Nansook Hong
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| Korean name | |
|---|---|
| Hangul | 홍난숙 |
| Hanja | 洪蘭淑 |
| Revised Romanization | Hong Nan-suk |
| McCune–Reischauer | Hong Nansuk |
Nansook Hong (born 1966), was selected by Sun Myung Moon to be the wife of Hyo Jin Moon, first son of Moon and his wife Hakja Han Moon. Hyo Jin Moon was the apparent next-generation successor at the time. Nansook Hong was 15 and Hyo Jin Moon was 19 when they were married in New York.[1] After bearing 5 children and enduring her husband's ongoing infidelity, cocaine addiction, and physical abuse, she fled the multimillion-dollar Moon family estate in 1995 with her children and got a divorce.[1] In 1998 she published a book (with unnamed collaborator Eileen McNamara) entitled In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Family, which is about her experiences as a member of the Moon family.
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[edit] Fourteen years as a member of the Moon family
A brief excerpt summarizes some of the key events in her life from her point of view:[2]
The eighteen-acre secluded compound where we lived in Irvington, forty minutes north of New York City, is the world headquarters of the Unification Church and the home of the founder of the religious movement the world knows as "Moonies." The estate, called East Garden, had been my personal prison for fourteen years, since the day the Reverend Moon summoned me from Korea to be the child bride of his eldest son, the heir to Moon's divine mission and earthly empire. Then, I was only fifteen, a naive schoolgirl eager to serve her God. Now, I was a woman ready to reclaim her life. Today, I would escape. I would take the only thing holy about this marriage, my children, and leave behind the man who beat me and the false Messiah who let him, men so flawed that I now knew that God would never have chosen Sun Myung Moon or his son to be his agents on earth.....
Accepting the Reverend Moon for the fraud I now know him to be was a slow and painful process. It was only possible because that realization, in the end, did not shake my faith in God. Moon had failed God, but God had not failed me. It was God alone that comforted me, a woman-child in the hands of a husband who treated me either as a toy for his sexual pleasure or as an outlet for his violent rages.
God was guiding me now as I surveyed my sleeping children and the suitcases we had been packing clandestinely for weeks. My belief in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon had been at the center of my life for twenty-nine years, but a shattered faith is no match for a mother's love. My children had been my sole source of joy in the cloistered, poisonous world of the True Family. I had to flee for their sake, as well as my own.
According to an article in the New York Post, Hong stated that "she contracted a sexually transmitted disease from her husband Hyo Jin Moon and was "a toy for his sexual pleasure or an outlet for his violent rages." She also reports she saw his father Sun Myung Moon abusing his children."[3]
[edit] Criticism of Sun Myung Moon by Hong
In October 1998, Hong participated in an online interview hosted by TIME Magazine, in which she stated: "Rev. Moon has been proclaiming that he has established his ideal family, and fulfilled his mission, and when I pinpointed that his family is just as dysfunctional as any other family - or more than most - then I think his theology falls apart."[4] Hong told Mike Wallace in an interview for 60 Minutes that Sun Myung Moon confirmed to her, in person, that he had extramarital affairs which he justified by calling "providential affairs."[5]
Hong also reported on 60 Minutes that when she told Hyo Jin Moon's parents about the repeated beatings she received from him, including when she was 7 months pregnant, Sun Myung Moon and Hakja Han Moon blamed her.[6]
[edit] References
- ^ a b A Scion Falls Short of Sinless, Eileen McNamara, Boston Globe December 20 1997
- ^ Hong (1998). p. 4-7.
- ^ "Double Trouble for Moon Empire", New York Post, August 17, 1998.
- ^ Life with the Moons: A conversation with Nansook Hong, former daughter-in-law of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, TIME Magazine, October 13, 1998.
- ^ Nansook Hong, interviewed by Mike Wallace, 60 Minutes, September 20, 1998.
- ^ Nansook Hong, interviewed by Mike Wallace, 60 Minutes, September 20, 1998. Un Jin Moon responded by saying "sounds familiar", and that her parents responded similarly when Un Jin's husband beat her: [Wallace]: "And your parents would say?" [Un Jin Moon]: "I deserved it".
[edit] Further reading
- Hong, Nansook. (1998). In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Family. Little, Brown. (ISBN 0-316-34816-3)
[edit] External links
- Review of In the Shadow of the Moons by a Unification Church member.
- Interviews with Nansook Hong on local and national news shows on television, including on 60 Minutes.
