Unification Church stands at heart of South Korea’s ex-presidential couple scandal
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SEOUL – The special counsel investigating Kim Keon Hee, the wife of disgraced former President Yoon Suk Yeol, summoned both the former first lady and Jeon Seong-bae — a shaman who was taken into custody on Aug. 21 — to look into alleged corruption involving the former presidential couple and the Unification Church.
The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, better known as the Unification Church, was founded in 1954 in Seoul by the late Rev. Moon Sun-myung and has since grown exponentially, gaining solid footholds in South Korea, Japan and the United States. In a 2021 press conference, the group reported that some 19,000 followers in South Korea regularly pay offerings to the organization.
The Unification Church is currently led by Hak Ja Han Moon, the widow of the late founder Moon. Her followers believe she became the Messiah after Moon’s death in 2012.
The religious group’s connection to the former presidential couple first caught public attention when the prosecutors investigated alleged corruption involving Kim and Jeon ahead of the special counsel team’s official launch in mid-April.
The Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office had previously investigated Jeon and a former high-ranking Unification Church official surnamed Yoon.
The latter insisted that he gave Jeon a luxury diamond necklace and Chanel handbags as a gift for the former first lady following former President Yoon’s 2022 election victory. He said the gifts were intended to gain support for projects serving the church’s interests in Cambodia, acquire South Korean cable news channel YTN and receive an invitation to the presidential inauguration ceremony.
But the Unification Church has come under scrutiny after church official Yoon’s special counsel questioning in mid-July, in which he reportedly testified that he had delivered the luxury items “under the instructions of the Unification Church’s leadership.”
The Unification Church had distanced itself from the official’s actions, reportedly claiming that the luxury gifts were a “personal wrongdoing.”
However, the special counsel secured multiple testimonies that both Han and the church official had expressed their support for then-presidential candidate Yoon in March 2022, which was backed by the entire organization.
Allegations linked to the religious group escalated further as Jeon and the former church official are thought to have interfered in the People Power Party’s leadership race by enlisting church members to join the party and support People Power Party Rep. Kweon Seong-dong’s bid for floor leader in 2023.
After securing evidence and testimony through multiple search and seizure operations and summonses at the Unification Church’s facilities and offices over the past month, the special counsel confirmed that Jeon and church official Yoon exchanged text messages, asking “How many party members do we need to mobilize for the party’s leadership election?” and saying “(President) Yoon’s support still firmly lies with Kweon.”
The special counsel team also expanded its investigation to look into additional suspicions regarding the Unification Church after discovering that the church official obtained the help of a key aide to former President Yoon to quash a police investigation into overseas gambling suspicions involving Han, the church leader, in 2022 and 2023.
Meanwhile, former first lady Kim appeared for her fourth special counsel questioning Monday morning following three previous sessions since her detention on Aug. 12.
Though the team questioned Kim about her alleged involvement in manipulating the stock price of imported car dealer Deutsch Motors and the bribery case involving the Unification Church, Kim exercised her right to remain silent for most of the questions.
The special counsel team reportedly questioned the former first lady on whether she was the owner of the contact saved as “Keon Hee 2” on the phone of the shaman Jeon.
The investigators revealed that Jeon had several phone calls with “Keon Hee 2” around the time he allegedly received luxury items from the church official and attempted to deliver them to the former first lady.
Kim reportedly remained tight-lipped about the phone contact and the church official’s gifts, but the special counsel team decided to indict the former first lady on Friday, three days before the expiration of Kim’s detention period.
The special counsel team reportedly added that the schedule may vary depending on how the investigation procedures unfold throughout the week.
Content retrieved from: https://asianews.network/unification-church-stands-at-heart-of-south-koreas-ex-presidential-couple-scandal/.
