Moon officiated many large weddings in Korea with brides and grooms in traditional Korean garb

The secretive and mysterious Sun Myung Moon met his end on September 3, 2012, dying in a Seoul, South Korean hospital at the age of 92.

For 40 years and more, he beguiled the Western world as a wedding officiant at mass marriage ceremonies, secret trips to North Korea to establish a sunshine policy with that country’s Stalinist dictators and establishing a Unification Church that recruited millions of followers, while sending scores of concerned parents into panic.

Born in 1920 in a tiny North Korean village, Moon believed himself to be ordained by Jesus Christ to carry out the son of God’s earthly mission that Moon characterized as “a special mission on Earth.” After middle school, he moved to Japan to take part in the Korean independence movement. He said the police beat and tortured him numerous times before the authorities there booted him out of Japan. Upon returning to Korea, he began proselytizing and preaching God’s word which landed him in a communist gulag for five years as a spy for South Korea, charged with “disturbing the social order.”

The day before the communists planned to execute him, U.S. troops, now fighting in the Korean War, intervened and freed him from the labor camp.

He returned to the partitioned south and started the Unification Church in 1954. He and his followers painted pictures of U.S. soldiers to earn money for the church. By 1963, he started up the Tongil Group and branched out into manufacturing, resorts and construction. Forbes estimated in 2010 that Moon’s private transcontinental business holdings were valued at $1.5 billion.

Moon used his powerful business empire to halt the spread of communism, which he saw as godless and committed to cutting man’s divine cord to God. By 1968, Moon had recruited more than four million people to his anti-communist International Federation for Victory over Communism group.

As a powerful businessman, Moon became friends with presidents, prime ministers and dictators. Moon began preaching the Unification creed in the United States in 1970. More than 300,000 of his followers gathered at the Washington Monument to hear him speak. He also acted as a wedding officiant at Madison Square Garden to more than 2,000 couples.

In 1982, a U.S. federal court, in a controversial decision, convicted Moon of federal income tax evasion. Numerous prominent scholars and religious leaders condemned the ruling as a gross violation of freedom of speech. He served 13 months of an 18 month sentence.

Moon’s most controversial actions centered on acting as a wedding officiant and perform a wedding of hundreds of people simultaneously. This ceremony, known as the “Blessing,” was performed for married or engaged couples. It’s reported that he would sometimes match up the couples himself.

In 1995, Moon did perform a wedding and blessing ceremony for 360,000 couples at the Seoul Olympic Stadium. In 2009, Moon did a similar ceremony for 40,000 couples at Sunmoon University in South Korea.

Moon is survived by 14 children from two marriages. Moon never revealed how he came to be ordained as a messenger from God or what that mission was.