Chambumo Gyeong - 354. Wild rumors
The expulsion of students and dismissal of professors from Ewha Womans University and Yonsei University caused True Father's suffering to continue. Christian organizations responded to the spiritual enthusiasm that was taking place in the Unification Church by spreading all kinds of wild rumors. On July 4, 1955, True Father was arrested on charges of avoiding the draff and thus violating the military service law. Subsequently, four of his disciples were also arrested. 1 Many sectors of society opposed the Unification Church. Government offices, schools, religious groups and families all turned against our church. We were persecuted not because I was an evil person or because the Unification Church was an evil church. Rather, it was based on rumors that Christian leaders contrived by accusing us of all sorts of evils and wrongdoing as have been seen throughout history. As a result of these rumors, Christians began to hate us.
I was educating people with the words of the Principle; that is why whoever came to the church had spiritual experiences. If they did not come back, the spirit world gave them a hard time. This would become a serious problem for them. When intelligent people listened to the Principle, they were bound to join the Unification Church. That is why, in order to stop us, Christians began taking all kinds of terrible measures against us. (104-069, 1979/04/01) 2 Christians raised the issue of the heretical groups in the history of Christianity and said we were like those groups. They threw every sort of accusation against us. Because this continued for about ten years, the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCLA) investigated us. They spent 40 days investigating the rumors that had accumulated over ten years and concluded, "There is nothing there." But they did not make a public announcement about it. They did not say, "Moon of the Unification Church has done nothing wrong, and all the rumors you have been believing are lies." When I was declared not guilty after my trial, the newspapers devoted only a few lines to it.
How could the negative image that was established nationwide be changed? Even though our church did public relations work to change public opinion, everyone still opposed us. Finally there were legal proceedings, and based on the investigative report from the police, we made an announcement that the Unification Church is not the kind of place that people think. They still did not believe us. Although the police confirmed it, people said, "The Unification Church has bribed the police!" (104-070, 1979/04/01) 3 There was a woman, a devoted mother and wife. She was so close to her husband that she thought that without him she would die. But after she joined the Unification Church, her life changed. Instead of going back to her house at 5:00 p.m. to prepare dinner, she would stay and listen to my teachings late into the night. In those days I often spoke until 4:00 a.m., regardless of how many members were with me. I was sleeping just two hours a night on average.
Naturally, problems arose within her family. Her husband asked her not to go to the church, but still she came, saying, "No matter what, I will go." This kind of family dispute was a good reason for Christian ministers to oppose me. From their point of view, I was causing their best members to go astray. Hence, many of them gathered and organized to oppose our church. As a result, I was falsely accused of all kinds of wrongdoings. However, I thought to myself, "Go ahead, put all the blame on me," and I did not make excuses.
After the court found me not guilty and I was released from Seodaemun Prison, I did not hear any Christian ministers say that I was found innocent of the rumors and that they must have been false. (249-206, 1993/10/10) 4 Unification Church members were persecuted severely, especially the women. It is because when they left home to go to the market, they ended up going to the church in spite of themselves, which led their husbands to jump to all sorts of wrong conclusions. These incidents were common in the early days of our church. If you understand spiritual phenomena, there is nothing mysterious about them. Yet the rumor spread that I controlled our members by some kind of electrical device that I had secretly implanted in them.
Actually, even people in the secular world use hypnotism to exercise mind control on people. How much more powerful are the spiritual experiences that people have when they connect to the Spirit of God! There was nothing unusual about what these women believers did, coming to the church with a heart yearning for the Word of God. Do you have any idea how great the power of prayer is? If you pray, you can have such experiences. (076-142, 1975/02/02) 5 Around the time of the Ewha Womans University and Yonsei University incident, five cabinet ministers tried to knock me down and obliterate the Unification Church. Since they could find no fault in me, they tried to convict me of evading military service. They accused me of lying about my age, that I claimed I was two years older than my real age. However, despite a thorough investigation, the court could not produce any evidence, and I was found not guilty. (239-021, 1992/11/23) 6 We held a 60-day witnessing campaign at Ewha Womans University and Yonsei University, and many students and professors joined. The two universities were in an uproar, and their administrations felt so threatened that they had to do something about this situation. So they made allegations against me. They called me a heretic and hurled all kinds of false accusations at me. But no matter how much the prosecutors investigated me on those charges, they could find nothing criminal.
The university authorities accused me of being anti-family, and that I practiced sexual immorality, but the prosecutors could not find any evidence to support those charges. Therefore, they arrested me on the charge that I evaded military service. Did I evade military service? I had short hair during the Korean War, so they thought I belonged to the North Korean Peoples Army. Even though I was willing to join the South Korean army, I was classified as Third Class, which exempted me from military service. Hence I was not able to join the army. In the end, no matter how much the prosecutors tried to make a case against me, they could not find me guilty of any of the charges. That is why I was acquitted after three months.
However, most people did not learn that I was declared innocent. Christian ministers did not inform their members that the court had acquitted me. The newspaper reports about it were very brief. Our church leaders suggested, "Let s make a statement about the Seodaemun incident and the groundless allegations against the Unification Church." Yet to me, the allegations were not the issue, and my imprisonment was not the issue. The issue to me was that the Republic of Korea had betrayed me. It would do no good to regard Korea as my enemy and fight back. Rather, in order to restore Korea, we would have to move on to the world level and then return to Korea. This was the path of restoration through indemnity that lay before us. (185-206, 1989/01/08) |