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| Couples from around the world attend a mass wedding ceremony at the Cheong Shim Peace World Center in Gapyeong, South Korea, Thursday, Sept. 7, 2017. About 4,000 South Korean and foreign couples exchanged or reaffirmed marriage vows in the Unification Church's mass wedding arranged by Hak Ja Han Moon, wife of the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the controversial founder of the Unification Church. / AP-Yonhap |
By Park Si-soo
About 4,000 couples from 64 countries exchanged wedding rings here on Thursday at a mass wedding organized by the Unification Church.
A further 20,000 couples worldwide participated in the ceremony at the church's Cheong Shim Peace World Center in Gapyeong, Gyeonggi Province, via the internet.
Han Hak-ja, a self-proclaimed messiah and widow of the church's founder Moon Sun-myung, officiated.
The church matched the couples, a practice manifesting the founder's theology. Some were matched cross-culturally to uphold the church's belief that in God's eyes there are no such things as nationality or skin color.
The Unification Church, which Moon founded in 1954, is a unique interpretation of Christianity that believes world peace can be attained by creating "true families."
Moon died in 2012 at 92.
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