Unification Church - Political Activities

Political Activities

See: Unification Church political activities

The Unification Church has been noted for its political activities, especially its support for United States president Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal, its support for anti-communism during the Cold War, and its ownership of various news media outlets through News World Communications, an international news media conglomerate which publishes The Washington Times newspaper in Washington, D.C., and newspapers in South Korea, Japan, and South America, which tend to support conservatism.

In 1970, President Nixon sent a request to the Korean Foreign Ministry to provide information about the Unification Movement, and two years later he met with leaders of the movement. In 1974, Moon took full-page ads in major newspapers defending President Richard Nixon at the height of the Watergate controversy. The church was caught up in the 1976 Koreagate scandal which involved Korean political figures trying to influence Democratic members in the United States Congress. A Congressional subcommittee led by Democratic Representative Donald M. Fraser of Minnesota described the church as being "paramilitary" and "tightly controlled." It also found that the South Korean intelligence agency, the KCIA, had used the Unification Church as a political tool within the United States and that some Unification Church members worked as volunteers in Congressional offices. Together they founded the Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit organization which acted as a propaganda campaign for the Republic of Korea. The committee also investigated possible KCIA influence on the Unification Church's campaign in support of Nixon.

It was during this time that the church and Rev. Moon received backing from Japanese billionaires Yoshio Kodama and Ryoichi Sasakawa, who controlled Japanese boat racing.

In 1986 CAUSA International, a church supported anti-communist organization, sponsored the documentary film Nicaragua Was Our Home about the Miskito Indians of Nicaragua and their persecution at the hands of the Nicaraguan government. It was filmed and produced by church member Lee Shapiro, who later died while filming with anti-Soviet forces during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. In 1994 the New York Times, in a review of a PBS Frontline documentary on the Unification Church, said that, "outside investigators and onetime insiders … give a picture of a theocratic powerhouse that is pouring foreign fortunes into conservative causes in the United States." In 1998 the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram criticized Moon's "ultra-right leanings" and suggested a personal relationship with conservative Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In 1995, the former U.S. President George H. W. Bush and his wife, Barbara Bush, spoke at a Unification Church event in the sold-out 50,000-seat Tokyo Dome. Tickets ranged from $80 to $120. "If as president I could have done one thing to have helped the country more," Mr. Bush told the gathering, "it would have been to do a better job in finding a way, either through speaking out or through raising a moral standard, to strengthen the American family." Han, the main speaker, credited her husband with bringing about Communism's fall and declared that he must save America from "the destruction of the family and moral decay."

In 2003, South Korean Unification Church members started a political party, "The Party for God, Peace, Unification, and Home." In an inauguration declaration, the party announced its focus on preparing for the reunification of the two Korean states by educating the public about God and peace. A church official said that similar political parties would be started in Japan and the United States. It operates every polling station.

Moon is a member of the Honorary Committee of the Unification Ministry of the Republic of Korea. The church member Jae-jung Lee had been once a unification minister of the Republic of Korea. Another, Ek Nath Dhakal, is a member of the Nepalese Constituent Assembly, and a first Minister for Co-operatives and Poverty Alleviation Ministry of the Government of Nepal.