여수 교계 "통일교 의도적 여수 개발과 침투 반대" < 호남뉴스앤조이 < 기사본문 - 뉴스앤조이

여수 교계 "통일교 의도적 여수 개발과 침투 반대" < 호남뉴스앤조이 < 기사본문 - 뉴스앤조이



여수 교계 "통일교 의도적 여수 개발과 침투 반대"
통일교 그룹 (주)일상의 '여수 디 오션 리조트' 7월 초 개장…기독인들 시설 출입 자제 요청
기자명 문규옥
승인 2008.06.18 


점차 통일교 성지처럼 변모하고 있는 여수시 상황을 보다 못한 여수시교회연합회(회장 배용주 목사·이하 여교연)와 교단 대표들이 지난 6월 12일 통일교에 의한 여수시 개발 중단과 의도적 여수 침투에 대해 적극적인 반대 입장을 천명했다.

▲ 여수시 교회연합회는 지난 6월 12일 통일교의 의도적인 여수 침투와 개발을 반대하는 성명서를 채택하고 적극적인 대응 입장을 표명했다.ⓒ여수종교문제연구소 사진 제공

여교연은 먼저 "통일교가 2012년 여수 세계박람회를 계기로 순교의 성지요, 구국의 성지인 우리 여수를 장악하려는 음모가 있음을 알고 이같은 성명서를 채택하게 됐다"고 밝혔다.

여교연은 "정부의 J프로젝트의 일환으로 여수시 화양면 일대가 개발 예정지구로 지정된 것에 우리 모두 큰 기대를 걸고 있으며, 또한 차질 없이 진행되기를 희망한다"고 전제 한 후 "그러나 이 거대한 국가적인 사업이 본래의 목적에 부합하지 않는 방향으로 진행되고 있다는 우려를 금할 수가 없다"고 밝혔다.

여교연는 우선 "사업시행자가 처음 미국의 3개 회사에서 1년여가 지나자 통일교 그룹의 (주)일상(현재는 해양산업주식회사)으로 바뀌었는데 이는 통일교가 자신들의 정체를 감추기 위한 의도로 처음부터 계획적으로 재경부나 여수시를 기만한 것이라는 의문이 제기 된다"고 밝혔다.

이어 "통일교는 여수시 화양 지구가 경제자유특별구역으로 발표되기도 전에, (주)일상을 통해 예정지구의 땅 수십만 평을 미리 매입한 사실이 있으며, 이후 지정된 사업과는 아무 관계가 없는 여수 일대 요지의 땅을 매입했다"고 설명했다.

▲ 여수 디 오션 리조트 공사현장. ⓒ여수종교문제연구소 사진 제공

여교연은 특히 "화양지구 관광특구 기공식 때에는 통일교 문선명 교주가 직접 참석하여 사업과는 아무 상관이 없는 통일교 교리에 대해 장시간 설명하면서 자신과 통일교를 선전하였다"며 이 모든 사업이 문선명 교주의 평화 사업의 연장선상에서 추진되고 있다고 지적했다.



이어 여교연은 "여수세계박람회를 준비함에 있어서 여수의 개발은 너무도 중요한 일이지만 이 중요한 사업이 특정종교집단의 선전과 개인 우상화의 야심을 위해 이용당한다면 정부나 여수시는 돌이킬 수 없는 과오를 범하는 일이 될 것"이라며 "이에 통일교의 의도적인 여수침투와 통일교 교주의 메카화를 절대 반대하며 그것을 저지하는데 끝까지 총력을 다할 것을 천명한다"고 밝혔다.

한편, 여수노회 이단사이비대책위원 신외식 목사(여수종교문제연구소)는 "통일교 그룹 (주)일상에 의해 추진 중인 '여수 디 오션 리조트'가 7월 초 개장을 앞두고 대대적인 홍보에 나서고 있다"며 "특히 2012년 여수 세계박람회 유치가 자신들의 공로인 것처럼 선전하며, 리조트 시설을 통해 지역경제를 살리고 유익을 준다는 식의 선전을 통해 지역민들을 유혹하고 있어 기독교인들의 디오션리조트 시설 출입 자제와 주의를 요청한다"고 당부했다.

문집단침투에 대한 여수시 교회연합회 성명서

우리는 문선명 교주와 그 집단(이하 ‘통일교’-우리는 문선명과 그 집단이 성경과 교리에서 완전히 이탈하여 있으므로 정통적인 교회라고 인정하지 않지만 일반적으로는 통일교로 알려져 있으므로 통일교라 함)이 2012년 여수 세계박람회를 계기로 순교의 성지요, 구국의 성지인 우리 여수를 장악하려는 음모가 있음을 알고 이에 성명서를 채택하는 바이다.
정부에서는 전라남도에 J프로젝트의 일환으로 여수시 화양면 일대를 개발 예정지구로 지정 발표한 바 있었다. 우리 여수 시민들은 낙후된 지역이 개발되고 많은 외부 자본이 투자되며 일자리 창출은 물론이요 삶의 질을 높일 수 있고, 특히 우리 여수의 미래를 바꿀 수 있는 대단위의 사업이 유치된다는 점에서 한껏 꿈과 기대에 부풀어 있었다. 따라서 우리도 이 사업이 차질 없이 진행되기를 진심으로 희망하였고 지금도 그 기대를 버리지 않고 있다.

그러나 이 거대한 국가적인 사업이 본래의 목적에 부합하지 않는 방향으로 진행되고 있다는 우려를 금할 수가 없다. 우리는 처음 화양면 관광 특구 투자 신청시에는 세계 굴지의 미국의 3개 회사를 통해 개발하는 것으로 되어 있었고, 이를 재경부나 관계관청이 긍정적으로 평가하여 도움을 준 것으로 알고 있다. 그런데 그 후 1년여가 지나자 그 미국 회사들은 투자를 철회하였고, 사업시행자가 통일교 그룹의 (주)일상(현재는 ‘해양산업주식회사’로 상호변경함)으로 바뀌었는데 이는 통일교가 자신들의 정체를 감추기 위한 의도로 처음부터 계획적으로 재경부나 여수시를 기만한 것이라는 의문을 갖게 한다.

통일교는 여수시 화양지구가 경제자유특별구역으로 발표되기도 전에, (주)일상을 통해 예정지구의 땅 수십만 평을 미리 매입한 사실이 있다.

2005년 6월 문선명 통일교 교주는 여수지역 기관장과 주민 오십여 명을 거문도에 초청하여 사업설명회를 갖고 여수를 통일교의 메카로 육성하겠다고 공언하고, 여수시가 협조하면 일본 은행에 예치된 3억불 등 많은 자본을 투자하겠다고 공언한 바 있다. 통일교는 지정된 사업과는 아무 관계가 없는 여수 일대의 요지의 땅들과 여수시 남면 거문도 수월산 일만 평을 매입했고 계속해서 거문리 일대 주요 관광지를 매입하려고 주민들을 현혹하고 있는 실정이다.

2005년 12월 여수시 소호동 오션리조트 기공식 석상에서 (주)일상 회장 황선조는 문선명 교주의 평화 사업의 연장선상에서 이 사업이 추진된다고 밝힘으로서 그동안 통일교와 연관을 끈질기게 부인하던 저들의 주장이 위장이었음을 스스로 밝혔다.

특히 2008년 1월 29일 화양지구 관광특구 기공식 때에는 통일교 교주 문선명씨가 직접 참석하여 사업과는 아무 상관이 없는 통일교 교리에 대해 장시간 설명하면서 “누가 돈을 내는가?”라고 그 자신의 우상화를 유도하면서 자신과 통일교를 선전하였다.

===

세계 사람들이 방문하는 여수세계박람회를 준비함에 있어서 화양지구를 포함하여 우리 여수의 개발은 시민의 꿈과 희망을 심는 너무도 중요한 일이다. 그러나 이 중요한 사업이 특정종교집단의 선전과 개인 우상화의 야심을 위해 이용당한다면 정부나 여수시는 돌이킬 수 없는 과오를 범하는 일이 될 것이다. 그러므로 우리는 자랑스런 여수시의 발전과 후손들을 위해 아래와 같이 주장한다

-문집단은 2012년 여수 세계박람회개최가 30만 우리 여수시민과 온 국민의 열화와 같은 염원과 노력의 결집으로 얻어낸 결과임에도 오직 통일교 자신들의 공로인 것처럼 선전하는 것을 즉각 중단하라.
-광양경제자유구역청은 화양지구 경제자유특구가 여수시에는 아무 혜택도 없이 오로지 통일교에게만 엄청난 혜택이 돌아가게 된 경위를 명확하게 밝히고 특구지정을 즉각 철회하라.
-우리는 세계적인 물의를 일으켜온(브라질 등) 통일교에 의해 우리 고장 여수가 개발되는 것을 절대로 반대한다.
-문집단은 지금이라도 기업과 종교의 쌍두기형적인 형태를 청산하고 시민에게 사과하라.
-여수시는 통일교가 교리적인 의도성을 가지고 여수개발에 뛰어든 경위를 파악하고 그들과의 관계를 확실히 청산하라.
-여수시민들은 경제논리 때문에 구국의 성지 우리 여수의 후손들의 장래가 통일교에 의해 저당잡히는 것을 철저히 경계하라.

우리는 5백여 교회와 9만여 성도뿐만 아니라, 진정으로 여수를 사랑하는 시민들과 함께 통일교의 의도적인 여수침투와 통일교 교주의 메카화를 절대 반대하며 그것을 저지하는데 끝까지 총력을 다할 것을 천명한다.

2008년 6월12일

여수시 교회연합회장 배용주 목사

통일교 문선명, 여수 기독교계를 비웃다! - NEWS M

통일교 문선명, 여수 기독교계를 비웃다! - NEWS M

통일교 문선명, 여수 기독교계를 비웃다!
변하삼
승인 2008.03.04

<뉴스 M 아카이브>는 나누고 싶은 과거 기사 ‘다시보기’ 코너입니다.




매주 목요일 여수광림교회에서는 여수교회연합회 회원들의 기도회가 열린다. 이 기도회는 2년을 넘게 이어오고 있다. 예장통합 여수노회도 다른 장소에서 기도회를 열고 있다. 이 기도회의 제목은 '통일교 여수 개발 반대'다. 하지만 연합회의 이런 노력을 무색케 할 만큼 여수에서 통일교의 기세는 수그러들지 않고 있다.


▲ 통일교 문선명 교주.1월 29일 여수 화양면 장수리 청해가든 운동장에서 해양관광복합단지 착공식이 성대하게 열렸다. 이 착공식에는 곽정환 선문대 이사장, 이동한 세계일보 사장, 박준영 전남도지사, 한화갑 전 민주당 대표, 주승용·이강래 대통합민주신당 의원 등 정·관계 인사와 시민들이 참석했고, 이례적으로 통일교(세계평화통일가정연합) 문선명 교주가 직접 참석했다.

시공자인 (주)일상은 ‘현재 추진하는 여수화양지구 해양 관광 복합 단지는 에버랜드 면적(148만 8000㎡)의 7배 규모로, 화양면과 화정면 일대 9.99㎢에 1조 5031억 원을 들여 2015년까지 5개 지구로 나뉘어 단계적으로 개발한다’고 밝혔다. 또 이 단지에는 골프장과 호텔, 별장형 콘도, 펜션, 축구장, 실내 육상 트랙, 스포츠 교육 시설 등이 들어서고, 윈드서핑·모터보트·스킨스쿠버 등을 즐길 수 있는 마린 스포츠 센터와 터널 수족관, 생태 관찰관, 식물원, 플라워 가든, 세계 민속촌, 로마식 온천탕과 해수 스파 등도 갖춰진다고 설명했다.

(주)일상은 지난 2005년 교계의 반발에도 불구하고 오션리조트 개발이 시작되면서부터 지금까지 이 개발 사업은 통일교 차원이 아닌 일상 건설회사의 개별사업이라고 밝혀 왔다. 당시 여수시장으로 있던 김충석 시장 역시 이 같은 일상의 주장을 거들고 나섰다. 김충석 시장의 행보는 김 시장이 여수의 한 중견 교회에 출석하는 집사였기에 교계의 공분을 샀다.

그러나 이번 일상의 화양지구개발 과정에서도 이 같은 일은 반복됐다. 화양지구개발을 돕고 있는 여수시의 오현섭 시장 역시 여수에서 손에 꼽히는 대형 교회인 여수제일교회(목사 김성천) 출석 교인이다. 연합회 한 관계자는 "여수 교계가 통일교의 물량 공세로 인한 여수 잠식에 대해 우려하고 있는데 반해, 기독교인인 오 시장은 엑스포 성공을 위해 물불 안 가리고 이단 단체에까지 손을 벌리고 있다"며 허탈한 심정을 감추지 않았다.

이번 화양지구개발 기공식은 지난 2005년 오션리조트 기공식과는 의미가 다르다. 오션리조트 기공식에서는 (주)일상의 황선조 회장과 김충석 전 여수시장이 한 목소리로 통일교와 무관한 개발 사업이라고 밝힌 데 반해, 화양지구개발에서는 아예 통일교 교주인 문선명 씨가 전면에 나섰기 때문.


▲ 착공식에 참여한 통일교 관계자들. 맨 우측에 문선명 교주 부인 한학자씨의 모습이 보인다.문선명 교주는 이날 격려사에 한 시간이 넘는 시간을 할애했다. 이는 통일교 집회를 방불케 했다. 영하의 날씨에도 불구하고 야외에서 치러진 착공식에서 지역 기관 단체장들과 정치인, 그리고 대다수 통일교 인사들로 들어찬 객석은 그 긴 시간 동안 빈틈없이 들어찼다. 다만 박준형 도지사는 일정 관계를 들어 문선명 씨의 격려사 도중에 식장을 빠져 나갔다.

문 교주는 이날 격려사에서 “지구의 75%를 차지하고 있는 바다는 전 세계 미래 발전의 원동력이 되고 여수화양지구 개발은 그 시발점이 될 것”이라고 말했지만, 이해할 수 없는 말도 쏟아냈다. 통일교의 교리와 자신의 치적, 그리고 때 아닌 호남 사람 비하까지 들먹여 주위를 당혹케 했다.

문 교주는 “나는 싸워서 져본 적이 없다”면서 “기독교인들이 나 이기지 못했다”고 말하고 “기독교인들 피해 입힌 게 뭐 있나? 잘 알아보지도 않고 반대한다”며 여수교계의 통일교 반대 운동에 대해 간접적으로 불만을 토로했다. 또 국제결혼에 대해서도 “내가 국제결혼 만들어 모든 민족이 하나 되고 있다”며 “전라도에서 해마다 많은 사람이 떠나가는데 통일교 들어와 보지…”라고 이야기했다. 또 호남 사람들의 부정적인 면을 언급하면서 “전라도 와서 이런 이야기해서 미안하다. 하지만 말 할 만하다”고 말했다 급기야 “(개발 사업에) 돈은 누가 대냐?”고 재차 물으면서 할 말은 하겠다고 말했다.

문 교주는 기독교는 물론 종교 전체를 비판하고 나섰다. 자신이 창조 원리를 밝혀냈다면서 “종교가 웬말이냐, 기독교가 웬말이냐, 유교 공자 모두 실없는 것들”이라고 말하면서 “죽어보면 (자신의 말을) 안다”고 말했다.


▲ 통일교가 전면에 등장한 여수해양관광단지 착공식,문 교주는 또 자신의 치적을 설명하면서 “2004년 본인이 미국과 한국의 국회로부터 평화의 왕으로 추대됐고 2006년 평화의 왕 대관식을 거행하게 됐다”고 말했다. 또 “미국과 러시아가 교차축복결혼(국제결혼)을 이루면 세계는 평화가 도래할 것”이라든지 “대한민국과 미국도 자신의 신세를 지고 있다”는 등 황당한 주장도 내놨다.

한편 이번 화양지구개발과 관련해 여수시교회연합회 목사는 “현재 여수 교계는 이번 통일교 개발 사업과 관련해 어려운 싸움을 하고 있다”며 “지자체는 물론 정치인들까지 가세, 통일교를 두둔하고 있어 답답하다”고 말했다. 하지만 현실적인 대응책은 아직 전무하다. 엑스포를 앞둔 데다가 지역 발전이라는 논리에 통일교의 폐해를 알려온 교계의 목소리는 힘을 쓰지 못하고 있다.

이번 화양지구개발 착공식에 오현섭 시장은 참석하지 않았다. 다만 정해균 부시장이 참석했다. 여수시측은 시장의 불참과 관련해 “같은 시각 2012년 여수세계박람회 관련 회의가 있어서 부득이 불참하게 됐다”고 밝혔다. 오 시장이 출석하고 있는 여수제일교회 김성천 목사는 “오현섭 시장은 통일교의 여수 개발을 반대하는 입장인 것으로 알고 있다”면서 “하지만 정치 논리와 전라남도와의 관계에서 어려움을 겪고 있는 것으로 알고 있다”고 말했다. 연합회 기도회에도 참석하고 있는 김 목사는 “여수 교계가 오 시장의 의도를 알아주고 이에 힘을 실어줘야 한다”고 덧붙였다.

하지만 통합 여수노회의 한 목회자는 “통일교의 개발 사업은 바로 여수시에서 직접적으로 일어나고 있는 일”이라며 “오 시장이 통일교 행사에 불참하는 것만으로 교계에서 면죄부가 될 수 없고 (통일교 저지는) 결국 오 시장의 결단이 필요한 것”고 지적했다.

지난 2005년 착공된 오션리조트 개발도 이미 상당한 진전을 보이고 있다. 또 이번 화양지구개발도 시작됨에 따라 여수에는 이미 통일교의 그림자가 진하게 드리워진 셈이다. 통일교의 물량 공세가 이어지고 있지만 지역교계의 목소리는 점점 작아지고 있다.



변하삼 / <뉴스앤조이> 기자

[특집]회장님과 총재님의 ‘여수 땅 사랑’ - 주간경향

[특집]회장님과 총재님의 ‘여수 땅 사랑’ - 주간경향

[특집]회장님과 총재님의 ‘여수 땅 사랑’

2009.05.26 

이건희·정몽구·통일교 등 소유토지 세계박람회 기회로 땅값 상승 기대


지난 5월 11일 여수시로 들어가는 초입 격인 여수공항로 주변은 공사현장을 오가는 덤프트럭의 굉음과 뿌연 먼지들로 가득했다. 여수공항 맞은편 산자락엔 순천에서 이어지는 자동차전용도로 공사가 한창으로, 2011년 완공되면 현재 이렇다 할 진입로가 없는 여수시의 관문이 될 것으로 보였다.

마침 다음날은 ‘2012여수세계박람회(여수엑스포)’ 개최를 정확하게 3년 앞두고 한승수 총리와 관계부처 장관, 지자체장들이 지원위원회를 열기 위해 여수를 찾을 예정. 때문에 여수공항에서 시내까지 거리 곳곳엔 교통경찰들이 교통통제 연습을 하고 있었다. 월드컵(11조5000억 원)과 맞먹는 12조3000억 원의 생산 유발 효과가 기대된다는 세계박람회 준비가 착착 진행되는 모습이었다.


삼성·현대·GS·통일교 “나도 여수 지주”

2012여수엑스포는 서울올림픽(1988년), 대전엑스포(1993년), 한·일월드컵(2002년)에 이어 개최되는 국가적 행사다. 무엇보다 인프라 확충 등 지역 발전을 기대하는 여수시민이 가장 손꼽아 기다리지만, 여수엑스포 유치에 물심양면 앞장섰던 기업들도 그 ‘단맛’에 거는 기대가 크다.

기업들이 노리는 여수엑스포 수혜는 SOC 등 각종 사업 참여가 우선이다. 여수엑스포로 10조 원을 넘는 생산 효과와 5만 명에 달하는 일자리 창출 효과가 발생할 것으로 전망돼 기업으로서는 그냥 지나칠 수 없는 대공사판인 것이다. 이와 함께 또 다른 측면의 기대감도 존재하는데, 바로 여수엑스포 개최 발표 이전에 매입해두었던 토지 등 막대한 부동산 차익이다.

현재 여수지역의 땅을 보유하고 있는 대기업은 삼성그룹과 현대·기아차그룹이 대표적이다. 이건희 전 삼성 회장은 2005년 2월 여수시 소라면 사곡리 궁항마을 임야 6필지 2만1120㎡(6400평)을 사들였고, 2006년 12월엔 인근 무인도인 모개도 등 8필지 6만2700㎡(1만9000평)을 매입했다.

여수엑스포 유치의 최대 공로자로 꼽히는 정몽구 현대·기아차그룹 회장은 여수시 율촌면 봉전리 땅을 갖고 있으며, GS칼텍스 허동수 회장의 장남인 허세홍 상무도 이 전 회장이 소유한 섬 건너편에 개인 명의로 땅을 보유하고 있는 것으로 알려졌다. 이밖에도 여수공단에 입주한 삼양그룹의 삼남석유화학, 한화그룹의 한화석유화학, 금호그룹의 금호석유화학, 삼성그룹의 제일모직, GS그룹의 GS칼텍스가 여수지역에 법인 명의의 땅을 소유하고 있어 차후 땅값 상승의 혜택을 볼 것으로 예상된다.

그러나 2012년 세계엑스포를 계기로 여수가 추진하는 다도해의 세계 관광단지 프로젝트에 가장 많은 수혜가 예상되는 곳은 통일교 관계사인 일상해양산업이다. 여수시 소호동에서 오션리조트를 운영하며, 화양면 일대에 해양·레저타운 개발 사업을 진행하고 있는 일상해양산업은 대단위 관광사업을 통한 이윤은 물론, 여의도보다 큰 1만65㎢(305만 평) 상당의 부지를 보유하고 있어 부동산 가격 상승에 따른 수혜가 예상된다.

‘이건희 섬’ 모개도, 묏자리 또는 영빈관?

이건희 전 회장이 2004년 매입해 2년 후 자신 명의로 등기신고를 하면서 알려진 여수시 소라면 사곡리 일대는 천혜의 자연환경을 간직한 곳이다. 여수시청에서 승용차로 15분 정도 거리지만 전형적인 반농반어 마을로, 산중턱에서 고라니가 뛰노는 모습이 보일 정도. 특히 모개도의 경우 하늘에서 본 모습이 제대로 선 ‘하트(♡)’ 모양이어서 방송을 여러 번 타기도 했다. “아마 한반도를 다 뒤져도 이런 희한한 섬을 찾기는 힘들 것”이라는 게 마을 사람들이 말이다.



여수시 소라면 사곡리 장척마을에서 두 노인이 멀리 이건희 전 삼성그룹 회장 소유의 무인도인 모개도를 바라보고 있다. 지난 2004년 매입 후 별다른 개발 움직임이 보이지 않는 가운데에서도 “여수엑스포 용도의 영빈관이나 묏자리로 쓸 것”이라는 관측이 나오고 있다.
활처럼 휘어진 지형이라 하여 이름붙은 궁항마을. 이곳에서 만난 김재선 사곡4구 이장은 “궁항마을은 여수만 앞바다가 한눈에 보이며, 특히 다도해 사이로 지는 일몰이 아름다워 사진 작가들이 몰리는 곳”이라며 “4년 전 이 전 회장의 구입 사실이 알려지면서 한때 부르는 게 값일 정도로 일대 부동산 값이 뛰기도 했다”고 말했다.

2009년 1월 기준 궁항마을의 공시지가는 임야와 전답, 대지에 따라 다르지만 공히 3.3㎡(1평)당 3만 원 이하 수준. 이 전 회장이 매입한 궁항마을 해안 끝 쪽 임야와 모개도의 가격은 이중 가장 낮아 1만 원에 못 미친다. 2004년 매입 당시 공시지가도 이와 크게 다르지 않다.

하지만 이 전 회장은 2차 매입 당시 6만2700여㎡(1만9000여 평)을 7억2000만 원 정도에 매입한 것으로 알려졌다. 3.3㎡당 4만 원 정도. 주변 부동산에 따르면 현재 궁항마을의 경우 3.3㎡당 5만~15만 원에서 호가가 형성돼 있다. 여수시에 자리한 한 부동산중개소 대표는 “길이 끊어지고 임야지대라 이건희 전 회장이 매입할 당시에도 공시지가는 현재 수준 정도였는데 약간 웃돈을 주고 산 것으로 안다”며 “이후 소문이 퍼지면서 가격이 급등해 최고 4배까지 뛰기도 했지만 지금은 거품이 꺼진 상태로 이 전 회장 땅의 경우 3.3㎡당 5만 원 정도가 호가”라고 전했다. 하지만 이마저도 거래가 없어 정확한 매매가는 파악하기 어렵다는 것이다.

결국 부동산 시세 차익은 없다는 설명. 그렇다면 이건희 전 회장은 무엇 때문에 연고도 없는 여수까지 내려와 토지와 무인도를 매입했을까? 궁항마을 옆 장척마을에서 만난 주민들은 “이곳의 터를 본 것”이라고 분석했다. 오래도록 이장을 지냈다는 김모씨는 “그룹이 수조 원의 연매출을 올리고, 주식만으로도 엄청난 부를 가진 사람이 이 시골까지 와서 땅투기를 하겠느냐”라며 “당시 헬기를 타고 이 주변 상공을 여러 차례 돌 만큼 풍수를 따졌고, 이때 유명한 지관이 동행했다는 이야기를 들었다”고 전했다.

궁항마을 야산과 모개도 매입 이후 4년이 되도록 별다른 개발 움직임이 없는 것에 대해 삼성 측 반응은 “이 전 회장 개인이 매입한 부동산으로 그룹 차원에서 그 의중을 알 길이 없다”는 것이다. 그러나 마을 사람들이 짐작하는 궁항마을 야산의 용도는 ‘묏자리’다.

궁항마을의 김 이장은 “구입 당시 그룹 연수원 용도라는 말이 돌긴 했지만 우리 생각으로는 개인 별장이라면 모를까 그룹 연수원을 짓기엔 터가 좁다”며 “이 전 회장이 구입한 마을 끝자락 임야와 모개도엔 이곳 문중들의 묘가 10여 기 정도 있었는데 모두 정리했다”고 말했다. 장척마을에서 만난 일단의 노인들도 “이 전 회장이 산 땅은 명당으로 소문나 궁항마을 주민들과 외지인들이 묏자리로 눈여겨본 곳”이라며 “모개도를 산 것도 묏자리 전망을 확보하기 위한 것”이라고 말했다.

여수 소재의 부동산개발업자들은 이 섬의 용도를 ‘영빈관’이라고 내다봤다. 오는 2012년 여수엑스포 기간 중 삼성 측이 국내외 귀빈을 모시기 위한 접견별장이 될 것이라는 전망. 모개도는 경사가 완만한 산으로 이루어져 있어 건축이 용이하며, 해안가엔 하얀 백사장도 갖추고 있어 영빈관을 짓기에 적당하다는 평이다. 한 재계 인사도 “여수 엑스포가 유치되면 행사장과 가까운 곳에 바이어를 특별히 대접할 공간이 필요할 것이고, 일종의 리조트 같은 영빈관이 지어질 것으로 본다”고 전했다. 하지만 이 전 회장이 매입한 땅의 경우 ‘자연녹지지역’으로 지정되어 있기 때문에 해당 부지의 전면적인 개발이 수월하지 않을 것이란 게 부동산업계의 대체적인 견해다.

이 전 회장 외에도 사곡리 땅엔 의외의 주인이 등장한다. GS칼텍스 대표이사 허동수 회장의 장남인 허세홍 상무. 정유사업을 하는 GS칼텍스는 석유공업단지가 있는 여수시에 토지 14만1389㎡(4만2845평)를 가지고 있다. 허 상무가 보유한 땅은 이건희 전 회장의 모개도와 마주 보는 해안가다. 허 상무는 이 전 회장이 섬을 산 지 한 달 뒤인 2005년 1월에 매입한 것으로 알려졌다.

통일교 관광개발은 날개를 달고

이들 재벌그룹들 못지않게 여수 땅에 깊숙이 진출한 곳은 문선명 총재가 이끌고 있는 통일교 관계사 일상해양산업이다. 현재 일상해양산업은 이건희 전 회장의 땅 소재지인 소라면과 접한 화양면에 부지를 매입하고 관광단지 개발을 착수한 상태다. 일상해양산업은 이 부지에 화양복합관광단지(여수시 화양면), 디오션리조트(여수시 소호동), 골프장, 호텔, 승마클럽 등 위락시설을 대규모로 건설한다는 계획을 세워놓고 있다. 이를 위해 총 사업비 1조5000억 원을 투자한다는 계획이다.
일상해양산업 ‘동북아 해양관광 허브’를 목표로 추진하는 여수 화양복합관광단지 조성공사는 현재 순조롭게 진행되고 있다. 일단 ‘선도사업’ 격인 골프 아일랜드 지구 공사가 예정대로 진행돼 내년 12월 정도면 화양면 안포리와 장수리 일원에 18홀 규모의 골프장과 별장형 콘도 등이 조성된다.

소호동에 건설한 디오션리조트는 이미 남해안 지역의 명소로 자리 잡았다. 얕은 산중턱 높이에 위치해 여수 신항 앞의 가막만과 다도해가 보이고, 여수시청에서 차로 7~8분이면 도착할 수 있어 지난해 7월 개장한 이후 반 년 만에 흑자를 달성한 것. 디오션리조트는 여수시 소호동 해안가 11만8800㎡(3만6000평)에 자리하는데, 지상 7층·지하 4층의 콘도미니엄과 스파시설을 갖춘 물놀이장이 있다. 20층 규모의 오성급 호텔은 여수엑스포 개최 전인 2011년 개장을 목표로 건설 중. “입소문이 빠르게 번지면서 여수·광양·순천은 물론 전국 곳곳에서 사람들이 몰려들기 시작했다”는 게 일성해양산업 측 설명이다. 최근에는 여수 거문도에 첫 관광호텔을 건립하는 삽을 뜨기도 했다. 디오션 거문도 리조트에는 사업비 500억 원을 들여 거문도 덕촌마을 바닷가 부지 3만3612㎡(1만180평)에 지상 3층, 지하 3층 규모의 관광호텔과 콘도, 대규모 해수풀장 등을 만든다. 내년 말 준공 예정.

여수에는 일상해양산업 외에도 세계기독교통일신령협회, 재단법인세계기독교통일신령협회유지재단 등 통일교 재단이 토지와 건물을 다수 보유하고 있다. 문선명 총재 또한 국내에 체류할 때는 통일교 시설들이 밀집한 가평에 머물면서 전용 헬기로 서울과 여수시 화양면 장수리 해양 복합레저단지 건설 현장을 오가며 회의를 주관하고 있는 것으로 알려져 있다. 이에 대해 일상해양산업 측은 “일본과 중국 등을 대상으로 해양관광사업을 펼치기 위한 장기적 안목에서 여수를 선택한 것”이라며 “여수가 가진 인프라야말로 최대의 관광자원”이라고 강조했다.


여수 땅 소유 유명인은 또 누가 있나

여수시 화양지구와 이웃한 율촌면∼소라면을 잇는 해안가와 섬은 수려한 경관 덕분에 일찌감치 외지인의 토지 매입이 종종 있었던 곳이다. 이 지역은 한때 여수 엑스포 개최지 확정과 맞물려 부동산 투기 열풍이 일기도 했다. 지역 부동산업계 관계자는 “유명인들의 섬 매입 등이 알려지면서 이곳 일대 땅값이 20만∼30만 원으로 2∼5배 올랐다”고 전했다.

유명인으로는 탤런트 최불암씨를 들 수 있다. 최씨는 이건희 전 회장과 이웃한 섬 중 하나인 소라면 사곡리의 복개도를 보유하다가 2002년께 이 섬을 서울의 한 부동산업자에게 넘긴 것으로 알려졌다. 복개도는 만조가 되면 섬이 되었다가 썰물 때면 육지인 장척마을과 다시 연결되는 이른바 ‘모세의 기적’이 일어나는 섬. 이곳 역시 ‘일몰’이 장관으로, 복개도와 모개도 사이의 바다를 붉게 물들이는 일몰 광경을 구경하기 위해 매년 연말이면 많은 관광객이 찾고 있다. 주변 광장은 ‘해넘이 관광지’로 불리기도 한다. 특히 이 섬들 주변엔 각종 패류가 풍성하고, 낙지도 유명하다.

복개도와 모개도 사이에 자리한 장구도는 최근 몇 년 동안 수차례 주인이 바뀌었다. 때문에 “실제로는 이 회장이 구입한 것 아니냐”는 의혹도 나오고 있는 것. 하지만 사곡리 4개 마을 이장들에게 확인 결과, 2004년 이후 이건희 전 회장 명의의 추가 매입은 없는 것으로 나타났다. 여수시 관계자 또한 “이 회장이 구입한 땅은 자연환경보존지구와 수자원보호구역으로 묶여 건축과 개발행위가 규제돼 있다”며 “각종 설만 난무할 뿐이지 어떤 방법으로 사용할지에 대해서는 아는 바가 없다”고 말했다.

여수개발에 참여한 일본 투자단도 눈에 띈다. 지난해 3월 1만 명에 달하는 대규모 일본투자단이 전남 여수시 화양면에 개발 중인 ‘화양지구 종합해양관광레저단지’에 대한 투자를 저울질하기 위해 연달아 현지를 방문한 것. 일상해양산업이 민단 및 조총련계 한인 자본과 일본 자본의 투자를 이끌기 위해 1만 명의 투자단을 초청했는데, 이후 Onmost, Glitter star 등 소수의 외국투자회사뿐 아니라 일본 자본도 여수개발 프로젝트에 가세했다는 게 현지 분석이다.


<여수·조득진 기자 chodj21@kyunghyang.com>

통일교, 거문도에 해양호텔 준공

통일교, 거문도에 해양호텔 준공

통일교, 거문도에 해양호텔 준공
이길상 기자
승인 2011-09-17 

▲ 거문도 해양호텔 준공식 모습(사진제공:통일교)

2012여수세계박람회, 숙박 인프라에 큰 기여

[천지일보=이길상 기자] 통일교가 거문도 해양호텔 준공식을 거행했다. 이 호텔은 문선명 총재가 주도하고 있는 여수를 중심한 해양관광단지 개발 사업의 일환이다.





지난 12일 열린 준공식에는 문선명 총재 내외, 스탈링스 대주교를 비롯한 미국종교지도자협의회(ACLC) 회원 172명, 일본 지도자 300여 명, 지역주민 등 3000여 명이 참석했다.



여수와 제주도 중간 지점에 위치한 다도해의 최남단 섬 거문도에 180억 원이 투입된 이 호텔은 전체면적 4891㎡ 지하 1층, 지상 3층의 건물로 객실 90개와 세미나실, 레스토랑, 연수시설 등을 갖췄다.




통일교는 “거문도 호텔은 여수박람회의 성공적인 개최를 돕고, 나아가 여수가 남해안의 관광복합단지로 도약하는 데 일조할 것으로 기대된다”고 밝혔다.



이날 행사에서 문선명 총재는 “21세기 65억 인류의 식량 자원의 보고가 해양”이라며 “한국 일본 미국 오세아니아 태평양 등 전 세계의 해양을 수십 년간 직접 개척하고 개발에 앞장섰다”라고 소감을 피력했다.



강동석 세계박람회 조직위원장은 축사에서 “거문도에 호텔을 준공하게 된 것에 대해 정말 축하의 말씀을 전한다”며 “총재님의 자서전을 통해 인류의 비전이 바다에 있음을 많이 말씀하신 것을 알게 되었고, 다시 한 번 개인적으로 많이 공감했다”고 전했다.



한편 통일교는 동해안에 강원도 용평리조트를 운영하고 있으며, 2008년도 남해안에 여수 디오션리조트를 개장했고, 같은 해 서해안에 무창포 비체펠리스를 개장해 운영하는 등 전국적으로 리조트 사업을 활발히 추진하고 있다.

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Unification Church under siege in Brazil | WWRN - World-wide Religious News

Unification Church under siege in Brazil | WWRN - World-wide Religious News

Unification Church under siege in Brazil

"WND.com," May 14, 2002

RIO DE JANEIRO -- Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church – which owns real estate and other assets in Brazil thought to be worth nearly $250 million – is facing a major investigation here for alleged money laundering, tax evasion and abetting illegal immigration.

In addition, Moon's massive land acquisitions along national borders have raised concerns about regional security in South America. If prosecutors prove what they suspect is the real purpose of the church's activities there, their investigation could be the beginning of the end for Moon's vision of a new Eden on the continent.

Rev. Phillip Schanker, vice president of Moon's organization, the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, USA, acknowledged the Brazilian crackdown, but told WorldNetDaily it was politically motivated and that there is no evidence to support the charges. In addition, he said, his organization is responsible for a great deal of philanthropy in the region, such as the donation of dozens of ambulances to local communities.

The church's far-flung empire includes several media properties, including The Washington Times and Insight magazine, the World and I magazine, and more recently, United Press International.

Paradise for believers

Over the last decade, the Family Federation for World Peace, Moon's organization, has bought land in South America that Moon himself has estimated at close to 1.2 million hectares.

Much of that territory includes the sprawling New Hope Farm, a paradisical but largely idle plantation larger than some countries, extending across the Brazilian border into Paraguay and Bolivia. According to Moon, the fertile lands and mineral resources in the region are "big enough to feed one or two hundred million people."

The charges against Moon's organization arose after a former employee, Korean translator Jae Sik Kim, complained to the Labor Ministry late last year that he had been cheated out of his salary. His testimony, which included charges of fraud, sparked a police investigation in December that has rapidly accelerated after years of growing government unease over Moon's activities, culminating in a massive search and seizure operation last week.

According to a Federal Police statement, "although formally established in the country as a philanthropic entity, the (Family Federation for Unification and World Peace) has developed a diversified program, generating ... a high level of doubt about its true objectives."

After seizing bank records in February, federal authorities on May 6 conducted a simultaneous raid on church holdings in 15 cities throughout Brazil.

Following the money

Sergio Messias, the Federal Revenue Service's intelligence chief for the southwest region, believes that the Unification Church is acting fraudulently in Brazil as a commercial entity under the guise of a not-for-profit organization.

The two main elements of the investigation underway involve allegations that taxes should have been paid by the church as a commercial entity, and of money laundering involving currency illegally imported to Brazil. If proven, the allegations could result in the appropriation of the church's real estate, and criminal penalties including jail terms for the group's leaders.

"The Revenue Service believes that the real purpose of Moon's organization, specifically the land acquisitions, in Brazil is to create a tourism complex for commercial purposes," Messias told WND.

In the Brazilian section alone, the international estate extends over 85,000 hectares in Mato Grosso do Sul. According to the Revenue Service's calculations, the group owes taxes on about $30 million to $35 million per year in undeclared income from those lands, plus unpaid rural taxes, since 1996.

"We have discovered that the money used to purchase the land came from the U.S., Japan, and Korea, from either the Unification Church itself or from entities linked to the church," Messias said.

Although the Family Federation for Unification and World Peace is registered in Brazil as a domestic entity, and in the name of Brazilian individuals, Messias said there is solid evidence that those that control the organization and make the decision to purchase land are foreigners.

But under Brazilian law, foreigners are barred from purchasing land 150 kilometers from the national border, which would entitle the court to seize those lands. Authorities are also considering appropriation of the rest of the vast estate, by the Incra land reform agency.

Surprise visits

Family Federation's Schanker said he's been in communication with the Brazilian ambassador in the United States trying to work through the allegations "for the past year-and-a-half," insisting the church has "fully cooperated" with Brazilian authorities.

"Starting in September 2000," Schanker said, the Brazilian government "began making requests for information" regarding Moon's operation. "All I can say is we have been cooperative and have given them all the information they have requested."

Local officials "have visited the place several times," he said, including a number of "surprise visits."

He said he knew nothing about the charges that the church owed millions in back taxes to Brazilian tax agencies.

"They looked for drugs, they looked for cross-border connections, they looked for all kinds of things but came up with nothing because we have been open and cooperative," he said.

Schanker notes that the church has a school in the area – which now has 300 students – and has "donated at least 57 ambulances" to local communities. He also says the church has contributed "a large amount of land" for the formation of a national park.

"We've bent over backwards to cooperate," he adds, acknowledging that he personally submitted a five-page report in 2000 to the Brazilian ambassador's office in the U.S., "answering their questions as to who owned the land [and] what was our purpose for it."

Alarmed by the Unification Church's land acquisitions, the Mato Grosso do Sul State Assembly has set up a special inquiry to investigate the organization. That inquiry calculates that some $200 million could have entered the country illegally.

Through 1999, the most recent data from the Revenue Service, only $40 million had passed legally through the Central Bank.

While the amount that may have entered Brazil illegally is still not known, Messias maintains there is clear evidence of money laundering.

"We have heard testimony from various individuals who crossed the border from Bolivia or Paraguay carrying in some cases about $200,000 in currency," Messias said, adding that the amount allegedly laundered in such a way is estimated in the millions of dollars.

In addition the revenue agency found that thousands of visitors to the New Hope Farm each year contributed from $1,000 to $10,000 each over a period of years to take part in the church's "contemplative tourism" offerings, such as 40-day seminars.

"A very conservative estimate would be that about $10 million per year were laundered this way," Messias said.

Investigators claim the decision to buy land was intended to maximize its return from tourism and mineral resources. According to Messias, this suspicion reinforces the hypothesis that they were acquired by a foreign entity for commercial purposes, rather than for philanthropy.

The region, apart from its natural beauty and fertile soil, also contains some of the largest ground reserves of fresh water in the world. Those reserves are expected to multiply in value in the coming decades as fresh water becomes increasingly scarce, Messias said.

According to the Unification Church website, Moon commented on the scarcity of water after a visit to South America, saying: "What do you need most in nature? Water. Without water, nothing will survive. All the food we consume requires water. Whoever controls water will control the future world."

Evidence shows that the group also targeted purchases of land containing some of Brazil's richest bio-diversity.

"We also have evidence that as soon as they discovered that foreigners could purchase land in the Pantanal wetland preserve, the group began conducting real estate evaluations, over-flights, and other activity that we believe shows intent to purchase up to 1 million more hectares," said Messias.

That activity stopped late last year when the investigation intensified.

Police conduct massive sweep

According to a statement by the Federal Police superintendent in Mato Grosso do Sul, Wantuir Brasil Jancini, "the Moon case is of concern, because he acquired huge tracts of land, but we have heard nothing about the economic activity in the area."

In between spiritual meetings, food preparation, cleaning and other activities, an estimated 800 foreign volunteers per month arrive at New Hope Farm to provide volunteer labor in farming, fishing, ranching and other activities such as apiculture and an experimental ostrich farm. That is not to mention the millions reaped through tourism as thousands of church members flock to the region each year to take part in religious teachings and stay in comfortable hotels owned by the church.

The Federal Police said about 50 church-sponsored illegal immigrants have been discovered so far, the fruit of immigration control operations started when the New Hope Project was begun.

After months of surveillance and subpoenas of the church's bank records, authorities conducted a massive search-and-seizure operation May 6 to collect material evidence in 15 cities in Mato Grosso do Sul and Sao Paulo states. About 70 federal police, acting with 35 revenue inspectors, public prosecutors and state officials began sweeping farms, homes, hotels and offices belonging to church members.

What they found was a Taurus .380 pistol, three laptop computers, 20 CPUs from microcomputers, a mobile satellite telephone, $16,000 in travelers checks and $214 in brand new single notes, hundreds of videos, audio tapes, CD-ROMs and documents written mainly in the Korean language. Brazilian law does not permit unfettered search and seizure, although the protections are not as broad as those in the United States. Police obtained authorization for the raids based on a series of legal protocols.

According to a police spokesman, "the next step is to analyze all these materials for indications of crime, which will then be handed over to federal prosecutors. The process will take some time, because just counting the bank records there are up to 30,000 branches in the country that may have to be investigated."

Messias estimates this aspect of the investigation will take months to resolve.

East of Eden

Immigration authorities say the Unification Church has been officially active in Brazil since 1976, but other sources claim the group arrived as early as 1964. The church also has vast business assets in Uruguay, where it began its South American expansion and is said to be planning a seaport, territory in Argentina and interests in other parts of Latin America besides the international New Hope Farm.

The ambition of the site's planned temple, hotel and university complex could rival the Ziggurat. It is said that the complex was planned to host up to 30,000 followers, or nearly the entire population of two neighboring cities, Jardim and Guia Lopes da Laguna, but had been blocked on violations of building codes. The estimated current capacity at the site is some 3,000 people.

According to Unification Church's leaders in Brazil, such as Neudir Ferabolli, a lawyer for the organization whose own bank records were among those seized, the blitz on the church's holdings represents religious persecution by authorities and individuals, who do not understand the group's philosophy or its purpose in Brazil.

Ferabolli dismisses the charges as little more than religious persecution and the state legislature's investigation as grandstanding during an election year, according to an Associated Press report.

"It's more like they want us to buy them," Ferabolli said of accusations the association was trying to use its money to buy influence with the region's politicians.

Allegations never proven

The presence of the Unification Church has had an uneasy past in this predominately Catholic country. In 1981, the Justice Ministry launched an investigation for supposed "brainwashing" of youths after receiving dozens of letters denouncing the church.

However, allegations of violating child protection laws and holding youths against their parents' will were never proven. But local communities invaded and destroyed some of the church's offices, leading to protests by the group that it had been persecuted for its religious beliefs, but evidence shows the federal government had, in fact, sided with the church.

Classified documents from the 1981 Justice Ministry investigation, published by Brazil's Estado do São Paulo newspaper, suggested the military regime at the time supported Moon because "the Unification Church fights openly against international communism ... and therefore is a means to balance the very uneven activities of subversive organizations in our country."

Over the years, both the Catholic Church and Protestant movements have sought to have the Unification Church expelled from Brazil, sending letters to the Justice Ministry about the alleged "depersonalization" of Moon's followers and questioning his "unorthodox" interpretation of Christian theology.

Unification Church in Brazil

The philanthropic acts and land purchases at over market value begun in 1996 ended the discreet profile the church had adopted after the 1981 investigation. Church missionaries have since complained of harassment, such as difficulty with obtaining phone lines in some areas, and "negative" press reports involving alleged drug trafficking, as well as other accusations the group has denied.

In a speech in New York, transcribed on the Unification Church website, Moon said: "Even among the South Americans, no one worked as hard as I have for the sake of South America."

Moon founded his church in 1954 based on his landmark work, "The Divine Principle." His movement seeks to "clarify the meaning of the Bible and all the world's scriptures, paving the way for the world's religions to resolve their internal struggles and become resources for building world peace."

Among the most prominent Moon activities in Brazil was financial support for soccer clubs, a Brazilian national pastime. One such team, the New Hope Sports Center, is a top-ranked club that won third place in the state championship in 2001, putting tiny Jardim on the map in professional sports.

"Although the Unification Movement is investing a substantial amount of money in the soccer team, the team has become an effective tool for opening the hearts of the people," Unification Church missionary Nelson Mira of Jardim wrote in an essay, "True Parents New Soccer Team Wows Brazil."

The group has carried out high-publicity charitable events, such as the donation of several dozen ambulances to local communities, plans to build a soccer stadium and other pledged investments amounting to $100 million, huge open barbecues and other such activities. The group and its ambitious undertakings also create jobs in the region for members and non-members alike, and have indisputably helped the local economy.

However, Brazilian authorities doubt the motives behind the Unification Church's philanthropy. Among the concerns is that the organization intends to expand its social and political influence in Brazil through its practice of arranged marriages between Brazilian and foreign citizens.

There are at least 25 documented cases of foreign church members who travel to Brazil while pregnant, give birth, then take these infant Brazilian citizens out of the country several months later, according to Messias.

This part of Moon's activity in the region is of concern, he says, because it suggests that the Unification Church is busily building what could become in effect an independent religious state in South America.

In Moon's work, "Blessing and Ideal Family," he explains the purpose behind the arranged marriages: "When we can go into every country without restriction because of these international marriages, the walls which were high and strong will be destroyed."

According to Messias, "we began this investigation seeking to determine the situation with the land taxes and whether or not the Family Federation for Unification and World Peace is conducting commercial activities. However, we found that the real problem was not just fiscal, but relates to national security."

Investigators suspect that the Unification Church plans to educate the children born in Brazil under Moon's philosophies for later reintroduction into Brazilian society, where they could assume political posts and other positions of power. Likewise, the land acquisitions are thought to be part of a larger scheme to set up foreign colonies in Brazil that would grow in influence over time and overtake national authority.

"These children could even become president one day," Messias said.

The Revenue Service is not alone in its suspicions. According to recent statements in the press by Defense Minister Geraldo Quintao, the Unification Church and its expansion in South America over the last decade is "not well looked upon."

Moon has reportedly proposed U.N. administration of demilitarized "buffer zones" in areas of intense conflict, specifically along the 38th parallel between the Koreas. According to Moon's vision, the land ceded to create these zones would be compensated by the South American real estate. Brazilian officials allege this is a point of concern for national security.

According to a Moon speech published by his group: "I am working to make a balance between the third world and first world nations, based on nearly 60 island nations, and to connect them with South America. These countries of South America opposed me, but because of my investment they will change. Eventually this will connect to and be part of the U.N. foundation."

Quintao has already met with his Bolivian counterpart to discuss the situation with Moon's land purchase across the border, and both agreed to set up a special intelligence subgroup to monitor the activity on their borders and with Paraguay, where Moon's organization is also active.

"When a foreign individual appears wanting to buy land on both sides of a border, establishing continuity with land on the other side, evidently this is of interest to the intelligence sector and needs to be accompanied with attention," Quintao said.

'Persecution'

Schanker says he believes the church is being subjected to unwarranted persecution.

"This seems clearly a case of government interference in the affairs of a religious organization," he said. "There is no commercial intent for that property."

Schanker denied there was anything to charges of money laundering, tax evasion and illegal immigration. "Impossible," he said.

He said the same kind of persecution occurred against Moon in the U.S. in the late 1970's.

The Unification church's teachings "stirred up a lot of investigations and a lot of questions and prejudice," Schanker told WND, adding that the group was subjected to a lot of probing by congressional committees and other federal agencies.

Eventually, Moon was charged and convicted of tax evasion – "for an amount that was beneath the Justice Department – $7,300 over a three-year period," Schanker said, on "an account that had been closed for three years on monies that the church said were public, not private."

Brazilian authorities "have put every kind of stumbling block in our way," he said. "We have tried to give them every bit of access possible. But why do they bring machine guns, break down doors, and create an image as if we're a criminal organization? It's crazy. It's hype."

Schanker called charges that the church was attempting to set up foreign colonies in Brazil "ridiculous."

"We haven't converted anybody," he said. "If anyone would interview people at our school, for example, they'd tell you we're not interested" in those kinds of activities.

Such charges "are absolutely unfounded," he added. "They are just fomenting hysteria for either political or religious reasons."

Sun Myung Moon's Lost Eco-Utopia - Outside Online

Sun Myung Moon's Lost Eco-Utopia - Outside Online

Sun Myung Moon’s Lost Eco-Utopia


A decade before his death, Sun Myung Moon—multimillionaire founder of the controversial Unification Church—sent a band of followers deep into the wilds of Paraguay, with orders to build the ultimate utopian community and eco-resort. So how’s that working out? Monte Reel machetes his way toward heaven on Earth.

Monte ReelFeb 20, 2013






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Day three aboard this muggy cargo boat and I’m still incapable of turning around without bumping into a hanging bag of oranges, or a sack of wheat flour, or a jug of cooking oil. Crammed to the rafters with rapidly perishing produce, the Aquidaban is as colorful and claustrophobic as an Arabian souk. An unwritten rule confines pigs, chickens, and goats to the foredeck, but two plus-size rats, Carlos and Pepe, as named by the cook who ladles out the stew, have the run of the ship. The rawboned cats prowling around are wise not to pick fights.

Photo GalleryImages from Monte Reel’s journey through Paraguay.

Lunar EclipseA look at the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s wild career.
Reverend Moon’s VIP house at the Victorious Holy Place of Puerto Leda.
The pool is cleaned daily but the Messiahs rarely use it.

For roughly six dollars a day, anyone can hitch a ride aboard this floating market, a 128-footer that runs a weekly route on the Paraguay River from the center of the country to its northern border. Dozens of locals have wedged themselves into the second deck. They include women and children, but most are bushwhackers: men who scrape out a living clearing trees and brush for small-scale livestock farmers along the upper stretches of the river. Some travel with their own chainsaws. Others carry machetes wrapped in newspaper. They huddle shoulder to shoulder, dulling their discomfort with cans of Ouro Fino, Paraguay’s cheapest beer. Most speak the indigenous language of Guarani first, Spanish second.

I’m with Toni Greaves, an Australian photographer. With my notebooks, her cameras, and our English, we’re conspicuous outsiders. Occasionally, I catch the men staring at us and speaking in lowered voices, as if taking bets on what exactly we’re up to. They’ll never guess. We’re looking for paradise. I’ve heard it’s under construction just upriver.

According to my GPS, we’ve crept into the southern edge of the Pantanal, a tropical wetland that’s about 30 times larger than Everglades National Park. The clear divide between the river and its banks has begun to dissolve. Floating islands of rubbery-stemmed water hyacinths grow big enough to be mistaken for solid land. Water encircles the trunks of riverside wax palms, and dark stains mark how much higher on the trees it can rise. The red-dirt roads in this part of the country are washed out for months at a time, and when temperatures as hot as 120 degrees bake them dry, they become dangerously rutted. This boat is the only reliable mode of transport serving the riverside villages.


A couple of times a day, we stop at a predetermined location, which can be as simple as a single shack with nothing else in sight but water and scrubland. A crewman shoves a long wooden gangplank out to the bank. Mattresses, motorcycles, chocolate cookies, oxcart wheels—there’s no predicting what might pass over those splintered boards to the families pacing with anticipation at the river’s edge.

One of the Guarani-speaking bushwhackers standing next to me on the foredeck can’t contain his curiosity. “Which stop are you getting off at?” he asks in rusty Spanish. Five or six of his friends—all, like him, in their twenties, with baseball caps pulled low over their brows—stop chatting and pretend not to eavesdrop. “Puerto Leda,” I answer.

He tilts back a can of Ouro Fino. I ask him if he’s heard of it. Of course, he says. He rides this boat once a month, and it always stops at Puerto Leda. But, like everyone else I’ve quizzed on board, he’s never walked ashore to look around.

“I know that some Japanese men live there,” he tells me. “They’re with the Moon sect.” He drains the can, eyeing me. “Are you?”

“No,” I say. An orange sun abruptly sinks under the tree line on the river’s west bank, and within 15 minutes an orange moon pops up over the opposite horizon, paling as it rises. I duck inside the pilothouse. The captain predicts we’ll reach Puerto Leda in the dark hours of early morning.

THE REVEREND SUN MYUNG Moon, who died in September 2012 at age 92, about a year after my trip to Puerto Leda, founded the Unification Church in South Korea in 1954. In addition to overseeing the church, which he said aimed to fulfill Jesus’ unfinished mission by establishing a new “kingdom of heaven on Earth,” Moon managed vast commercial interests and called himself a messiah. He was frequently accused of cult practices, in part because some of his hundreds of thousands of followers turned over very personal decisions—including the choice of marriage partner—to him. More than a decade ago, Moon told some members of his church that he wanted them to lay the foundation for a new Garden of Eden in one of the least hospitable landscapes on the planet—northern Paraguay.


Moon was notorious for attention-grabbing gestures: conducting mass weddings in Madison Square Garden, taking out full-page ads in major American newspapers to support Richard Nixon during Watergate, spending 13 months in federal prison for tax fraud and conspiracy in the early '80s. But during the final years of his life, his Eden-building project kept chugging along well out of the public eye, germinating largely unseen in this remote wilderness of mud.

In 2000, Moon paid an undisclosed amount for roughly 1.5 million acres of land fronting the Paraguay River. Most of that property was in a town called Puerto Casado, about 100 miles downriver from Puerto Leda. Moon’s subsidiaries wanted the land to open commercial enterprises ranging from logging to fish farming. But a group of Puerto Casado residents launched a bitter legal battle to nullify the deal. While that controversy continued to divide Paraguayans, the Puerto Leda project proceeded under the radar. Moon turned the land over to 14 Japanese men—“national messiahs,” according to church documents, who were instructed to build an “ideal city” where people could live in harmony with nature, as God intended it. Moon declared that the territory represented “the least developed place on earth, and, hence, closest to original creation.”

Moon wasn’t the first utopian to favor Paraguay. Examine many European maps drawn between 1600 and 1775 and you’ll find something labeled Lago Xarayes at the head of the Paraguay River. Conquistadores journeying up the river confronted the inundated plains and confused them for a massive inland sea. Tribes spoke about a Land Without Evil on the far side of Xarayes, and the Spaniards believed that the same area hid a gateway to El Dorado, the lost city of gold. By the 1800s, most mapmakers correctly recognized the Xarayes as a mirage and relabeled it as part of the Pantanal.


Still, the dream lived on for some. In 1886, a German anti-Semite named Bernhard Förster and his wife, Elisabeth Nietzsche—Frederich’s sister—founded Nueva Germania, a colony located about 115 miles southeast of Concepción that was designed to spawn generations of Aryan Übermensch. After three years of feverish struggle in the jungle heat, Förster mixed himself a cocktail of morphine and strychnine, drank deeply, died, and left the place in a state of irreversible decline. The next century brought utopian colonies of Australian socialists, Finnish vegetarians, English pacifists, and German Nazis. They all failed.

So how are Moon’s followers—or Moonies, as they don’t like to be called—holding up? Hard to say. I’m aware of two other journalists who’ve seen Puerto Leda. One, a British Catholic missionary, visited after the first colonists arrived and was unable to fathom their motives. Maybe they were smuggling drugs, she insinuated in a church magazine. The other, a Paraguayan newspaper reporter, visited in 2008 and published a few articles praising the Unification Church’s philanthropic work, which includes building schools in rural areas. The reporter championed the ecotourism potential around Puerto Leda but included no details about the people living there.

A few weeks before my trip, I got in touch with a Unification Church office in Asunción. The initial response was warm: I’d be welcome to visit, a representative said. But by the time I arrived in the capital, things had gotten complicated.

For much of the past decade, Moon’s surviving children (he fathered 15 from two marriages) have been fighting for control of the empire. The bickering has extended to Paraguay, where the Unification Church has established several corporations or foundations that oversee agribusiness interests. In 2010, Moon’s eldest living son from his second marriage, Hyun Jin Moon, organized a Global Peace Festival in Asunción, but the Unification Church’s regional director refused to recognize the event. He claimed that Hyun Jin Moon had fallen out of favor with his father. Moon’s eldest daughter, Ye Jin, later backed the director. Now the church’s various offices in Paraguay were pledging allegiance to different sides.


Just days before Greaves and I arrived in Asunción, one of Moon’s local subsidiaries announced that it planned to sue the office I had contacted. My calls and messages went unanswered. By the time I boarded the Aquidaban, I’d begun to suspect that the National Messiahs in Puerto Leda might have no clue we were coming.

Around 5 a.m., the boat begins to veer to port. We inch along the west bank, and I see nothing resembling the gates of Eden. It’s dark. My mind drifts to the British missionary’s 2000 account of Puerto Leda, which described her arriving “in the blackness of night on the crocodile-ridden bank,” where she was accosted by an attack dog “with a jawful of long white teeth.”

“Think positive thoughts,” Greaves tells me.

Greaves believes that positive conceptualization makes good things happen. During our first two days on the boat, we kept joking about the “friendly little lizard” that ate her bananas and scattered droppings all over the crime scene. There are no lizards on this boat, just Carlos and Pepe.

I succumb to negative thinking. My imagination fills the darkness with visions: the curled lip of a snarling dog, the slow, patient blink of a crocodile’s eyelid.

NO CROCODILES, NO DOGS. Just one man, a portly Paraguayan navy guard in military fatigues, awaits us at the end of the gangplank. He smiles without joy. “This isn’t where you want to get off,” he says.

“This is Puerto Leda, and the people here are expecting us,” I say. I drop some names: the man I had been leaving messages with in Asunción, his secretary. The guard has never heard of them. But the fact that we know where the hell we are seems good enough for him. He abandons the role of brick wall and welcomes us into this humid kingdom. Beyond the small wooden cabin where he sleeps, I see a string of lights farther inland—the heart of Puerto Leda.

“Do you have repellent?” he asks.


My skin is lacquered in a stiff coat of stale sweat and deet. “Lots.”

“Good,” he says. “You’ll see at night. We can’t even talk to each other because of the mosquitoes that fly into our mouths.”

Another man has arrived in a truck to siphon fuel from a tank on the Aquidaban. He introduces himself as Wilson, a site administrator. He’s not a National Messiah but rather a 44-year-old Chilean with a youthful, friendly face, a polo shirt, and rubber boots, a Moon follower who moved here two years ago. His wife and children are still in Chile.

“I didn’t know anyone was supposed to be coming,” he says. Walking to his truck, he fishes out a phone and executes a minor miracle: he pulls a signal from the air and places a call, trying to figure out if anyone in the colony knows anything about our visit. He comes up empty but still helps us with our bags, tossing them in the back of his truck.

“Let’s go,” he says.

The Aquidaban drifts away, and we bounce along a dirt road, leaving the guard behind at his cabin. “It’s a naval station,” Wilson explains, a gift from the Messiahs to the Paraguayan government. In exchange for a permanent security presence, he says, the navy now has a base to patrol the upper stretches of the river.

Within a minute, the headlights reveal an indistinct cluster of buildings. I can make out what appear to be several two-story houses, a water tower, a couple of large communal buildings, and a cell-phone tower.

Wilson kills the engine in front of a structure that looks nothing like the humble river-side casitas found throughout this region, a district the size of South Carolina in which about 80 percent of the 11,000 residents lack running water. The building in front of us has a peaked terra-cotta roof, brick-and-stucco walls, expansive glass windows, and no fewer than five remote-controlled Carrier air-conditioning units. At the front door, a dozen pairs of leather slippers wait for us. “Very Japanese,” Greaves observes. We remove our dirty shoes and take our first steps into Reverend Moon’s Victorious Holy Place.


All is silent. Wilson flips a switch, throwing light on what appears to be a dining hall. The large wooden tables, each covered with a plastic tablecloth, could accommodate about 100 people. They are vacant.

“There aren’t many people around right now,” Wilson explains. “But sometimes we have 100 working here at once.”

I spot just one, a Paraguayan cook who emerges from a kitchen. With disconcerting efficiency, a buffet breakfast materializes on a table: fresh coffee, tea, miso soup, fried eggs, cereal, cheese, ham, fruit, bread, and marmalade.

“Wow,” I say, the word bubbling up from some primitive part of my brain as I attempt to take in everything at once: the kingly buffet, the decorative carvings on the high-back chairs, the FISH OF THE PANTANAL poster, the Ping-Pong table in a far corner, the neatly stacked Spanish-language copies of Reverend Moon’s autobiography, As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen, near the wall. An ascetically thin Japanese man in a polo shirt and jeans walks toward us, smiling behind wire-rimmed glasses.

“Good morning,” he says in English.

He pads across the glazed tiles with a hurried shuffle, as if he’s been waiting for us for years. He’s 62, and his name is Katsumi Date (pronounced dah-tay), or just Mister Date, as Wilson addresses him. He’s a National Messiah.

“Please enjoy your breakfast,” he tells us. “Would you like a hot shower?”

Actually, we would. On the Aquidaban, a rubber hose dangling into a stricken toilet doubled as a handheld showerhead. Here we’ll discover that individually wrapped soaps and shampoos are freely available in the tiled showers, as are clean towels. Indulging our physical comfort appears to be Mister Date’s only priority. He’s already made beds for us, he says, in case we need a nap after such a long journey. He apologizes repeatedly for not being better prepared. “We weren’t expecting visitors,” he reiterates.

“So,” he asks, “what is it you would like to see?”

Well, we’d like to see what 12 years of dedicated labor in pursuit of earthly perfection looks like. The Aquidaban is scheduled to hit the end of its weeklong route this afternoon, turn around, and stop here again sometime in the evening. We’ve got 15 hours, maximum, to find out. “Everything,” I answer.


The place, Mister Date says, is all ours.

A FEW HUNDRED YARDS from the guard station, I spot a sportfishing boat docked at the riverside. It’s big—about 30 feet long, fiberglass, with a prominent cockpit. I ask Mister Date about it.

“Ah yes,” he says. “Reverend Moon designed that boat himself. It was brought here from New Jersey.”

Does the Reverend fish? I ask.

“Oh yes,” says Mister Date. “He is a world-champion tuna fisherman.”

The statement, technically speaking, is not false. In 1980, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Moon’s boat was declared the winner of an international tuna-fishing tournament organized by the Unification Church. “I don’t want to be second even in catching tuna,” he said in a speech delivered a few months after the competition. “In every field and competition, I have been second to none.”

Apparently, the True Father’s fishing jones was a deciding factor in the placement of Puerto Leda. Moon first visited the Paraguay River on fishing trips in the 1990s, and by decade’s end he was cruising down it and ordering church members to wade along the muddy banks to plant 63 signposts demarcating the land he had decided to buy.

In 1999, Moon called his most devoted Japanese followers to join him on a 40-day spiritual retreat outside Fuerte Olimpo, about 25 miles south of Puerto Leda. I’d read a brief description of those days on a church website. One Messiah had written: “It was very hot and we wanted to bathe in the water. But we could not because piranhas would come. It’s a big problem! Also there are problems with ants. One National Messiah became very sick from an ant bite. It’s a dangerous place. There are all these problems, but Father just says, ‘Ah, the purity of nature!’”

Clarity was never the True Father’s specialty. Even Moon’s followers had trouble understanding him at times. In addition to calling for a return to Original Creation here, he told his devotees, in 2000, that “we need to build the best underwater palace in the world.” In 2011, he declared, “It is time to establish God’s throne at the top of the Grand Canyon.” Once, he held up his fourth finger and told some followers, “I was ready for today’s meeting before 1 a.m. Today is the seventh day of the tenth month. Today is the seventh day but there isn’t an eighth day. Who decided that? It was me, but I am in a position where I can’t do what I decided, because 10 fingers are related.”


A Moon website that publishes the English transcripts of his speeches warns that they’re based on notes and “may bear no similarity to what was originally said in Korean.” Deciphering Moonspeak is even more daunting when your task is building a new Eden. Back in 1999, when Moon called on the Messiahs to assemble in Paraguay for the 40-day retreat, he spent most of that time fishing. Near the end of their time together, he instructed them to build an ecologically sustainable city that could serve as a model for the whole world. The plan, such as it was, lacked specifics; not all of the founders agreed on what the city should look like. Yet they forged ahead, determined to create something extraordinary in a place where wilderness reigned.

Now, as I glance at the scene, I see huge dormitory buildings, guesthouses, and sheds for mechanical repairs. I count seven freshwater fish farms, fully stocked with pacu, a toothy species that looks like an overgrown piranha. I see no other people.

“Normally, there are about 10 of us who live here,” Mister Date tells me. “But this week six are away in Asunción. So there are just four now.”

WE WALK THROUGH EARLY-morning light on smooth sidewalks, past manicured gardens of hibiscus and bougainvillea, beside an Olympic-size swimming pool. A young man hired from a nearby village slowly sweeps a filtering net through the deep end. Nothing—not a single foreign particle—seems to mar the clean blue rectangle of water. We enter a two-story communal building that resembles an office complex. I see Wilson in a small room, tapping away at a computer. We climb a stone staircase to the second floor, following Mister Date into what appears to be a rec room. There’s a television hooked up to a satellite system, and Mister Date pops a disc into a DVD player. The DVD, Mister Date tells us, explains everything.


The footage that flashes across the screen dates from 1999. We see the founding Messiahs walk across untamed wastes—the grounds where we now sit. They lay bricks in wet mud. They sand metal frames. They wash dishes in the river. They wear heavy clothing, light fires to keep the mosquitoes away, and sweat in the wavy heat. They stagger through gale-force winds.

Then, in a clip from 2000, we see Moon himself, touring the partially cleared grounds, wiping sweat from his brow, eating lunch, leaving in a private plane. The footage segues into scenes of the men working feverishly to build a luxury house for Moon and his wife, Hak Ja Han, who visited for a second and final time in late 2001. The rest of the DVD covers more recent developments, and the highlights—set to swelling orchestral music—unfold like a training montage from Rocky. Messiahs erect the water tower. Man-made fishponds materialize on the grounds. A landing strip is planed flat by tractors. The Messiahs unload saplings from the Aquidaban, then plant them in sprawling groves. A group of about a dozen visiting Japanese students—the children of Unification Church members—help the Messiahs build a school in a nearby village. When the DVD ends and the lights come up, I’m exhausted just from watching all that drudgery. I look at Mister Date’s corded forearms, his gaunt face, his waspy waist. Every aspect of his being seems molded by toil. Even with the help of the local hires, the Messiahs labor all day, usually outside.

“It’s a lot of work just to maintain,” he admits.

The fact that only 10 men live here comes rushing back to me. The colony has actually lost population since its inception, despite all the construction. Four of the original Messiahs have returned to Japan. Only the hardest of the hardcore have stuck it out.


And this raises a couple of questions: Who are these guys? And why have they put themselves through this?

MISTER AUKI WALKS ACROSS the dining hall carrying a basket filled with whole fish freshly yanked from the river. He’s a short, balding Messiah whose task this morning, as on most days, is to catch something for the grill.

“I caught lots of piranha today,” he tells the men, his face splitting into a smile. “And also a five-kilogram pacu.”

The pacu is now part of the lunch buffet, which the four Messiahs plus Wilson, Greaves, and I spoon onto plates. It’s noon, the midpoint in an unchanging daily regimen: up at 4:30 a.m. for a half-hour of silent worship, breakfast at five, then back to their bedrooms to prepare for work at 6:30. Each is assigned a separate job: one fishes, another tills crops, another feeds the fish in the ponds. Someone tinkers with the water-purification system and checks the pH level in the pool, though no one swims. (“We don’t take much time for recreation,” one Messiah tells me.) They generally work in 1.5-hour bursts, taking half-hour breaks in between. Lunch always runs from noon to 1:30. They’ll work until 5 p.m. and round out the evening with dinner and a short prayer meeting. That leaves them about two hours until the lights go out at nine. Most use that time to read, pray, or watch satellite TV.

Greaves and I tuck into our food and strike up a conversation with Norio Owada, whom I recognize from the DVD. Mister Owada is 64, and manual labor and a good diet of homegrown vegetables have pared him down to a taut, leathery minimum.

“Nice to meet you,” he says, bowing his head quickly. He speaks English well enough to feel self-conscious when it’s not quite right. Before he joined Moon in Fuerte Olimpo for the retreat, he worked as an English translator in greater Tokyo. He disliked the work and wanted out. Urban life felt meaningless.


“I needed a special challenge, and I couldn’t find one in Japan,” he tells me. “I had lost my motivation. When I came here I recovered it.”

Mister Owada is a good example of your average founding Messiah: a city dweller with very little experience in construction and even less in wilderness survival. His wife was selected for him by Moon, who was said to possess the ability to intuit good matches, and Owada left her in Japan with their children when he came here. He gets a church salary, which helps keep the colony solvent. His family and other members of the Japanese congregation provide more money, though no one can tell me how much has been poured into the place. Once every 11 months, Mister Owada gets four weeks of vacation, which he can use to go to Japan. His wife has visited him twice since 1999.

In the beginning, the colonists hoped they would be joined by their wives (as well as many, many more followers). Every August, they invite children of Japanese church members to visit for a couple of weeks, but so far none have chosen to stay on. “My wife thinks that it is not realistic for her to move here yet,” Mister Owada says, “because we still have to raise the standard of living more.”
 When I press him on how tough and lonely this must get, Mister Owada says it doesn’t bother him. Moon sanctified his personal sacrifices, promising the men that spiritual rewards would make up for their suffering. “Even if you die, what regret will you leave behind?” Moon asked the founders in 1999.

“We’re risking our lives for this cause,” Mister Owada says, his left eye twitching convulsively. “I like to risk my life,” he continues. “That is doing something worthwhile. We have continued to stick with this.”

Months later, after Moon’s death from complications from pneumonia, I will once again reach out to Mister Date to see if the True Father’s passing affects the Messiahs’ dedication. It doesn’t. They have the blessing of his widow, Mister Date says, and the ongoing feuds among the Moon children won’t affect them. They plan to work on Puerto Leda for at least another decade.


“OF COURSE THERE IS ecotourism potential here,” says Mister Date. We’re standing outside an unfinished three-story brick building near a shed that protects three car-size generators. Mister Date refers to the brick building as “the hotel,” but for the moment its only occupant is a stick-legged baby goat nosing around the food pellets being stored on the ground floor. Mister Date begins running down the potential pluses of opening the place up to travelers: tourism would allow people to see examples of sustainable living and take the lessons home with them. This Eden is intended to be an environmental paradise, he says. He tells me the Messiahs are also considering building an insect museum.

“Why did you stop work on the hotel?” I ask.

He pauses and smiles politely. “In a small place, you can have disagreements easily,” he says. “They’re expecting us to be financially independent, but that’s not easy here.” The Messiahs, it seems, don’t always see eye-to-eye on the best way to reduce their dependence on member donations. Some want to concentrate on agribusiness and scrap the ecotourism idea. The hotel is unfinished because they aren’t sure whether opening the place to outsiders is a good idea.

We walk on, past planted fields of lemongrass, oranges, mangoes, grapefruit, asparagus, sugarcane. The crops are struggling. If agriculture alone is expected to support the colony, there are some kinks to work out. The men have planted thousands of jatropha trees, which can be used to make biodiesel fuel, but hundreds of parrots zeroed in on them and ate all the fruit. During the most recent wet season, rising waters flooded many of the thousands of neem trees.

“It’s been a hard year,” Mister Date admits. “A lot of things have died because they were three months underwater.”

It’s clear that these guys have faith in miracles, and that’s exactly what’s needed here in Puerto Leda. Without one, the Victorious Holy Place seems destined to be another curious monument to human ambition and folly. But watching how hard the Messiahs work, I can’t help but admire their tenacity. The fanaticism that underlies their devotion to this cause must burn hot, but they hide it well. They’re not evangelical. They’re friendly and welcoming to those who don’t share their beliefs. They’re reflexively humble and generous and—whatever I might think of their motives—admirably tough. They’re underdogs. The kind of guys you root for.


During the last hours of my visit, Mister Date shows me something that might actually work out. “Japanese yams,” he announces, staring down at a plot of tilled soil. “They grow very large underground, up to 10 kilograms. They do well here.”

My immediate impulse is to celebrate this victory with hearty congratulations. I’m thrilled for his indefatigable yams. Maybe all the sweat that Mister Date has sunk into this plot will bear a little fruit. Maybe little victories like this can help other people in the Pantanal live richer lives. Maybe that’s enough.

Mister Date stares down at the dirt. “Unfortunately,” he says, “they taste very bad.”

AT THE END OF the day, I’m alone in the dining hall. We have a couple of hours before the Aquidaban is due to arrive and take us back downriver. In the kitchen, a cook is slicing piranha into sashimi strips. I’m standing at the Ping-Pong table, absently bouncing a ball up and down. The hollow plock echoes around the high rafters. No one wanders in for a game, so I head out toward the pool.

He’s still there, the man with the net, sweeping as if he hasn’t let up since dawn. A shame: I didn’t bring any trunks. But I do have a pair of heavy cotton cargo shorts in my backpack. I walk to the dormitory and return wearing them. I ask the sweeper, “Does anyone ever use this pool?”

“Only the tourists,” he says.

The tourists? Based on a guest book I flipped through earlier, he must be referring to those Japanese students who visit every August, the occasional Paraguayan government official, and Greaves and me.


I resist the urge to plunge, mainly because it’s so quiet around here, and step down the foam-padded ladder. Floating on my back toward the deep end, struggling against the weight of my shorts, I look to the west and see a pink disc of sun teed atop the crown of a palm tree. A gentle wind rustles the fronds, stirring nesting parakeets. They erupt in flight. Above them, against a backdrop of high cirrus, I spot what I think is a hawk climbing out of view.

I wonder: from those elevations, do the straight lines and Windex blue waters of this pool appear to be jarring aberrations? Or do these man-made forms resemble natural elements of the landscape, considering that chasing impossible fantasies is something humans always seem to do around here? Could this colony appear, from such lofty heights, to be as organic and as transient as a parakeet’s nest?

I have no idea. All I know for sure is that the sun is starting to slide behind the palm tree. Darkness will fall within minutes, and the mosquitoes will follow. Right now this water feels perfect.

Monte Reel's Between Man and Beast: A Tale of Exploration and Evolution will be published in March by Doubleday.
From Outside Magazine, Feb 2013

As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen by Sun Myung Moon | Goodreads

As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen by Sun Myung Moon | Goodreads




As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen

by
Sun Myung Moon
4.17 · Rating details · 148 ratings · 22 reviews
Reverend Sun Myung Moon's autobiography shares stories of his family and childhood and his calling from God. The early years of the Unification Church, the expansion to an international ministry, and the importance of global wedding ceremonies are all explained in first-hand accounts. (less)


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Aug 15, 2012Patrick rated it really liked it
My late mother's pen pal from Korea sent me this book as a gift out of the blue. It's a very inspiring survival/life story of a man that really loves others. Rev. Moon really shows how we need to be selfless instead of selfish to achieve world peace. I agree with him that religion is a means to an end. It often goes astray because man is flawed. I also agree that the family is paramount to happiness and peace. When you learn to care for your own family you learn how to care for others. Western culture could learn a great deal from the Eastern culture in this regards. I think the thing Rev. Moon touches on the most is spirituality and harmony. Materialism is a complete distraction from this amazing gift to mankind. (less)
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May 01, 2016Genia rated it did not like it
Here comes a rant:
(The review was written in parts along with reading the book)

I feel like the first part of the book made the author look like a holy person which true seems stupid to me. I would rather hear about him being a bad boy and becoming a peace warrior than hear the justification of his "bad" actions

I liked the second part more. We learned about his studies and his passion to understand things. We've also seen how he loved helping the poor. However, I feel like he acted stupidly. You shouldn't donate if you you are left with nothing.

Till the third part I felt like nothing he had done made him deserve to be called a peace worrier. He had done nothing special except annoy the government and be beaten and tortured for it. I hated how he treated his family. The whole nation is important but your mother and wife not? That's ridiculous.

Some points I liked in this book:
The chapter about the dancers.
How they earned money from selling stamps.

At this part I couldn't take it anymore. He was just talking bullshit. DNF (less)
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Mar 22, 2013Jennifer Tanabe rated it really liked it
This is a rather unusual book! It is the autobiography of Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who passed away in September 2012. I read the book a couple of years ago, and was alternately inspired and frustrated by the content.

Of course, since it was originally written in Korean much of my frustration has to do with the differences between Korean language and culture and English and western culture in general. So, I found it pretty hard to relate to tales of a boy growing up in a small village in the Korean countryside. There wasn't much in common with my experience as a western female born in St. Andrews, Scotland, a small town but home to the University of St. Andrews (yes the one attended by Prince William!), and then growing up in Dundee, a larger industrial town famous for jute, jam and journalism (yes, factories!). Anyway, some of the stories were enjoyable as glimpses of life in a very different world from my childhood.

When it came to his thoughts on more universal issues, though, there was a lot to be inspired about. And, to be fair, that is what his whole life was about.

So, to understand more about Reverend Moon and the Unification Church he founded, definitely read this book! (less)
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May 29, 2016Jody rated it did not like it
Recommends it for: no one
Shelves: recycled
At first I was touched by this man's spiritual connection -- he is a witch too! But as he ages into the 20's and beyond, I am struck by how much I don't like him. He is not kind and loving to his parents, letting them think he is dead when he could have told them. He leaves his wife and young son to go out for rice and doesn't return. He is surprised when they find him 7 years later, but he feels no remorse.

He uses guilt to get donations of food, saying "You should help us now or you will be sorry in the future."

All successes are his. His followers are just sheep and not trained to move up. We never learn what it is that he teaches. (less)
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Apr 23, 2014Christopher Davies rated it really liked it
Well worth the read. It doesn't pretend to be comprehensive, it is more anecdotal and reflective. I understand that it has been assembled by a team of writers from recordings of Rev. Moon's speeches, particularly informal talks with Unificationists.
What I found particularly attractive were simple observations and comments about ordinary life. Rev. Moon was a man of global stature, some, including me, even say of universal stature, but he never lost the common touch and his simple humanity is fresh as the mists of morning and then warms with the gentleness of the spring time sun. (less)
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Apr 28, 2011Kiki rated it it was amazing
This tells the story of an extraordinary individual, from his humble beginnings in a village in North Korea to his work world-wide as a bringer of peace. Autobiography is melded with spiritiual thoughts, guidance and practice, and a call to find the deepest, best parts of ourselves.
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Sep 04, 2012Lee rated it it was amazing
I loved this book because of the intimacy of his first person account. As the most significant spiritual guide, for me; I strongly identify with his heart and spirit to live life with God and care for humanity and nature.
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Oct 26, 2017Beni Vitai rated it it was amazing
Shelves: unificationism
Never gets old; a classic of the Moonie genre.
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Apr 02, 2016Jaroslav Vašák rated it really liked it
I knew almost nothing about Mr. Son-myong Moon despite the beginning of reading the book. The first half of the book seemed strange to me. Maybe it was a strong story, but it didn't penetrate me, or I didn't like the style in which the book is written. Something changed in the second half. I don't know if it was because I already knew Mr. Reverend Moon better, or because the content changed from a biography to a certain recommendation on how to make the world a better place. Anyway, the second half of the book fascinated me. It had some nice ideas and strong stories. Son-myong Moon must have been a true leader who did a lot for our country. I would be honored to meet such a person. I would also like to do good things and be a good leader, but I must say that after reading some lines from the book, I had to think a lot about myself. I still have a lot of work to do to get even a little bit closer to Reverend Moon. (less)
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Jun 20, 2013Justin rated it it was amazing
Basic biography of Reverend Moon and his thoughts/ideals. As a Unificationist I may be biased, but I thought this book did a good job of showing where he comes from, how he formulated Unificationism in his early years, and how he physically set out to be a positive change in the world. I would like to note that this book is meant for anyone to read, not just members, so this autobiography doesn't go into actual principles of the Divine Principle (Unification Doctrine) and sticks to general principles.

This is a great book to learn more about Reverend Moon and the Unification Church! I recommend! :D (less)
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Mar 07, 2015Cheryl Roth rated it it was amazing
I love this book, it is a candid portrayal of a misunderstood man who has lived through uncountable trials and tribulations but never given up on his vision, hopes and ideals. This book is empowering.

It is a touching personal recollection of his life and his vision for world peace, including how he went about trying to fulfill his vision. He was a teacher, a prophet, a saint, a scientist, a minister, a businessman, a father, a leader, a public speaker, and a peacemaker. He lived up to the words of Jesus who taught us to love our enemies.

This book is easy to read. The chapters are short but full of insight. I highly recommend it to everyone. (less)
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Oct 17, 2016Suzi rated it liked it
Not well written, but an interesting read. It is more an assemblage of Reverend Moons thoughts, musings and speeches over the years it would seem. The breadth and depth of his influence and involvement in business and connections with political leaders is breathtaking. I read this for book club, would not have been aware of it otherwise.
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Jul 28, 2021Kristen Fort rated it did not like it
Shelves: did-not-finish
Passing this book along. It had been given to me years ago. 2014 was a vastly different year than 2018, when his son became publicly known as nutterbutters, for being the leader of a splinter group from his father's Unification Church, this group being the Sanctuary Church. Look up Sean Moon. Nutjob. ...more
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Oct 24, 2017Marcia Schlichting rated it really liked it
It tells of Rev. Moons early life, his persecutions and imprisonments, but always is keeps God in his heart. What an amazing man! What an amazing champion for God!
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Mar 25, 2014Camden rated it it was ok
This is more like 1.5 stars. I think there are some good points in this book, but for the most part, it wasn't my cup of tea. Needless to say, I'm glad it's finished. (less)
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Jun 15, 2015Mark Bouchard added it
this book is a revelation of how one man heeded the call of God and was undaunted by all obstacles to fulfill his mission to share gods heart with the people of the earth
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Feb 28, 2020Richard Urban rated it it was amazing
Book Review
As a Peace Loving Global Citizen
by Rev. Sun Myung Moon
Reviewed by Richard Urban

As A Peace Loving Global Citizen is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the life and heart of the man who Jesus asked to carry on His uncompleted mission.

Rev. Sun Myung Moon was born in Anju, in what is now North Korea in 1920, when Korea was under forced occupation by Japan. Rev. Moon explains that, above all else, the primary responsibility of a leader is to keep the peace. In fact, this is the lifelong goal of Rev. Moon. Rev. Moon recalls fondly being peacefully carried on his father’s back as a young child.

Rev. Moon’s great uncle Yoon Guk was a supporter of the Korean Independence movement, for which he was arrested and spent time in jail. We learn about Rev. Moon’s school days, his love of nature, and his fierce sense of righteousness.

We learn in detail about Rev. Moon’s encounter with Jesus on that fateful Easter Sunday morning while praying alone in the mountains. Over time, through an intense spiritual struggle to understand the nature of suffering in this world, Jesus revealed many secrets to him.

On God’s command Rev. Moon headed north into communist North Korea. Due to the opposition of Christian ministers, the communist authorities arrested and tortured Rev. Moon. Three months later he was transferred to Heungnam Prison special labor camp. There prisoners bagged ammonium nitrate fertilizer in deplorable conditions. Most prisoners died of exhaustion after six months, but Rev. Moon survived two years five months until United Nations troops liberated the prison camp.

After looking for his disciples and fleeing south across the 38th parallel to Busan, Rev. Moon built his first church of US Army ration boxes on the Beomnetgol hillside. There he wrote the first version of the Principle, the basic teachings of the Unification movement. He also witnessed to the first member to join in South Korea, Hyun Shil Kang. Many students from Ewha and Yonsei Christian Universities joined the Unification Movement, again causing those institutions to persecute and spread false rumors.

A missionary was sent to Japan in 1959, which was then still very much an enemy county of Korea. Later, in 1965 Rev. Moon visited all 48 contiguous states and set up Holy Grounds, traveling and sleeping in a small car.

We also learn about Hak Ja Han, Rev. Moon’s wife and the Women’s Federation for World Peace that she founded. Godly marriages, especially those bridging races, religions and nations are a signature of the Unification Movement. Rev. Moon also loves fishing and soccer. He met Mikhail Gorbachev in April 1990 and urged him to allow religious freed in the Soviet Union, as well as establish diplomatic relations with South Korea. President Gorbachev followed his advice. He also met Kim IL Sung, the very man who was in charge of his imprisonment at Heungnam Prison special labor camp.

Solving the problem of world hunger is also very close to Rev. Moon’s heart. And young people will benefit greatly from the section “New Vision for Youth”.

Rev. Moon published his autobiography in 2009. On September 3rd, 2012 he died and ascended to Spirit World. So where does that leave all of us? In a world torn by war and division, Rev. Moon’s message of not left wing or right wing but rather “Headwing” or Godism is desperately needed.

He gave us the truth, the formula, and most of all, the heart to build a world of peace. He leaves to us the great legacy that he has pioneered. But will we grab the batton and run, or rather just remain stuck in the same place? Understanding the life of this extraordinary man will be an essential launching place for our own journey as we work to establish a world of lasting peace centered on God.
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Aug 27, 2018Adina rated it it was amazing
The life of Reverend Sun Myung Moon has been a life of tribulations and suffering, however, for the sake of mankind. He was a man who has devoted all his life for world peace, and yet he was criticised as a leader of a cult, a heretic, he was an assassination target of numerous religious and political parties, and was even sent to prison 6 times. Despite all these, he still forgave, he still embraced, and he still loved. He has lived a legendary life, and at the same time, a respectable life. I would like to salute him with my utmost sincerity. (less)
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May 14, 2019Jouch rated it liked it
I had to write an essay based on this book for a competition. I won first place. Whoa!!! I won a tablet that I rarely use today and that would have been a lot more helpful for a less rich kid. But whatever, I do read e-books on it SOMETIMES!!! I didn't agree with Moon's point of view on every aspect, but it was still a decent book. (less)
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Oct 14, 2021Ian added it
Hagiography of the most shameless order.

Even though I no longer believe, I’m including church books on my bookshelf because they’re an integral part of my history. And despite all the negatives of my religious upbringing, one silver lining is that the daily religious reading I used to do gave me above average reading + writing skills.
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Apr 09, 2017Joel Bedulla rated it did not like it
To be clear, I didn't finish this book entirely, I sort of skipped it after some chapters.
Sun Myung Moon talks blasphemy and I definitely didn't enjoy this book.
He was calling himself "perfect" and "right". Even if you don't consider that as blasphemy, it's certainly annoying. (less)
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Aug 11, 2018Leon rated it it was amazing
I may be biased, but his life is eternally inspiring.
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