The Moon also sets

4 September 2012 By Martin Hutchinson

True, his Unification Church’s commercial operations made large losses and ran up huge debts. But even with weak operating management, the church’s knack for religious services was outstanding. Moon’s followers provided more than enough donations to repeatedly bail out disasters.

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Sun Myung Moon, the head of the Unification Church, died on Sept. 3 at the age of 92. The Unification Church now claims 7 million members. He was imprisoned in 1948 for 34 months in a North Korean prison camp, and in 1982 for 13 months in the U.S. Federal Correctional Institution at Danbury, Connecticut for income tax evasion.

The Unification Church owns a South Korean automobile company, Pyonghwa Motors, which has a joint venture in North Korea, and a “chaebol” conglomerate Tongil Group, which has interests in manufacturing, drugs, tourism, construction and publishing, with four subsidiaries listed on the Korea Exchange.

A U.S. business, True World Foods, supplies seafood and sushi to 8,000 Japanese restaurants in the country, according to the website of Fish Information & Services. The church ranks third in Korea’s tourism market, according to the Korea Travel Times, and owns hospitals in Korea, Brazil and elsewhere. In the United States, it owns the Washington Times and United Press International.

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