By Kim Young-jin
Better known as a self-proclaimed messiah, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s legacy also includes decades of engagement with North Korea. His death, analyst say, is not likely to affect the relationship between his Unification Church and Pyongyang.
Despite his staunch anticommunist stance, Moon offered the North a channel to the outside. The connection, meanwhile gave the religion a foothold in the isolated state.
Shortly after his 1991 meeting with North Korean founder Kim Il-sung, Moon’s Washington Times was granted a rare interview with Kim.
“The Unification Church gives the North an outlet to the outside,” one South Korean analyst said. “Moon’s passing shouldn’t deal a significant blow to that relationship.’’
Born in what is now North Korea, Moon’s efforts got off to a rocky start, when he was arrested there in the 1940s while preaching - for allegedly spying.
Fulsome engagement began when he traveled to the North to discuss with Kim about issues such as inter-Korean economic cooperation projects and the arrangement of reunions of separated families. Some credited the talks for sparking rapprochement measures between the Koreas.
`` At one point, we each felt we had so much to say to the other that we just started talking like old friends meeting after a long separation,'' Moon said of the meeting.
Moon wrote in his autobiography that he urged Kim to relinquish his nuclear program but that the North Korean leader said it was for peaceful purposes.
Perhaps most impactful was the establishment of Pyeonghwa Motors, an automaker operating in the North operated by the church and Pyongyang. The firm is regarded as among the more successful of such economic projects.
Watchers of the church say that Moon’s rapprochement drove part of a larger conviction regarding harmony between peoples and religions. But sensing that the North would not soon change, he may have scaled back efforts.
Moon sent condolence delegations to the North following the death of Kim in 1994, and that of late ruler Kim Jong-il last year. The regime sent Moon lavish gifts on his birthday.
Moon, from complications from pneumonia, died early Monday at a hospital in the church's headquarters east of Seoul. Watchers said the North was likely to express a form of condolence given the longstanding ties.