The lie that Myung-hee Kim was raped in Japan

Updated December 4, 2020


Myung-hee Kim in Korea, probably in 1954 when she was cohabiting with Sun Myung Moon. By the end of the year she was pregnant with his child.

(The Unification Church is now known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, FFWPU.)

Myung-hee Kim was born in 1930 in North Pyongan province, north of Pyongyang, in what is now North Korea. (source: UC of Japan monthly journal “Family” dated June 2005.)

The Sunday Journal USA of April 25, 2013 gives a date of June 30, 1955 for the marriage of Sun Myung Moon and Myung-hee Kim.

For further details of their marriage see:
Moon’s third ‘wife’ – Myung-hee Kim (in South Korea)


Abusing and manipulating Japanese Unificationists through guilt

For decades, Japanese Unificationists have been told that Myung-hee Kim, who gave birth to their son Hee-jin Moon in Tokyo on August 17, 1955, was raped by a Japanese official.

Myung-hee Kim stayed in Japan for over four years – without a passport or visa. She and Hee-jin returned to Korea on October 2, 1959. Those who knew Hee-jin said he spoke very good Japanese.

Why was Myung-hee Kim in Japan? Because in Korea at that time, a person found guilty of committing adultery would be jailed if the spouse made a complaint to the authorities. [That law was only revoked in February 2015.] Moon was still married to his first wife, but Moon had got Ms Kim pregnant, and so Ms Kim was sent away to Japan so Moon could avoid scandal and jail.

Japanese Unificationists have been made to feel guilty about the supposed “rape” of the woman who, they were told, would have become the future True Mother. The purpose of making them feel guilty was so that Unification Church leaders could push them to raise large sums of money to indemnify this great sin and “evil” act, by a Japanese person, which affected the course of God’s “providence of restoration”.

However, the really evil thing is that this story of Ms Kim being raped is a lie. It is a fabrication, and the Korean leaders of the Unification Church / FFWPU have known it all along.

Myung-hee Kim admitted to Sun Myung Moon and to numerous people that she was seduced by the leader of a spiritual group (who was Korean). She said it was her own fault for being weak.

[It has also been said that when she traveled to Japan, she had a contact person to go to in Tokyo who was part of a Korean spiritual group.] At the time, being on her own in Japan for four years, she was vulnerable because Sun Myung Moon had not sent her any money for her support or that of their child. The spiritual leader in Japan persuaded her that Sun Myung Moon didn’t really love her.


Dan Fefferman, the American Unificationist leader, wrote that, in 1970 in a meeting with “Father, Mrs. Won Pok Choi and President Young Whi Kim”, he was told that Myung-hee Kim was “was either raped or seduced by a Japanese man”
http://www.tparents.org/library/unification/talks/feffermn/fefferman-heejin.htm


On August 28, 1971 Moon spoke at the 
Cheongpyeong Training Center in Korea. He stated that Hee-jin was born in Japan and lived in a Buddhist temple. This would seem to confirm that Ms Kim was connected with a Buddhist religious group in Japan.



▲ Around the time of the Korean war and in the years following it, many Koreans traveled to Japan illegally from Busan in fishing boats, similar to the one above. The influx was a big problem for the Japanese authorities.

Rev. Jin-hun Yong stated, in a talk published on Youtube on November 23,  2013, that it was a Korean man and not a Japanese man. “… After Seon-gil Choi failed, Father met Hee-jin’s mother (Myung-hee Kim) and explained to her about the role of Eve. … Hee-jin’s mother was in the position of the growth level. … She became pregnant and was sent to the Eve nation, Japan, to give birth there and to come back. … [6:40] There was one Kyong-kyu Yu who went with her. He escorted her as her bodyguard. At that time Korea and Japan did not have a visa. Because Japan had ruled Korea for 40 years, it was very difficult for Koreans to enter Japan at that time. She went to Japan without an official visa. They borrowed a boat and went to Japan… She worked with one of the officials at the Immigration Office. That person was actually a Korean who lived in Japan. … and suddenly this official raped Hee-jin’s mother. She was crying as she told me the story. … [9:40] In any event, after that incident she somehow managed to come back to Korea [arriving on October 2, 1959]. … Hee-jin’s mother wrote a letter to Father saying she was raped. Father wrote letters to her to come back, and he sent people. He went to meet her. She would always run away. She continuously avoided Father. … Father put Hee-jin in his family register as his son.

The student who accompanied her was Seung-taek Oh, not Mr Yu. Mr. Oh was also a student from Yonsei University which Myung-hee Kim had been attending. Three male students had joined from that university. Seung-taek Oh agreed to help Myung-hee Kim. (see below for further details.)

It seems that Rev Yong explained some things that were true, but also added the lie that Myung-hee Kim was raped. (Rev Yong did not mention Sun Myung Moon’s relationship with Chong-hwa Kim in Pyongyang in 1946-1948 for which Moon and Kim were both jailed for bigamy. Moon was sent to Heungnam prison. Moon said that Chong-hwa Kim was in the “Rachel position.” Following that relationship, Myung-hee Kim would be Moon’s third wife, not his second wife.)

Rev Yong spoke about an official from the Immigration Office. According to the FFWPU of Japan monthly Family magazine of June 2005:
“At the time, in 1955, Japan and South Korea did not have diplomatic relations, so why was Myung-hee Kim able to travel to Japan?
1955年当時は、日本と韓国は国交樹立していないのに、なぜ金明熙が日本に渡れたのか?”

Also “With the Treaty of San Francisco signed with the World War II Allies coming into effect in April 1952, the Japanese government unilaterally stripped Koreans living in Japan of their citizenship, leaving them stateless.
Cho Kyung-hee, a Sungkonghoe University researcher from a Chosen-seki background is an expert on Zainichi Korean issues.
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/803299.html

Rev Yong said, “At that time Korea and Japan did not have a visa.” His story about an immigration official helping Myung-hee Kim is not credible.

So the top Koreans, including Moon, confused the issue: they mentioned some truth but added the lie about rape.

The really big question is, Did the Japanese Moon church leaders know that the rape story was a lie? Did they connive with the Korean leaders in abusing and exploiting the ordinary Japanese Unificationists for financial purposes? If they did, how would Japanese members feel about that?



▲ Hee-jin, right, with his father, in the early 1960s.


Chung-hwa Pak said that Myung-hee Kim was detained by the Japanese authorities because she had no money or passport. She apparently spent three months in the Omura Immigration Detention Center, which was near Nagasaki, before being brought back to Korea in 1959. (see note below about the Omura IDC.)



▲ Myung-hee Kim with Hee-jin in Korea in the early 1960s, before Moon took Hee-jin away from her.


Here is an extract from Chapter 6 of the The Tragedy of the Six Marys by Chung-hwa Pak:

“In the case of Kim Myung-hee, who was an excellent student at Yonsei University, when Sun Myung Moon learned that she was pregnant, he made a plan to make her go to Japan [in August 1955]. He sent her with Oh Seung-taek 呉昇澤, an innocent young man who also went to Yonsei University. He had just joined the church. Moon feared his own position would be jeopardized. [He feared he might be arrested for adultery since he was still married to his first wife. Moon implied that Oh Seung-taek was the father of the child. In March 1955 Dong-sook had been born and it is widely accepted that she, known as a ‘True Child’, was the daughter of Sun Myung Moon.]

Promising to guarantee [support] their life abroad, Moon made them hide in a small fishing boat which was smuggling metal bullet or shell casings from Busan to Japan. In that way they were smuggled across. (The cost was covered by the money Oh received from his father by lying that it would be for his tuition.) Oh Seung-taek and Kim Myung-hee had the baby [in Tokyo] in an extremely difficult environment because they could not speak Japanese or go to a hospital, since they were illegal immigrants. Young Seung-taek Oh is said to have cut the umbilical cord of the newborn baby with his own teeth when she gave birth to the baby.

Oh Seung-taek, who was tired of waiting because they had used up the little money they brought and they had not received any living expenses from Sun Myung Moon, made a promise that he would not return to Korea until Sun Myung Moon called him. However, he got on the smuggling boat again to return to Korea to speak to Sun Myung Moon. Oh Seung-taek and Kim Myung-hee, who had been struggling in a place where they couldn’t speak the language, decided together that Mr. Oh would go back alone to Korea to ask directly for the living expenses from Mr. Moon.

Oh Seung-taek met Sun Myung Moon, and described their difficult circumstances, and asked for living expenses. Sun Myung Moon rejected the request with a very curt answer. I have never heard of such a harsh story. Even ordinary people would not give such treatment to a person in this situation.

Moreover, despite the fact that it is natural for the person called “Second Coming Messiah” to take responsibility for himself, Sun Myung Moon turned his back on Oh Seung-taek in such a cold manner. Oh Seung-taek was so angry that he broke up with Sun Myung Moon, whom he believed was the Second Coming Messiah and had come to worship. In fact, “I do not have any money for you. You guys are on your own!” was what Moon said.

I remember it well because I was right next to Sun Myung Moon when that happened. At the words of Sun Myung Moon, Oh Seung-taek was screaming, “What do you mean? Remember it! You are Satan!”, and he stormed out. He was one of the three students from Yonsei University who had joined at the time Kim Myung-hee got pregnant. After hearing of her circumstances and being asked, he was the one student who believed that it was for the sake of the Messiah, Sun Myung Moon, and the Unification Church – and he had volunteered to take on the responsibility. He didn’t even talk to his Christian parents about it. He met Kim Myung-hee in Busan and smuggled her onto a small fishing boat to Kyushu, Japan.

When Mr. Oh ran out [of the room] in anger, there were 7 or 8 people there, but no one could do anything, even though they thought it was a pity. I feel remorse for it. In Japan, where she knew nothing about what had happened, Kim Myung-hee only waited and waited for Oh Seung-taek to return with some money. It was a tremendous struggle for Kim Myung-hee and her little baby (Moon Hee-jin) to survive such days of waiting and waiting.”

pages 247-250  LINK


The Omura Immigration Detention Center, near Nagasaki, was created in 1950. It housed Koreans awaiting deportation to South Korea under the terms of Japan’s Migration Control Law and Alien Registration Law. However, the detainees included refugees who had fled South Korea for political reasons, and other left-wingers who feared imprisonment or even execution if they were returned to South Korea under the Syngman Rhee regime.


1955 Moon’s third wife, Myung-hee Kim (in South Korea)

Chung-hwa Pak describes what happened to Myung-hee Kim

Moon’s first wife, Choi Seon-gil, and Kim Deok-jin interviewed

Sun Myung Moon’s second wife – Kim Chong-hwa in Pyongyang

Sun Myung Moon’s fourth wife, Won-pok Choi

Sun Myung Moon’s fifth wife, Hak Ja Han

Hong Soon-ae, the mother of Hak Ja Han

Sun Myung Moon’s secret love child – Mother Jones

Dong-sook, listed as a ‘True Child’, AND Sung-jin Moon were married

The six wives of Sun Myung Moon

The Tragedy of the Six Marys – Chapter 3

The Fall of the House of Moon – New Republic