produce so-called sinless people by staging elaborate matching and blessing ceremonies in which he gave someone their
heavenly partner who would allow them to access eternal life. Number three, holy shit did the
Unification Church make so much money. Billions. No one even knows how many billions they've made,
but even one billion will be beyond impressive. Whether it was through legitimate businesses,
stuff sold on the side of the road, trinkets auctioned to get people's relatives out of hell, or donations, Sun Moon
lived the high life off of all his followers' contributions and his own unscrupulous business
savvy. Number four. By info. February 28th 2018 another
unification movement offshoot I mentioned. Sanctuary Church held a special
blessing ceremony. Oh they continue. This church led by Hyungyeong-Jin Moon, AKA Sean Moon who we met earlier,
also known as Rod of Iron Ministries,
and it's even more insane than his dad's church.
As the invitation noted for this blessing ceremony,
the couples were asked to bring the accoutrements
of the nation of Chun-Wu-Guk,
the so-called nation of cosmic peace and unity,
along with crowns.
Members also asked to bring a rod of iron,
which was designated by Sean Moon as the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, or equivalents, such
as an AK, representing both the intent and the ability to defend one's family, community,
and new spiritual nation of Chinon Gok.
Couples unable to purchase and legally transport a rod of iron because of laws, borrowing the
purchase of such weapons or other reasons,
were invited to purchase a $700 gift certificate from a gun store as evidence of
their intent to purchase a rod of iron in the future. To not do so,
if one is legally and personally able,
the announcement says would be a sign of great disrespect to the second
King of Chunluguk and to true father himself.
As the parable of the 10 virgins spoken of in Matthew 25 verses 1 through 13 explains,
believers should be prepared internally and externally to receive the grace of the bridegroom's
arrival so they can be welcomed into the wedding banquet.
Okay, that's, I don't know how you get AR-15 out of that verse, but all right.
Another moon is still hoping to take over the world.
This time he's arming his followers with the most powerful legal arms on the market to do so.
If any of the splinter groups rise to any real power, it'll be this one. But I hope not.
Sean publicly denounced his mom in 2015 for allegedly manipulating his dad's religious texts.
He also, check this out, conducted an arranged marriage for his dad's spirit.
He divorced his dead dad from his living mom and remarried her to some random woman named
Hsuan-Chil Kang. He's using his dad's bullshit against his mom. I love it.
Sean's church recently bought a 40-acre property in central Texas, a 130-acre property in eastern
Tennessee. There's already concerns from people that it's going to be some kind of Waco compound situation in one of these places.
Sean said the land will be developed into spiritual retreat centers as well as an agricultural farm to promote self-reliance
amongst his congregation.
Sounds like a compound.
Also, like a lot of his siblings, Sean has dabbled in music. He's the worst one. So great, but he's the most prolific right now.
He's the worst one. So great, but he's the most prolific right now. He's a rapper.
He raps under the name of King Bullethead. I'm not even kidding. He had a channel on YouTube,
but it was taken down due to the violent and aggressively homophobic rhetoric he uses. But
people keep throwing his tracks back up on YouTube. This one doesn't seem to be too violent. It's shitty.
You can find a lot of them on Rumble as well. They are,
they're something. This is a track called Crowned. In the video, he's wearing a golden crown
made of gold-plated bullets. Son and Holy Spirit, come on, yeah Shout out to Black Young Jin
I'm crowned by Jesse, chosen by Christ to be his heir
He put the pressure, creating the diamonds in me like a trillionaire
I got a queen, I chose her, he struck me like a flare
Miss oncoming traffic, got me burning bright in the air
Flight, like Jordan in slow-mort, the free-throw line
Like a chiropractor cracking my neck, real lining my spine
Walk straight and narrow, the path to hell gon' be why gonna let it light in like the red in your eyes
Cuz we gotta move by faith
I'm not moved by sight gotta pick fights with the devil like I'm Dana white
I'm gonna take to the air with my will but like I'm Orville right gotta put the rear side of my post a line of my
Sights cuz I'm chosen I take aim a seat I'm moving a snake moving on the next devil as I drag him left and I swipe It's straight off the map the declination apply his true notes my target. I shoot my ass
Fucking terrible. Oh Oh my god, it's so bad.
You can, he put the lyrics on the video.
So many misspellings, like even when he talks about Jordan, he doesn't even know how to
spell Michael Jordan's last name.
God, but he's rich.
That's cool.
Okay.
Yeah, it would suck if he takes over the world.
It would be terrible for us to be forced to listen to that insane bullshit.
Time Suck! Top 5 Takeaways!
The Moonies have been sucked! What a story.
So much entertainment. I knew nothing about them.
Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for the help in making Time Suck, such as Queen of Bad Magic Lindsay Cummins,
having to listen to so much of this at home the past few days because I won't
shut the fuck up about it. Thanks to Logan Keith recording this episode
designing merch for the store at badmagicproductions.com. Thanks to
Sophie Evans once again for the initial Moony's research. She actually suggested
this topic I think. Maybe I did. Maybe I did. Maybe she did. But thanks. Also
thanks to the all-seen-eyes moderating the Cult of Curious private Facebook page Mod Squad making sure Discord keeps running smooth.
Everyone over on the Time Suck subreddit and Bad Magic subreddits. And now let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker updates.
Our first update comes in with the subject line of Kenneth McDuff Runnin' sent in by
hot hard Texas father daddy Justin Milenex.
Dear Triple M Master Sucker, Justin writes, I just finished the Broomstick Killer episode
and had to call my aunt immediately.
I was born in Hearn, Texas and my great aunt and uncle lived in Rosebud for most of their
adult lives.
If you don't remember, Rosebud is where Kenny grew up. When I talked to my aunt I asked if she knew anything
about Kenny McDuff and she was like, oh yeah, your great uncle Harvey had some issues with him.
Apparently everyone in town knew Kenny was trouble and did not want him around. One day my great
uncle was tending to his goats. He was raising in town, caught Kenny hanging around his place,
loitering so he told him to get on that he's not welcome around his property.
Kenny ended up walking off after exchanging some real choice words.
The next morning my great uncle wakes up all of his goats have been shot and killed.
They didn't have any concrete evidence to press charges, but they knew Kenny did it.
Jesus. Also a little bit of a possible connection to the Macduff's ability to pay off those
parole board members. My aunt told me that my great aunt and great uncle owned the only laundromat
in Rosebud, my god, the Rosebud laundromat for several years. They bought it from Macduff's,
at one point thus giving them liquid cash to use for who knows what. Anyways, hopefully my family
didn't have anything to do with baby Kenny Macbutt Boy getting out of prison. Sorry, not sorry for the length of
the email. I'm an athletic trainer in Texas. I listen to Time Suck, Scared to Death and Nightmare
Fuel while heading home from work every day. If you read this, please give my awesome wife, Nikki,
a shout out for taking care of our new baby every single day. Also, if you could shout out my sister
in law, Megan, she loves Time Suck. I was able to get her to waste her time listening to the dick bird suck last month.
She was not happy with me.
Three out of five stars wouldn't change a thing, Justin.
Justin, what a cool update, man.
Fucking Kenny.
What a bastard.
Got into an argument, came back that night, executed a bunch of goats.
That dude was a true psychopath.
And that is crazy that your family ended up buying pistol-packing Mom and McDuff's laundrom That dude was a true psychopath. And that is crazy
that your family ended up buying pistol pack and Molly McDuff's laundromat. What
a small world. Thank you Nikki for all you do as a mom. Thank you Megan for
putting up with my nonsense. Aw dick turd. Glad that guy's dead too right? Next up
Amali and Michael Jackson updates. Sent in by known drug abuser, obvious degenerate Matthew Walker.
With the subject line of Papa Molly I'm sweating for real.
This junkie writes, hi master sucker. Apologies in advance for the long email,
but after listening to the most recent Michael Jackson episode, I wanted to write in about my
first time trying Molly. Huge congratulations to everyone at Bad Magic for the 400th episode as
well. But first though, I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you. I'm almost
into my sixth year of PhD studies. That is awesome. Almost done maybe. And I can truly
never describe how important it has been for me to have Time Suck, Scared to Death, and
All Things Bad Magic in my ear orifices these last few years. Through all the ups and downs,
in many ways, Time Suck has always felt like a kindred companion, a quest for knowledge, trying new things,
always striving to be better than the day before,
all in the hopes of improving this rock
or the lives of those around us, even for a moment.
So again, thank you.
Well, thank you for the kind words.
But enough of the sappy stuff.
On to the story of when I get high with my friends.
When I was in college, me and a buddy of mine
were wildly into EDM music.
Insert stereotypical raver picture here.
Oh, I'm picturing you guys having like bleach, spiky hair, fucking hemp, choker necklace. Just like
really I don't know, really like baggy like teeth, graphic teeth and stuff. We would
often go to shows around the campus. The first chance we got, one summer we
decided to ball out, go to Chicago to catch a show at the Aragon theater. It
was a super convenient place because he had my friend had family in the area. We could stay with them before and after the show.
Mind you prior to this I had never done Molly before but my friend had so when
he mentioned he would bring some with him for us to do before going to the
show I was ecstatic. I'd always wanted to try it out but never had the chance.
Excuse me. Q us getting ready for the show throwing back a couple of beers and
then the Molly comes out. Imagine my surprise when my friend starts cutting up lines and insisting the only way to do it is
to snort it. Another thing I had never done. Hey I haven't done that. So we
bumped a line or two and continued hanging before the show but before
heading out I still wasn't feeling anything. Honestly didn't know any better.
So thinking I was hot shit I decided to do a couple more just to be safe. Oh here
we go. We get to the Aragon theater start packing in like sardines. The music starts. It's probably
like three, four songs into the opening act when I realize, god damn, I'm higher than shit.
Making things worse between the hordes of people, lack of AC, and just general lack of available
water, I start sweating like crazy. Mm-hmm. That's why you have to be careful. I felt like all the
moisture was trying to evacuate my body at the same time. Meanwhile, I'm trying to just vibe with the music, but I can't silence the intrusive thought that
all of the sweat is pooling in my ass crack like it was the goddamn carniobluvial event in my pants.
So my brain blast idea in the moment is to periodically, maybe every two to three minutes,
covertly wipe the back of my pants to check for swamp ass. So clever, right?
This goes on for a solid hour before I feel eyes on me.
I look to my left and there is a solid group of five people staring at me in shock.
Based on the reaction, I can only assume they've been watching me for the majority of the night
before I caught their gaze.
In fairness to them, I get it.
I'd be shocked too if I had to continually watch a dilated doe-eyed man with pursed dry
lips continually massage his ass crack for an hour.
At any rate, with my high mind that I decide in that moment I need to leave,
I find my friend and somehow manage to describe the situation we head out.
I wish I could say the story ends there, but alas, there's still a little more.
To my great pleasure, sarcasm, my friend's preconceived exit strategy was to have
his mom pick us up from the show. As if the night couldn't get any worse. We hop into the minivan,
me in the middle seat, my friend riding shotgun and we hit the road. To my horror, my friend's
mom tries to talk to me and is asking me lots of questions about the show. I'm not sure what point
I realize this, but either from the dehydration or being too stupid high, I discover I'm incapable
of forming complete sentences. Yeah, that's probably because you're high. And I start to respond to her like I
just learned English. This frightens her, which freaks me out. So she continues to
talk to me as I transition to simply staring at her in the rearview mirror
instead of actually answering her. Eventually as we all settle into a deep
feeling of unsettled anxiety, we just ride the rest of the way back in silence.
I have never had a more uncomfortable car ride in my entire life.
The next day was pretty uneventful, but I'm sure I definitely made a lasting first impression
on her.
I hope you enjoyed my tale.
Got a kick out of it as much as I do thinking in retrospect.
Apologies again for the long message.
Not to make it any longer, but if you happen to read this, I was hoping that maybe I could
shout out the 501C nonprofit I volunteer for. Open Heart Magic. As hospital magicians, we bring magic to sick children in needs,
in the hope of empowering them in some of the most challenging moments of their lives.
I would have been happy to share some of the stories or I would be happy to share some stories
I have if interested. I'm running the Chicago Marathon this fall and I'm fundraising money by,
excuse me, and I'm fundraising money for Open Heart Magic so any support would be absolutely appreciated. Much love. Three out of five stars. Would not change a thing. Matt.
Oh, Matt. Well, how badly did your hand stink after all that nonsense? It sounds like you did
a lot of ass-stinking. Hopefully it was all on the outside of the pants. How many people who came into
contact with you that night got pink eye?
Now it's a very funny story.
Yeah.
So much sweat.
So much sweat.
Thank you for raising money for open heart, magic, you beautiful best.
Yeah.
Send us in some stories.
That is wonderful.
Yeah.
You can include a link for donations.
Also, please everyone using any illegal drugs.
Fentanyl overdoses seem to be on the rise.
I know several people who have lost loved ones recently to overdoses on fentanyl because
they didn't know the shit that they were taking was laced with fentanyl.
Actually some friends of mine recently got some molly that had fentanyl laced into it,
which is so stupid.
Get fentanyl test strips, test fucking everything.
You can get them on Amazon, lots of places.
Test shrooms, LSD, Mali, anything can have it.
Have fun but be safe.
And now for a pretty fucking heavy but also beautiful message from extremely resilient
sucker Preston Potter.
I hope my allergies can stay under control for this one.
Writing in with the subject line of sucking once again.
Hey Dan and your amazing team.
My name is Potter.
At least outside everyone knows me.
Let's start by saying that I've been listening since late 2019.
After overhearing a coworker listening to Suck 157 on Mormonism, that's when I started
listening, born and raised in Utah, I was intrigued by what I heard.
I'm not religious in any particular way.
More so the thought that mankind doesn't know enough to say one religion is more right than
another is for me, but needless to say my brain was thirsty for more.
I spent the next year and a half or so sucking up as much knowledge as I could,
trying to catch up to the library and focusing on the topics I found most interesting,
even living some of that STD life.
However, that slowed down a lot in early 2021. I found out my wife at 10 years and mother of my four boys was sick.
She was diagnosed with stage four cancer.
She had an intercolon and liver.
She's only 31.
My God.
Throughout the next year,
I was pretty preoccupied, but still tried to catch episodes when I could manage.
Apologize, because this will get rough. My wife had been through one of the roughest
chemo treatments her doctor had ever given a patient, in the hopes that her youth would
help her body deal with it. Then had some radiation treatment and just started another round of chemo,
but it wasn't looking good. She had been through weeks of inpatient care at the Huntsman Center, but still she was deteriorating fast. Then around the 1st
of May 2022, I found myself listening to Suck 288, Dr. Death, and The Right to Die. It was right
before we took our last drive to the Huntsman, so pretty much the worst time to listen to it.
I remember sitting there wondering if optional suicide was there, would she choose it? Seeing
my soulmate become a ghost of her old self and all the pain she had to go through,
wishing there was a way to help her, but also knowing that every ounce of her wanted to
live for her boys.
I could easily see how some people would have wanted to choose a quicker option.
After her second day, I had to make a call.
She had been in and out of consciousness for those two days.
It was being heavily sedated.
Late that night, she had her last moment of awareness.
She didn't speak. I don't think she could, but her expression and the fear and pain in her eyes said enough.
I told them to stop her longing treatment, make sure she didn't wake up again.
Whew. It was the worst and hardest decision I've ever had to make. And after all that,
her body fought for another nine days. The cancer had begun to show on the outside of her body.
Then on May 12th, 2022, she was gone.
After that, I couldn't bring myself to listen to the next episode. I was stuck with thoughts of
whether I could have done more for her. And for a while, I wasn't ready to move on. But coming up
on the two-year mark, I recently jumped back on the suckwagon. And come to find out, it brings
me more comfort than I thought it would. So thank you for taking the time to be a part of so many
lives for bringing knowledge, humor, and comfort to us earthly meat sacks. If this is too
long that's too bad. I need you to express this. And if you read this on air
please give a shout out to Jordan, Cash and Fatima. These three did so much to
help me through that time. Keep leading us through this knowledge-filled
universe. Master Sucker, I'll be looking for a reason to give you those last two
stars. Potter. Whoo Potter that's some some heavy heavy shit. Good on you for doing whatever you
could to ease her pain. Sometimes I mean that is all we can do. You know who would
want to live in that kind of agony knowing the suffering isn't gonna bring
you back to health? I wouldn't. Linz and I have had a lot of
conversations about scenarios like this and we both have stated, please,
do not make me suffer needlessly. Just let me go. I hope your lady's out there waiting
for you, dude. I hope she's feeling nothing but bliss now. Maybe she's already back. Maybe
she's in the spring blooms and the warm breeze and the beautiful bird that looks into your
window. I hope she's not somewhere having to take unification church classes, top-eye
new improved sun, young moon Jesus. But for real, I don't know what comes next. I don't think anybody's does for sure, but
I don't think we end when our heart stops. Anyway, Jordan, Cash, Fatima,
Prejudice Man, give him community and peace. Enjoy those four kiddos, Potter, man.
Glad you're back and Hail Nimrod. And finally, from Brian Ashley, a message of
an interesting death penalty perspective for Kenny McDuff.
Brian writes, hey guys, fuck that clown. Sorry for the length of the email. Love Brian.
Just kidding about the length part, not the fuck the clown part.
Hey guys, now I'm not usually in favor of the death penalty because it really seems like our justice system gets it wrong quite a bit
and innocent people have in the past been wrongly executed and that is absolutely inexcusable.
However, when it comes to people like Kenneth McDouchnutz McDuff and those like him, I'm
in the same boat as you.
There was so much evidence that he was a monster who had zero intention of ever slowing down
his heinous fuckery, let alone stopping or being rehabilitated.
And those types of people don't deserve to share the same planet with the rest of us.
But I don't think that decision should ever be put in the hands of a jury.
I think there should be a few safeguards and steps to go through prior to handing down a sentence of death.
First and foremost, the family of the victim should be asked if they think the perpetrator should be executed. If the answer is yes,
then it should be moved to a panel of judges who go over the evidence and decide if there's enough to warrant an execution.
I know this is similar to the mandatory appeals process that death penalty cases go through,
but I think this group should be neither pro nor against the death penalty. Just a group of the
best judges who go back to every detail of the case, make sure there's no reasonable doubt.
Once the person has officially sensed, it's up the rope within the week.
None of this spending years on death row going through appeal after costly appeal.
One roll, double or nothing, and this is saved for the worst of the worst anyway so let's get this show on the road. Now for the other side
of the coin I understand that the argument that the death penalty isn't a
deterrent and it's an emotional decision and I actually agree and I'm fine with
it. We should be emotional when some sick fuck rapes a teenage girl then murders
her in the most brutal way possible. We should be angry that those types of people get to go on living their lives.
I agree. And sometimes thriving in prison when they deserve to be thrown into a fucking woodchipper feet first.
Anywho, that's my thoughts. And I really am sorry for the length of the email this time.
Love, potential psychopath against dirtbags, Brian.
Brian, I like this. Yes, there should be some kind of special circumstance law for the worst
of the worst like Kenny Macduff. And I like your idea of a panel of judges reviewing things, the
family being involved, and then a speedy execution if the panel mirrors the jury's initial decision.
I think you've done it! You've solved the death penalty dilemma, at least for me.
Nimrod is pleased, especially with your wood chipper reference.
Thank you for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast.
Scared to death time suck each week. Short sucks nightmare fuel on time suck and scared
to death podcast feeds some weeks. And I'm going to share the same message as yesterday.
Don't start telling people that you're new and improved Jesus this week. on Time Suck and Scared of the Podcast feeds some weeks. And I'm gonna share the same message as yesterday.
Don't start telling people that you're new
and improved Jesus this week.
Don't make people think they can't get into heaven
unless you marry them to a stranger
and keep an eye out for Black Young Jen and keep on sucking.
Tide of the Suck.
And Magic Productions. In addition to Black Young Jin, I also keep thinking about OG Jesus up in heaven with his elderly Korean wife from yesterday's episode.
He was doing fine.
He was doing great as a bachelor up there.
Just loving his life.
Just loving being part of the Trinity. Omnipotent, immortal. He's fucking ripped.
He's got great abs. Free to do as he pleases. But now he's kind of depressed. He's stuck in
an arranged marriage with a hundred-year-old woman named Jong-Yong Suk or something. You know,
just uh, I just picture him like, you know, hiding somewhere from her. His dad approaches him.
hiding somewhere from her dad approaches him Jesus are you okay my son why are you hiding behind this golden pillar hey dad have you seen a jungle sook I can't
seem to shake her I just don't understand how she can be so slow
shoving around with a walker but also impossible to get away from.
Why would you want to hide from your wife, son?
Is she cruel to you?
No, no, of course not, dad.
No one's cruel here, you know that.
She just, she's clingy.
She's always trying to feed me, to fatten me up.
Well, I do love ramen and fried chicken. I hate kimchi. She's also constantly talking about lotions and creams and eye masks and all these skin
care regiments and anti-aging stuff.
She always wants me to put on more lotion on my face so I won't get wrinkles, to wear
a visor, stay out of the sun.
I keep trying to explain to her that I'm a god.
We're in heaven.
We don't have to worry about that stuff, but
she just won't listen.
I'm so sorry, son. Let's talk more about this later. I have to run right now.
Where do you have to go, father?
I have to go to another unification class.
It starts in five minutes in the Moses auditorium Sun young moon said if I skip again, I won't get to go to the Chris Cornell Stevie Ray Vaughn concert tonight in the Ezekiel amphitheater
Okay, dad
Gosh dang
Not gonna lie miss the good old days up here in heaven before the moonies showed up
Shoot here comes Jane Young sook. I gotta run before she slathers up my face again