Moon’s followers poured a pot of urine and feces on the head of a Seoul University Professor of Religion.

Washington Post February 15, 1974



… Mr. Moon himself is an enigma – the central personality in a constellation of related religious, financial and political enterprises that operate on a world-wide scale. [His 1974 calling card shown above.]

Among his constituency of true believers many see him as the Messiah returned to complete his work. Mr. Moon claims no divine status – he does not deny it either – but preaches that Christ will be born again in Korea in, our time. The theme is a pervasive one in the unorthodox Korean Christian cults from which Mr. Moon’s own doctrine sprang.

The established, mainline Christian churches both in the United States and Korea generally take a less admiring view. In these ecclesiastical circles Mr. Moon is regarded as a religious quack, a Korean-style Elmer Gantry who enjoys a warm and privileged relationship with the military-backed dictatorship headed by President Park.

Park has been jailing Christian clergymen in Korea in reprisal for the church’s opposition to his regime’s repressive policies. Unlike most of his countrymen, Moon and his principal supporters enjoy unrestricted travel and exchange privileges from the Park government.

In Seoul this week, General Secretary Kim Kwan Suk of the Korean National Council of Churches told Washington Post correspondent Don Oberdorfer that Mr. Moon’s religion “is not a church. It is a cult … a new sect which has been undermining the established church.”

During a row between the major church organizations and the Uniﬁcation group in 1968 a group of Moon’s followers – in a widely publicized incident – poured a pot of urine and feces on the head of a Seoul University Professor of Religion [Samuel Shahoon Shin].

… The secrets of Mr. Moon’s personal finances are inscribed in separate, private books and apparently are unknown even to the highest officials of his church. His net worth has been widely reported to be in the range of $15 million [in 1974], although he was ﬂat broke when he began proselytizing his vision in postwar Korea.



At one point in the earlier days of the church Moon was arrested on a morals charge – the date was July 4, 1955 – and a group of professorial and student followers were expelled from Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul. The church was a subject of controversy and scandalous rumors. …

A 1955 cartoon about Moon and the UC sex scandal:

MS [Moon Sun-myung] of the Unification Church [as he kicks a man out]:

“Can’t you read the sign! It says ‘Female College Students Welcome’ … Eek”

The sign above the door says HSA-UWC and Unification Church, 統一敎会.

◇統一敎會에메스◇ = ◇ MS of the Unification Church ◇

간판을 보고믈어와! 女大生歡迎인데…익크

京郷漫評 Kyunghyang newspaper. The cartoon was published on July 6, 1955, two days after Moon’s arrest on morals charges because of complaints from Ewha Woman’s University.

The strict standard of celibacy that now prevails for the vast majority of Uniﬁcation Church members stands in sharp contrast to the reputation of the Moon religion in Korea during the mid-1950s. The controversy … centered on widespread rumors – given prominent attention in the Korean press – of bizarre sexual initiation rites into the church. The initiatory ritual was reportedly designed to purge impurities of blood that all men and women inherited from Adam and Eve, at least according to the doctrine. (Moon was released after three months. His supporters maintain that he was found innocent of the morals charges placed against him. Other Korean sources said he was freed because of illness. The record is not clear.)

Link to this Washington Post article

In 1955, Moon admitted he had falsified his age to dodge the draft. Who made his “Certificate of Innocence”?

Moon 1955 sex scandal at Ewha Womans University in the headlines

Did Moon followers use money from prostitution to get him out of jail when he was charged with adultery?

“There were many sexually abused women. Moon arrested.”

Chicago Tribune Exposes Moon’s Sexual Rituals