South Korean investigators raided the Unification Church’s palace over embezzlement charges on May 6.
South Korean prosecutors raided more than ten Unification Church properties on May 6, including the movement’s Cheonjeong Palace headquarters, as part of an embezzlement investigation targeting Han Hak-ja — the 82-year-old “Holy Mother” and successor to self-proclaimed Messiah Sun Myung Moon.
The raid came eight months after prosecutors first charged Han with bribery: she allegedly provided Chanel handbags and a Graff diamond necklace to Kim Keon-hee, wife of then-president Yoon Suk Yeol. Kim was sentenced to four years in prison in April 2026. Yoon himself was impeached in December 2024 following a botched martial-law declaration. The church, which once cultivated ties to South Korea’s presidential office, now finds its leader entangled in the same political wreckage.
The Unification Church’s assets belong to God’s providence, not to any individual.
— Unification Church spokesperson, May 6, 2026
FROM MESSIAH’S WIDOW TO DEFENDANT
The church Han Hak-ja leads was founded in 1954 by Sun Myung Moon, who taught that he was the Messiah sent to complete Christ’s unfinished mission. Moon built a sprawling conglomerate: the Tongil Group industrial empire, the Washington Times newspaper, and mass wedding ceremonies in which he personally blessed hundreds of thousands of couples simultaneously. After Moon’s death in 2012, Han claimed co-divine status — declaring herself the “True Mother,” equal co-founder of a new Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.
The church’s reach extends beyond Korea. In Japan, the 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe exposed how deeply the movement had drained Japanese families. The gunman’s mother had donated the family’s entire savings to the church, leaving them destitute. Japan subsequently pursued legal action to revoke the church’s corporate status, a process completed in 2024.
THE EMPIRE TURNS ON ITSELF
The same logic that built the empire may now be dismantling it. Han Hak-ja’s alleged diversion of church funds to cultivate political favor left a paper trail. Investigators are now working through it. In Unification Church theology, the Holy Mother stands beyond reproach. In the Republic of Korea, she is a suspect.
The full original reporting is available at the Korea Times.
IN THE MARGINS
The Unification Church’s Washington Times, founded in 1982 as a conservative counterweight to The Washington Post, spent four decades as a fixture of American political media. The paper continues to publish. Its founder’s spiritual successor is currently the subject of a criminal investigation.
