The Unification Church
Japan is, by nearly every metric, routinely ranked as one of the safest countries in the world.
Despite a population of 125 million, the country reported a mere 289 homicides in 2022 - for comparison, the UK reported 581 - approximately twice as many incidents, despite approximately one-half the population size. Even Canada, a country whose population is comparable to just Japan’s capital city, reported nearly 900 homicides. It’s no wonder, then, that Japan is ranked as the 9th safest country on Earth - despite far outsizing every other country on the top 15 list in terms of population.
Sun Myung-Moon, founder of the Unification Church. Source: Foreign Policy
It’s also no wonder, then, that the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, enormously shocked the entire world. Both Japanese and foreign observers quickly began asking questions: how did Japanese security forces allow this to happen? How did the killer even get ahold of a firearm? Who is he, and what is his motive? The answer to that final question is the focus of today’s article - and it isn’t, by any means, a straightforward one. It begins not in Japan - but neighbouring South Korea.
In 1954, a man by the name of Sun Myung Moon - an avowed evangelical Christian and passionate opponent of communism - founded the Unification Church: an organisation which he led after claiming God had spoken to and ordered him to create a Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. Since its founding, the Church has been accused of brainwashing members, holding non-mainstream views on issues such as same-sex marriage or reproductive rights, and operating as a cult to enrich its top leadership. It still exists today - holding mass wedding ceremonies and even running the Washington Times newspaper, which is not believed to be a credible source of journalistic information (nor is it to be confused with the American mainstream Washington Post and New York Times newspapers).
But how did a Korean neo-Christian cult become linked to the assassination of a Japanese former Prime Minister?
Fumio Kishida, the current Prime Minister of Japan, speaks at Abe's funeral ceremony. Source: Prime Minister's Office of Japan
As implied given its ownership of an American newspaper, the Church’s presence is not limited to South Korea, and has a following in Japan of approximately 100,000 individuals (though this is a figure according to a spokesperson from the Church, and may be higher in reality). Tetsuya Yamagami - Abe’s assassin - believed that his family had been ruined by his mother’s donation to the Church that pushed them into deep poverty. Abe’s party, the Liberal Democrats that have dominated Japanese politics since the mid-1950s, does have known ties to the Unification Church.
Yamagami, therefore, sought revenge on a Prime Minister with links to the cult for pushing his family into a desperate financial situation.
Aside from the obvious - the presence of a cult in a major power’s mainstream politics - the situation shows another unusual trend. East Asian security is rarely defined by non-state actors. The Kuril Islands, nuclear weaponry proliferation, Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, and South China Sea dispute all consist of exclusively country-based actors, and other parties rarely - if ever - become introduced. The situation with the Unification Church, however, directly defies this trend, creating an uncommon occurrence with a barely predictable outcome.
TAI Score: Degree 2. It’s unlikely that the Unification Church will lead to heightened geopolitical risk in the Asia-Pacific region or beyond. But with outcomes such as the assassination of Shinzo Abe, its presence and operations should be monitored by both local and overseas actors for issues surrounding business risk, particularly given Moon’s incarceration in the United States for tax evasion. While political risk is minimised, business risk may not necessarily be absent.
