Onward Moonie Soldiers -- The Sons of Korean Cult Leader Sun Myung Moon

Nothing challenges a cult — or a new religious movement — like the death of its founder and the succession battles that inevitably follow.

Korean sect leader Sun Myung Moon and his Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity taught that Jesus Christ failed in his earthly mission because he did not have children. As the new world messiah, Moon and his wife would become the “True Parents” and bless the marriages of true believers to purify the bloodline of original sin.

So one would assume that the Moons’ own children would be pretty damn pure.

That myth began to crumble in 1998 when Moon’s former daughter-in-law, Nansook Hong, published a tell-all memoir about her turbulent 14-year marriage with the self-proclaimed messiah’s eldest son, Hyo Jin Moon, who died of a heart attack in 2008.

Entitled In the Shadow of the Moons, the ex-wife accused the onetime heir to Moon’s spiritual and political legacy of alcoholism, cocaine abuse, wife beating and cavorting with prostitutes.

Then, in October 1999, one of Moon’s other sons, Phillip Youngjin Moon, 21, committed suicide (according to the Washoe County coroner) by jumping from a 17th-story balcony at the Harrah’s hotel in Reno.

So much for the pure bloodline theory.

But it almost didn’t matter. By the turn of the millennium, the Moon organization had grown into a wealthy and politically connected global empire. It was — and continues to be — especially powerful in Japan, Korea, Uruguay and the United States, where it still publishes the Washington Times, a daily newspaper that continues a decades-long tradition of backing Republican Party politicians.

Sun Myung Moon, born in North Korea in 1920, died in 2012. His religious and political rise during the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s was closely tied to his fierce anti-Communism. In the 1970’s, the U.S. Congress “Koreagate” investigation linked Moon operatives to the South Korea CIA and their common interests on the world stage.

Moon — who had a strange obsession with the purity of his and his followers bloodlines — fathered fourteen, fifteen or sixteen known children, depending on whether or not you only count those born to his two legal wives. Moon and his second wife, Hak Ja Han, married in 1960. She is now 83 years old and is considered to be the spiritual leader of the main branch of the Unification Church.

Their youngest son, Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, was born in 1979. He was once his father’s designated heir as the international president of the Unification Church, but he split off from his mother and co-founded the Pennsylvania-based World Peace and Unification Sanctuary Church, better known as Rod of Iron Ministries.

This sect is infamous for exalting AR-15 rifles in its ceremonies as a symbol of the “rod of iron.” He and members of his church have ties to former Trump aide Michael Flynn and were reportedly involved in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Check out this VICE documentary to get a flavor of this Moonie sect.

Sean Moon’s brother, Kook-jim “Justin” Moon, born in 1970, is the co-founder of Rod of Iron and runs Kahr Arms, an American firearms manufacturer. They have gotten media attention for organized militia trainings in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and (notably) Waco, Texas.

Recent “Freedom Festivals” run by Sean and Justin Moon’s church in the Poconos region of Pennsylvania have featured addresses by Flynn and another Trump confidant, Steve Bannon. Flynn, who briefly served as National Security Advisor under President Trump in 2017, is scheduled to speak next month at the annual Freedom Festival gathering, along with a line-up of Christian right pastors and gun rights advocates. Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period. He later tried to withdraw that guilty plea. The Justice Department under Trump moved to drop the case in 2020, and a federal judge was weighing that motion when Trump issued Flynn a full pardon.

Meanwhile, it’s been a rocky couple of years for the Moonies abroad. In Japan, outrage over the church’s ties to prominent politicians — including its connection to the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — led a Tokyo court to order the dissolution of the Unification Church’s status as a religious corporation. Then, last year in South Korea, Hak Ja Han herself was arrested on bribery charges involving links to the former first lady there, Kim Keon Hee.

There has also been renewed media interest in the story of Sam Park, who says he is the illegitimate son of the Korean messiah and an early Moon devotee, Choi Soon-wha, also known as Annie Choi. His true parentage was concealed in 1966 when Moon allegedly directed his mistress to conceal the pregnancy and hand the child over to be raised by the family of his deputy, Bo Hi Pak. This son — who was also involved in the messy succession battle following Moon’s death in 2012 — was the subject of a 2013 article in Mother Jones magazine. Park, now 60 years old, recounts his saga in a 2025 documentary film, “The Moonies — Married to the Cult.”

Today, the Moon legacy is best seen in its affiliated global business interests. These include the Tongil Group in South Korea, which produces ginseng products, building materials and hardware for the South Korean military. True World Foods remains a major U.S. seafood distribution company and one of the country’s largest sushi-grade fish suppliers. The Washington Times, the conservative U.S. newspaper Moon founded in 1982, remains tied to the sect and actively supports President Trump.

Trump has continued a long Republican Party tradition of cashing in on the Moonie’s largess.

In September 2021, Trump gave a virtual keynote address to a “Rally of Hope,” an event hosted by the Universal Peace Federation, an affiliate of the Unification Church. He specifically praised Hak Ja Han as “a tremendous person” for her “incredible work on behalf of peace all over the world.” Trump’s financial disclosures reportedly show he was paid a total of $2 million for speaking at two Universal Peace Federation World Summits, held in Bedminster, New Jersey, and Palm Beach, Florida.

Former Moonie Steven Hassan, now a widely quoted leader in the anti-cult movement, bristles when anyone — including me — calls the Unification Church “a new religious movement.”

“We shouldn’t call them ‘the Unification Church’ because they have so many front groups,” he said in an interview earlier this month. “But they’re all connected to one central place, so we call them ‘the Moon Organization.’ So much of their activity has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with politics and business.”

Hassan, who has written several books on the lure of cults and counsels people trying to leave them, sat down with me for an interview about his experience with the Moonies and his fears about the threat they continue to pose. That video will be featured in next week’s installment of Messiahs I Have Known, along with a look at one religion scholar’s sympathetic assessment of the Unification Church.