September 24, 2025
SEOUL – Han Hak-ja, leader of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, better known as the Unification Church, was taken into custody after a Seoul court approved her arrest early Tuesday morning.
The 82-year-old appeared in public for the last time before her arrest when she exited the court building without answering any questions at approximately 7 p.m., Monday, five hours after she attended her warrant hearing.
The court found it necessary to detain Han, citing concerns over evidence tampering. She is suspected of providing illegal political funds to the former conservative party’s floor leader in 2022 in pursuit of political backing by the previous Yoon Suk Yeol administration.
Han also allegedly gifted a luxury necklace and Chanel bags to Yoon’s wife, Kim Keon Hee, and ordered a church official to destroy evidence ahead of a police investigation into her alleged overseas gambling.
The court’s approval of Han’s detainment is expected to accelerate the special counsel’s investigation into the presidential couple and their ties to the church.
Han was born to a Christian family in 1943, in Anju, South Pyeongan Province, in today’s North Korea. After coming to the South, she eventually joined the Unification Church in 1956, two years after the religious organization was founded in Seoul by the late Rev. Moon Sun-myung.
According to the religious group, Moon singled out the 13-year-old Han from her first visit to the church, saying, “God! Thank you for sending such a wonderful woman (Han Hak-ja) to Korea,” adding that she had been born according to God’s special plan and providence.
Four years later, Han married Moon and became his fifth wife. She is believed to have given birth to 14 children — seven sons and seven daughters — becoming what the Unification Church called a “True Parent.”
According to the church, she was a devoted partner who supported Moon’s diverse initiatives for global peace, ranging from her visit to North Korea to pave the way for South-North engagement in 1991 to overseas lectures on women’s role in world peace held in different countries in the early 1990s, including China, Japan, the Soviet Union and the US.
The late founder’s followers believed Rev. Moon was the Messiah and the “second coming of Jesus.” Though Han did not hold the same status, she was given the special title of “true mother.”
However, after the passing of Rev. Moon in 2012, Han took over the leadership of the church, and started to call herself “doksaengnyeo,” meaning “only begotten daughter” or “only daughter born of God’s direct bloodline” in Korean. In doing so, she presented herself as a divine figure within the Unification Church and as the rightful heir to lead the organization instead of one of Moon’s 14 children.
While denying the charges against her throughout special counsel questioning on Wednesday, Han reportedly insisted that she was God’s daughter, and argued that a person who has received her teachings should lead the nation.
A video released on the YouTube channel Choikytv also showed Han addressing executives at Segye Times, a South Korean daily newspaper owned by her church, urging them to “awaken” politicians and citizens who are unaware of doksaengnyeo. Han claimed that she, as “God’s only daughter,” was the reason why troops from 16 United Nations member states came to defend South Korea during the Korean War, and asserted that the nation’s people must serve and honor the True Mother.
The Unification Church is a major religious organization with missions in 194 countries across the globe.
The number of its official members is estimated at 1.2 million in South Korea alone. This figure reportedly reaches as many as 3 million followers worldwide.
Outside the realm of religion, the Unification Church has a massive business empire spanning vast fields of interest, from newspapers and hospitals to a hotel, a ski resort, educational institutions, cultural institutions, sports and retail.