Sun Myung Moon
Sun Myung Moon, (1920- ). South Korean businessman and religious leader, founder of the Unification Church. Moon, a millionaire who established his for-tune by making and selling weapons in the Korean War, founded the Unification Church in 1954. The sect’s doctrines include a fanatical opposition to the spread of ‘world communism’ and a belief in Moon as the second Messiah. The Church spread to the US in the early 1960s and is now active in many parts of the world, with some four million adherents. It has been accused of brainwashing its followers (the so-called `Moonies’) and of using them as virtual slave labour. In 1982 Moon, who has lived in the US since the early 1970s, was sentenced to 18 months in jail for conspiracy to evade taxes.
