Religious leader’s ailing health a concern while detained in South Korean detention center

Two grandsons of detained religious leader Hak Ja Han Moon say the 82-year-old grandmother is being “framed” on “insufficient evidence” and worry her already ailing physical health could worsen the longer she’s confined to a 70-square-foot jail cell in South Korea.

“Her health situation really is concerning,” said Shin Chul Moon, one of the more than three dozen grandchildren of Mrs. Han, the widow of the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon and the matriarch of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

“Her eyesight is really almost nearly blind,” the 27-year-old grandson said in an interview with The Washington Times. “Even just walking … even eating for her is a little difficult without support.”

“Currently at the detention center,” he said, “she is not getting any of that support.”

For more than 33 days and counting, Mrs. Han has been detained at Seoul Detention Center, where her attorneys say she has endured multiple interrogations lasting 10 to 12 hours. Despite her near blindness and a heart condition, Mrs. Han is allowed only five visitors for a total of 10 minutes a day.

Her trial on bribery charges in a South Korean court is scheduled to begin Tuesday but could be delayed. If that happens, she could be held for up to six months because prosecutors refused to allow her home confinement for fear she could taint evidence.

“I’m confident in her mental inner strength. It’s probably stronger than anyone I know personally. However, the worrying part is her physical health,” said Shin Chul Moon, who added that it is “with insufficient evidence, or just … testimonies from certain individuals that they frame this leader and put her into a detention center.”

The case against Mrs. Han is part of an expanding probe into prominent South Korean figures linked to imprisoned ex-South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.

Mrs. Han is not the only religious leader to have been targeted by the probe. About 200 miles away from Seoul, in the Busan Detention Center, Rev. Son Hyun-bo, 62, founder and head pastor of Segeroh Presbyterian Church, has been detained for nearly 50 days.

A former special forces soldier, Rev. Son is in fair health but is suffering from mold in his cell, according to his son, who spoke with The Times last week.

But the investigation into Mrs. Han specifically has raised concerns that the Asian democracy’s recently installed liberal president, Lee Jae-myung, is overseeing a purge of his party’s political opponents.

Shin Heung Moon, another of Mrs. Han’s grandsons, says the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification is being accused as a religion of “trying to, I guess, kind of build political ties to influence the country.”

He asserted that the allegations are rooted in unbalanced portrayals of Mrs. Han’s public statements over the years. “People just take clips of her speaking, and they twist the word, like the media … they twist it.

“This is something that can seem like persecution because they are not representing us in the proper way,” the 25-year-old grandson said. “They are twisting our words to make us seem like we are some radical cult.

“There’s no evidence that she herself ordered any or even had the intention of lobbying,” added Shin Chul Moon, the other grandson who spoke with The Times.

It’s a situation that has drawn intense criticism from religious freedom advocates across the globe and prominent U.S. political figures.

“The lawfare being directed at religious leader Dr. Hak Ja Han in South Korea is deeply troubling,” former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on X last month. “The intensifying assaults on religious liberty are a betrayal of the democratic principles that South Korea is meant to espouse.”

Mrs. Han, who was arrested on Sept. 23 and formally indicted on Oct. 10, has denied the allegations against her and has maintained that she neither ordered nor permitted the alleged bribery she is accused of.

She stands accused of embezzlement, suborning, the destruction of evidence and violating the Political Funds Act and anti-graft law, charges she has denied.

Investigators have seized data showing that federation members — exact numbers unknown — joined Mr. Yoon’s conservative People Power Party to help empower lawmaker Kweon Seong-dong, a top supporter of Mr. Yoon. Investigators say the federation paid $72,000 to Mr. Kweon as a bribe. Mr. Kweon, who is also in jail, has denied all charges.

The aim of the bribes, it is claimed, was to earn political favors for the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, including official assistance with a project in Cambodia and a takeover of Korean news channel YTN, in addition to a seat at the presidential inauguration.

Neither deal eventually transpired, nor did Mrs. Han attend Mr. Yoon’s inauguration.

The federation maintains that Mrs. Han had no knowledge of the alleged bribery and blames a rogue executive, subsequently fired, named “Yoon.” He, too, is in detention.

Shin Chul Moon told The Times that the circumstances currently being endured by Mrs. Han are most concerning because of the manner in which her decades of achievements as a religious leader around the world are being ignored. “They’re not even looking at taking a single glance at it, and from just certain testimonies, repeated testimonies, of certain individuals, they’re putting her as a criminal,” he said. “It really concerns me about the current state of our country in Korea.”

Ms. Han’s husband, the late Rev. Moon, founded the Unification Church in South Korea in 1954 and went on to make it a global movement. She inherited the organization’s leadership after Rev. Moon died in 2012.

The foundation pursues the unification of religions worldwide while promoting conservative family values. It also operates several businesses. In 1982, Mr. Moon founded The Washington Times.

Shin Chul Moon said his grandmother’s teaching is “very simple.”

“It’s really peace upon all the world,” the 27-year-old grandson said. “It’s to overcome the differences of religion, the differences of race and the differences of culture, and really, I guess, accepting the differences, but also working together to overcome the differences by having this one single belief that we come from, one creator, which is God, and she really truly only speaks to peace.

“That teaching in the current time today, I think it’s very important, as you can see around the world, a lot of a lot of conflict, even within each continent,” he said.

“To have someone that has been living their whole life for that one value to be framed as a person who has lobbied for their own benefits. … To a certain degree, it does seem like persecution to me.”

• Ben Wolfgang and Andrew Salmon contributed to this report. Mr. Salmon, The Washington Times Asia editor, reported from Seoul.