MARRIAGE BY THE NUMBERS; MOON PRESIDES AS 6,500 COUPLES WED IN S. KOREA

The Washington Post
October 31,1988

YONGIN, SOUTH KOREA, OCT. 30 -- When the wedding of 6,516 couples was finally over, well after the Rev. Sun Myung Moon had sprinkled holy water on the army of newlyweds and warned them about the dangers of Satan, Lee Kyu Chul decided to exchange a few words with his bride, Miura Kuniko.

But Lee is South Korean and his bride is Japanese, and neither speaks the other's language. Lee tried some English that she didn't understand. Lee also tried hand gestures, but that, too, failed.

"I feel a little awkward," Lee shyly confessed. The bride and groom, both members of the Unification Church, were chosen as marriage partners by Rev. Moon last week, and they met for the first time this week. "But I knew from the beginning what I was getting into," said Lee, a computer programmer. "I knew that it would be like this, and that's okay. I'll learn Japanese first and then teach her Korean."

Their communication gap was just one of many oddities in the Unification Church's largest-ever mass wedding, which counted brides and grooms from 17 countries, with the vast bulk coming from Japan and South Korea. Moon has conducted 12 mass weddings since he founded the Unification Church -- beginning humbly with just three couples in 1960, reaching 2,100 couples at Madison Square Garden in 1982, and culminating with the bridal D-Day held today in a warehouse at a soft-drink factory owned by Moon's church.

"All of the children gathered here have overcome national barriers and want to accomplish one world of the heart," said Moon in his wedding sermon. Looking tanned and plump, he was dressed in a flowing white robe and crown, and he stood on the dais next to his wife, dressed in the same white outfit. A church aide said the white shows Moon is free of Satan. "They want to fulfill their responsibility as children of God," Moon said. "They will achieve the unity that God has intended."

As its name implies, the Unification Church's doctrinal driving force is unity. The point of these weddings, according to spokesman Bernhardt Quandt, is to "symbolically erase national prejudices and racial prejudices, opening the family of mankind." Although the majority of couples were Japanese, the key theme at today's mega-wedding was unity between Japan and Korea, whose centuries-long rivalry intensified after Japan colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945. Quandt said Moon matched 2,500 Japanese with 2,500 Koreans, creating many linguistically gridlocked couples.

"Korea and Japan have lots of animosities, so these weddings will open a new era of emotions between the two countries," Quandt said.

Most South Koreans appear unimpressed: The ceremony today was given only cursory coverage by the local media, reflecting the public's relatively chilly reception to the Unification Church. Moon and his viscerally anticommunist church are identified with the right-wing generals who ruled South Korea until recently. On top of that, the nationalistic South Koreans do not think much of the idea of marriage to foreigners.

The Unification Church runs a low-profile but apparently profitable business empire in South Korea, Japan and the United States, where it owns The Washington Times, among other holdings. But Moon and his church have run into trouble in the States, where the church is regarded by its critics as a cult whose adherents are labeled "Moonies." Moon was convicted on tax evasion charges in the early 1980s and served more than a year in prison. He now spends most of his time in Seoul, although he regularly visits the United States, church officials say.

Moon makes the marriage matches after meeting the church members or sorting through their personal dossiers, which have large-sized photos, according to Quandt. Some of the members ask Moon to approve a match they've decided on, but in most cases Moon apparently matches people who have never met before. He decided on most of the 6,516 couples last week, according to Quandt, who is from West Germany and was married to a Korean in a previous mass wedding held by Moon.

"Rev. Moon works on inspiration," Quandt said. "He depends on God's inspiration."

Organizing a wedding for just one couple is always a confusing business, as any father marrying off his daughter knows. For 6,516 couples, it is about as big a mess as can be imagined. The logistical problems were compounded by the fact that the exact date for today's mass wedding was set at the last moment by Moon, who was waiting for divine inspiration on the timing, which came somewhat late, according to Quandt.

He said there was no time to book an auditorium or stadium in Seoul, so the church decided to use the warehouse at its Il Hwa Co. in Yongin, about an hour's drive south of Seoul. There was a rush to book plane reservations for the thousands of Japanese brides and grooms coming to South Korea, and some of them arrived late today or not at all. Buses carrying Japanese from the Seoul airport were arriving at the factory gates as the ceremony was ending.

The luckless Koreans who were inadvertently stood up at the communal altar by their Japanese spouses-to-be nonetheless participated in the wedding ceremony. Dressed in their regulation white dresses or blue suits, they gamely lined up with the other couples and cradled pictures of their missing spouses in their arms. One Korean bride, holding a picture of her Japanese husband-to-be, whom she had never met, was asked when she would see the man. "I don't know," she sighed.

Church officials said another ceremony for the hundreds of couples who missed today's rendezvous would be held once everyone arrives.

Arriving at Yongin on time was only part of the problem, though. After the wedding, some of the couples were split up in the swirl of humanity as the newlyweds poured out of the warehouse to chat and take pictures in the clear fall weather outdoors. An official called out the names of separated couples on an outdoor loudspeaker and told them where to meet. Many parents, unable to find their offspring in the jungle of 12,000 white dresses and blue suits, held signs aloft bearing the family name, hoping to catch the eyes of their newlywed children.

The brides and grooms had each paid the church about $300 to be in the ceremony. The price included a wedding outfit, which they could keep, transportation in South Korea, meals and rings. The lunch served after the wedding amounted to significantly less than a feast: Everyone was provided with Styrofoam lunch boxes containing some chicken, fish and pickled cabbage. Hungry couples and their families celebrated their holy matrimony by sitting or squatting on the pavement and eating a cold lunch with chopsticks.

Still, they indeed were the lucky ones. Church officials said that about 8,000 Japanese women had applied to get married today, but only 4,000 Japanese men. Several thousand women were therefore left out in the cold, and even some men were not picked for marriage because Rev. Moon didn't think any of the available women were proper matches for them.

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