From Korea With Love

...But even their herculean effort at street peddling has its limits...

...Even marriage between believers is a difficult proposition, since new converts are generally expected to have been in the sect for three years and to have achieved a high state of spiritual “perfection” before they wed...

...Moon Over Moscow For whatever reason, the sect’s F‘r e e do m Leadership Foundation opposes detente and works to “roll back the Iron Curtain...

...While financial advisor Torrey claims that this technique, coupled with the contributions from fellow travelers, covered the rapidly expanding budgets of the last few years, he believes the sales now have about saturated the market...

...And Moon would have to be on good terms with the KCIA, or else he would not be permitted to operate his anti-communist school for Korean government employees...

...The attitude of some sectors of the American public and press has been just the opposite...

...They exist all over the country-chafing under an unhappy lifestyle and looking for meaningful purpose in life...

...His effort moved into high gear in October when he launched a 21-city speaking tour, and his followers believe he is now making great progress in winning American hearts and minds...

...According to Fefferman, Moon took money from his own personal funds to buy the numerous newspaper ads used to spread his Watergate gospel...

...According to both Lee and State Department sources, the Korean government is actively concerned about improving its dictatonal image in this country, and they do not doubt that its intelligence organization, the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), has on occasion secretly subsidized ostensibly private organizations for this purposejust as the American CIA has done for the last 26 years...

...The KCIA has in fact grown up in a skewed mirror image of its American big brother...

...Eking a Moonie is not easy: forbidden in practice, if not by formal rule, are smoking, alcohol, and drugs...

...But Satan won again, and, contrary to God’s intentions, Jesus was crucified...

...While these words may sound like they were written by Ron Ziegler, Fefferman insisted that the Moonie effort is non-partisan and in support of the presidency, not the man...

...A related group in which the FLF as a whole was a leading participant was the American Youth for a Just Peace, which supported Administration policy in Vietnam and sent delegations of American youths to counterweight (in theory) the work of the anti-war movement...

...Divine Principle is more explicit about the reasons for the sect’s fierce opposition to communism, giving an analysis strikingly similar to the views of the late John Foster Dulles...

...In any case, he doubted that the Family is “real conservative” and is sure, for example, that it would have opposed the coup d’etat against the Allende government in Chile...

...Additionally, they have launched a seven-day public fasting campaign on the Capitol steps as part of the larger 40-day Prayer and Fast, and have tried without too much apparent success to organize interfaith support in their behalf...

...It would be wrong to take the Family too seriously as a political movement, but the ease with which its young members have overlooked or accepted the group’s political aims may have its importance...

...Altogether, Torrey estimates that the Church is currently operating on about a $3million annual budget, not including the cost of supporting the 2,000 “core” members who must be housed, fed, and clothed-at a conservative estimate of another $5 million ayear...

...Shortly after 11:OO p. m., the President himself appeared to greet the Family...

...Jamie Canton, yet another earnest young man, who bears the title Assistant Director of the Media Team for the Watergate Crisis, describes, somewhat in awe: “We stopped the world for him and he passed between us...

...Stating that “Nixon is being made a scapegoat” and that “Watergate is tearing the country apart,” Fefferman concluded that the scandal “inhibits the ability of government to move forward on issues such as the Mideast and the energy crisis...

...If God decides to dismiss this choice of His, let us have faith that He will speak...

...If Jeff turns out like the others I met, he will be that way after a few more weeks with the Family...

...I disagree with our military,” says Jarmin...

...Torrey reports this saturation campaign netted close to $500,000...

...In listening to roughly 12 hours of religious lectures at a weekend workshop designed to attract new recruits, I heard no mention of any of the group’s political activities...

...Our anti-communism is religious, so until we convince people of a belief in God, it is to our disadvantage to politicize...

...From the Family’s point of view, tea houses are ideal-they make money and they bring customers into a congenial atmosphere where the general pleasantness thrown off by almost all Moonies (or at least the 15 or so I met) is a lure for potential converts...

...We try to avoid politics...

...Moon, for his part, is perfectly aware that “many” of his followers regard him as the messiah, and he has apparently never made any attempt to convince them that this is not the case...

...When pressed about any inconsistency between his vehement opposition to the Vietnam war and Moon’s strong support of it, Jeff declared in exasperation, “All I know is that this is my calling...

...None of the American Moonies would be likely to know of any intelligence relationship...

...For most, his political ideas had little or nothing to do with their conversion...

...In fact, the September 24 issue of the Rising Tide newspaper extols the “inevitable end” of the Allende presidency...

...He asserted he was still a radical but admitted he knew little about the politics of his new religion...

...However, as with other sectors of American life, the energy crisis has changed things-by making paraffin for candles scarcer and more expensiveand the Family has now switched from candles to hand-filled terrariums for their principal sales item...

...The Park Chung Hee regime of course welcomes the backing offered by Moon, but its interest in his movement may well extend into the murky world of espionage...

...The Unification Church-taxexempt organization that it is-has since assumed the media cost, which the sect ’s 2 5 -year-old financial advisor, William Torrey, says has amounted to $72,000...

...It worked closely with another Moonie group, the Committee for Responsible Dialogue, which up to a year or two ago attempted to “confront the negativity and falsehood of the radical left” on campus by organizing debates between leftist leaders and conservative spokesmen such as Senator William Brock and Representative Philip Crane...

...As incredible as it may seem, in 1972, when a down payment was needed for the $850,000 estate-headquarters in Tarrytown, every Family member in the entire country-then about 1,500-dropped all other work and went out to sell candles for 40 days straight...

...Before Secretary General Jarmin is brushed off as a youthful extremist, it should be noted that by Moonie standards he is nearly middle-aged...

...Already the Family is plantning to move into labor-intensive businesses like house painting and cleaning...

...It even suffered its own Bay of Pigs last year when it got caught, after the fact, kidnapping Kim Dae Jung, the losing candidate in the 197 1 presidential election, from a Tokyo hotel room and spiriting him to Korea...

...They knelt down when he came near and, according to Fefferman, “Mr...

...Nixon seemed moved...

...They teach our GIs,how to kill but don’t give them enough ideological training in the nature of communism...

...This is the “educational and training arm” of the FLF, and it offers programs, courses, and seminars to train students and other young people “in techniques to overcome Communism in the way it is working hardest in America-ideologically...

...3) Lobbying...

...At this time in history God has chosen Richard Nixon to be President of the United States of America...

...The office of the President of the United States is, therefore, sacred...

...Moon’s River of Riches While Moon’s American operation is largely limited to penny-ante capitalism, in Korea he is a virtual conglomerate holding, besides the tea business, air rifle, pharmaceutical, titanium, and still other companies...

...Once newcomers are fully converted, they are all-accepting about every aspect of the sect...

...According to Jarmin, the FLF is “already spending a lot of time on the Hill trying to influence” congressmen and senators on national security issues...

...For example, not only does the FLF bumper sticker urge the viewer to “Free Soviet Jewry” but also to “Free Russia from Communism...

...Even as other Korean religious leaders have turned increasingly against President Park Chung Hee’s authoritarian rule, Moon has stayed an enthusiastic backer of the regime...

...He says there are 5,000 FLF members, including the 2,000 hard-core Moonies whose names were automatically inscribed on the organization’s rolls when they joined the Unification Church...

...2) The Rising Tide...

...As Richard Halloran reported in The New York Times on August 20, 1973, one of KCIA’s bureaus “is in charge of internal propaganda and anti-communist indoctrination” in Korea, and Moon would not continue to hold the training franchise if he refused to cooperate...

...The standard complaint against movements like Guru Maharaj Ji’s is that they distract people from all political concerns...

...Moreover, the tea houses are an outlet for the ginseng tea which is exported from Korea by a company controlled by none other than Sun Myung Moon...

...Jarmin maintains that most of the FLF’s funds come from private donations and contributions from the parent Unification Church...

...Where does all this money come from...

...We have for some time been in an era of retreat from politics into personal fulfillment and spiritual concerns, somewhat like the 1950s retreat into career...

...From Anarchy to Apocalypse I saw what he meant when I talked to Jeff, a thin, extremely intense young man who earlier had searched for spiritual fulfillment in the leftist Catholic Worker movement and in a monastery for nine months...

...What came across after a weekend’s total immersion in the faith was an organization full of sincere people working feverishly to raise the spiritual level of mankind-not a political action group...

...As for the identity of that messiah, Divine Principle does not give his name, except to say that he was born in Korea, “the new Israel,” in the years after World War I. Ask a believer if Moon (born in 1920) is the one, and there is a standard reply: “Many of us believe that Reverend Moon is the messiah, but we consider this a personal matter...

...Torrey may well be correct, but there .are those who do not think so, especially in the Korean exile community...

...gy from progressive causes, as Ramparts magazine has charged, but even the most bitter critics do not contend that the guru is interested in influencing American foreign policy or supporting the President on Watergate...

...The fact that Moon’s “revelations” reflect this early Cold War simplicity may be accounted for by the virulent strain of anti-communism to which he was exposed in Korea for over 20 years and also by Moon’s own imprisonment by the North Koreans for several years prior to 1950 Gust as the Divine Principle’s reliance on intricate diagrams and concepts like “the law of polarity” to explain all relationships may reflect Moon’s training as an electrical engineer...

...Followers of these two men energetically force leaflets on innocent pedestrians and hang their leader’s picture in fierce competition for poster space (and converts...

...But even Billy Graham remained quiet, so on November 30, Moon issued a personal statement on the scandal...

...A week before I met him, he had attended a two-day Family workshop-his first formal contact with the movementhad liked what he had heard, and “moved right in” to a communal living center...

...Since the FLF (as well as the Unification Church) is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization under the Internal Revenue Service’s rules, it is forbidden to actually lobby for specific legislation, but Jarmin states it carries on “educational” prograqs especially for legislative aides...

...mortally wounded in spirit and soul by the tragedy of Watcrgate...

...This is a biweekly newspaper in its third year of publication which prints Moon’s position on various foreign policy issues, publicizes dissidence in communist countries, and generally puts out news with a rightist slant...

...Political activities in this country are not nearly as developed as those in South Korea, where Moon operates a training school to which the government annually sends hundreds of thousands of civil servants, local officials, and military men for a course in militant anti-communism...

...The group plans an “international training center” in Washington and is already active on over 20 campuses...

...Now his spiritual doubts have vanished, although he concedes “at first it hurt my intellectual pride that it was all so simple...

...Therefore God has the power and authority to dismiss him...

...Jeff was long active in the anti-war movement and on one occasion was arrested for protesting outside the Pentagon-while his Marine officer father worked inside...

...And Then the Red Sea Parted On December 13, hundreds of Moo ni es - s elf-described as “welldressed and prayerful”-rallied in front of the White House “to lift the spirit of the President,” bearing signs reading “SUPPORT THE PRESIDENT” and “GOD LOVES NIXON...

...If there is any intelligence connection between Moon and the Hee regime, it is almost certainly limited to the very top level of the Moon organization and probably involves the organization in lobbying or public relations work for the Korean govemmentand not intelligence collection...

...It’s attractive for those in retreat to assume that politics will mind itself during their absence, or at least have the courtesy not to come bothering them in their new interests...

...When you can’t even count on religion to ignore politics, then it is time to pay attention to the political beliefs of the religious...

...Declaring that “God is testing America through the Watergate problem,” Moon said: This nation is God’s nation...

...Secretary General Jarmin explains, “If we’re willing to fight to the death to protect ourselves from communism, we should be willing to fight to the death to free other people, whether in Vietnam, Cambodia, or elsewhere...

...But Moon’s travels have shown him “a troubled land [in] moral and spiritual decline...

...In this spirit, six members of the Family have been regularly “visiting” congressional offices of both parties and asking the legislators to sign a petition in support of Moon’s Watergate “forgiveness” statement...

...Working out of a posh, 22-acre estate in Tarrytown, New York, he apparently intends to use America’s potential as the Free World’s most powerful and godblessed nation as his base for establishing the “kingdom of heaven on earth...

...He admits to having been bothered by what he calls the “anarchy” of the Catholic left, and now he enthusiastically embraces the rigid discipline and absolute certainty of his new faith...

...Lee Jai Hyon, who was a top diplomat in South Korea’s Washington embassy until opposition to the Park regime caused him to defect to the U. S. in June, 1973, equates Moon with another Korean messianic leader, Park Tae Sun, who, Lee says, also raised large sums of money from fanatic believers and grew rich from his business holdings...

...He would like to recreate in the United States-u la General Edwin Walker-the kind of indoctrination system that Moon runs in Korea...

...became so blatant in 1973 that the State Department ordered an FBI investigation of KCIA activities in this country and complained on at least half a dozen occasions to the Korean government...

...Whether they feel let down by their parents’ generation, by organized religion, by conventional or radical politics, by the counterculture, or whatever, a messianic religion like Sun Myung Moon’s offers something to believe jn-at a time when credible institutions are in short supply...

...He had seen the world in an “apocalyptic” state, but Divine Principle has convinced him that these “last days” were simply the prelude to the messianic age...

...But as Moon’s story shows, politics can chase them down and, when they’re not looking, put them on the wrong team...

...The causes they support are not necessarily rightwing, but their approach to them certainly is...

...He confides in a conspiratorial voice : “Although we don’t proclaim it, we’re talking covertly about smuggling our ideology and materials into communist countries...

...With the formidable task of selling a new messiah to the world, the Moonies (or “the Family” as they call themselves) are extremely media-conscious...

...So far, at least, only the young have been willing to make the fulltime commitment that the sect demands and move into the communal living centers where the Family lives in all 50 states...

...The movement’s American president, Neil Salonen, is only 28, and virtually all of the sect’s 2,000 “core” members are in their early to mid-twenties...

...Older persons may share the same doubts, but they tend to be less willing to open themselves up to a radical new set of beliefs...

...Nothing short of‘“the kingdom of heaven on earth,” as promised to it by its leader, who claims to have found the way through a series of revelations he received from Jesus Christ between his sixteenth and twenty-sixth birthdays...

...In fact, the rank-and-fie Family members do not even seem to know that they belong to a right-wing pressure group, and those who are knowledgeable firmly believe that the movement’s politics are completely in line with god-given Divine Principle...

...In a lecture on the doctrine, Michael Beard, one of their preachers, explains that there are only two major blocs on earth, “the Communist and the Free Worlds,” that they are locked in a “Cain and Abel-type” conflict, and that communism represents the forces of Satan...

...Presumably in keeping with Divine Principle, Moon took out an immigrant visa and moved permanently to this country in 1972...

...In an interview, Fefferman asserted that while the Family is “not taking any stand on the President’s innocence or guilt, we do feel he should be considered innocent until proven guilty...

...Their dedication is such that they work (and study and proselytize) seven days a week, without indulging themselves in what the rest of us call leisure activity...

...After a warm exchange of greetings, the Family joined hands and blocked traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue so the President could return home...

...God inspires a man and then confirms him as President through the will of the people...

...These little glassenclosed rock gardens take a great deal of effort to make, but the 2,000 American Moonies are a ready source of free labor...

...If we came on strong about Vietnam, it would chase people away...

...Lee and his colleagues in the Korean democratic opposition see Moon as an opportunist who has supported the present government in return for personal gain...

...Moon says he hesitated to speak out, recognizing he was not an American citizen and waiting for “some great spiritual leader or evangelist [to] rally America around God above the Watergate...

...Well, until recently, Torrey claims the main source of income has been the hawking of decorative candles, followed by the contributions of about 2,500 sympathizers-but not “Family members”-who live and work outside the church...

...Jannin is a 24-year-old ideologue who has the earnest, well-scrubbed, closely cropped look that I learned to expect in meeting Moonies...

...With the forces of the devil on the ascendency, Moon doctrine teaches, God tried to recoup by sending Jesus, “the second Adam,” to earth to marry, have “perfect” children, and kick off the messianic age...

...Directly in contrast, Sun Myung Moon interweaves politics and religion in the best tradition of the medieval popes...

...What is important,” she declared, “is Divine Principle...

...Moreover, they have opened a tea house in downtown Washington and hope to expand to other cities...

...Its specific target is the Marxist “enemy within” as well as the threat from abroad, and its three main areas of activity are: 1) The World Freedom Institute...

...When I questioned Jarmin on why the political aspect of the movement was not mentioned, he admitted the omission was no accident: “People who attend the workshops have more concrete ideas about politics than about religion,” he said...

...Potential converts come to the sect largely from the ranks of disaffected young people, and there is no shortage of those...

...That Moon’s religion comes complete with its own brand of right-wing politics seems to bother only outsiders...

...We’re not taking a political stand,” he said, “but we have to recognize that any social action has political overtones...

...Dan Fefferman, 25, and a former student and anti-war activist at Berkeley, is director of Moon’s National Prayer and Fast for the Watergate crisis...

...We’re tax exempt, but we can lobby about attitudes,” Fefferman asserted...

...His Unification Church operates a vast network of affiliate organizations in over 40 countries, under the distinctly temporal banner of the International Federation for Victory over Communism...

...Their interest in the movement comes from Moon’s charismatic appeal and the message of salvation he preaches...

...Soon, perhaps, he will dismiss questions about Vietnam and South Africa as “irrelevancies,” the way former SDSer Felice Walton did to me...

...Absolutely taboo is premarital sex, which Moon rails against as “fornication...

...Not known for its subtlety, the KCIA’s harassment of Korean residents in the U.-S...

...In its four years of existence, the FLF has started a number of programs which, while not coming anywhere near the ultimate goal-“Victory over Communism”-still are impressive in scope...

...When I spoke to him he was a week into his career with the Family...

...The sect’s bible, called Divine Principle, is the fruit of these “revelations,” and it tells how God’s original p?ans for a perfect world fell apart when the archangel Lucifer (Satan) entered the Garden of Eden, seduced Eve, and thus caused the “spiritual fall of mankind...

...Our duty, and this alone, is that we deeply seek God’s guidance in this matter and support the office, itself...

...And soon, according to Jarmin, the FLF intends to spin off a separate, new organization which will carry on direct lobbying and support selected political candidates...

...The FLF spends about $50,000 to $60,000 a year, not including the labor costs of its eight full-time employees (who receive no salary and who, as “core” members of the Family, live together in their own communal center, with Jarmin serving as their spiritual as well as temporal leader...

...Now, the new messiah has come to “fulfill” the promise of the Old and New Testaments...

...The Indian, who calls himself the “Perfect Master,” seems to have reached a plateau of sorts in November, when he failed .to fill even half of the Houston Astrodome for a declaration of “a thousand years of peace...

...Perhaps for this reason the American branch of the Victory over Communism effort has taken on the less strident title of the Freedom Leadership Foundation (FLF...

...Several rank-and-file Family members with whom I talked had no idea that they also belonged to the FLF, and indeed were almost totally ignorant of the movement’s political side...

...From Korea With Love by John D. Marks The two most widely seen faces in American cities today may well belong to the 15-yeardd Indian guru named Maharaj Ji and a 53-year-old Korean prophet named Sun Myung Moon...

...Moon’s avowed interest is in fighting communism, not preserving democratic niceties, and, as FLF Secretary General Gary Jarmin asserts, “Even if Park got more dictatorial, we would support him...

...What is more, the KCIA is involved in virtually every aspect of -Korean life, and it would be unusual if its interest did not extend to a burgeoning religious/ political movement run by a Korean who supports virtually all of its goals and who is in a position to work and lobby for its government’s position on the American political scene...

...His empire is worth well over $10 million, but Torrey insists that all profits go into the Unification Church and affiliate organizations...

...His movement may be diverting enerJohn Marks is co-author with Victor Marchetti of an upcoming book on the CIA...

...At the end of the year, this effort had been endorsed by four conservative Republican senators (Curtis, Fong, Hansen, and Thurmond) and 28 congressmen (mostly from the Republican right...

...Their success in littering the urban landscape may herald a new form of religious pollution...

...In any case, the faith he preachesdespite its appeal to former radical activists like Rennie Davis-is essentially spiritual, not political, in nature...

...For what does the Family make these sacrifices...