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The story
The National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales, which handles relief for former Unification Church (Family Federation for World Peace and Unification) victims, held a meeting on the 26th and revealed that at least around 10 Japanese women who traveled to South Korea for the group’s mass wedding ceremonies in the 1980s and ’90s are preparing to file compensation claims with the church’s liquidator, citing psychological distress. The mass weddings peaked from roughly 1988 to 1995, and an estimated 7,000 Japanese women believers are said to have gone to Korea to take part. On the thread, commenters debated why the male believers rarely come up in these stories, whether someone can seek damages while still remaining a believer, and the late former PM Shinzo Abe’s past ties to the church.
The National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales (Zenkoku Benren), which handles relief for victims of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (the former Unification Church), held a meeting on the 26th, revealing that some Japanese women who went to South Korea through the church’s mass weddings are preparing to file compensation claims with the church’s liquidator over psychological suffering. At least around 10 such people are said to exist.
According to Zenkoku Benren, the mass weddings peaked around 1988–95. An estimated 7,000 Japanese women believers are said to have gone to Korea after taking part in the ceremonies.
Many were matched by founder Sun Myung Moon with South Korean men they had never met, then married them. Many of those who have consulted Zenkoku Benren are reportedly living under harsh economic and psychological conditions.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
I wonder what happened to the Japanese men.
No matter how many articles I dig up, it's always Japanese women paired with Korean men.
Wasn't this basically a system for shipping Japanese women off to Korea as tribute?
There were a lot of men in Korea who joined the church just to land a wife, so a lot of women from Japan ended up getting sent over to meet that demand.
Turns out some of those people were former mass-wedding participants.
What, that's terrifying.
The South Korean government is always quick to slam discrimination elsewhere, but here it's just striking a pose with zero real follow-through.
Seems like they figure 2 years is enough for the heat to die down.
Nothing's going to change unless the Japanese government actually moves.
She's been indicted on other counts too, so it won't end at just 2 years.
I'm just a high school grad, so I don't really follow this —
what exactly are they trying to accomplish?
Someone smart, spell it out for me ("eroi hito" here is slangy internet-speak for "know-it-all").
They're saying, "Give me a cut of whatever cash gets clawed back from the church too, please."
Thanks a mil-chili-on! (an old internet pun mashing up "thank you" and "chili pepper")
Even before that famous video message, Abe sent a congratulatory message to a mass wedding ceremony back when he was Chief Cabinet Secretary.
This was also a scoop (just like the video message) from the Japanese Communist Party's newspaper Akahata — and since Abe never issued any rebuttal, it must have been true.
_
– [Shimbun Akahata / Japanese Communist Party website]
"Unification Church Mass Wedding Rally / Congratulatory Telegram from Chief Secretary Abe and Others"
_ June 13, 2006
https://www.jcp.or.jp/akahata/aik4/2006-06-13/2006061314_01_0.html
Listen, there are tons of second-generation believers who were forced into the church as kids and brainwashed by their parents and the church with lines like "Defy Founder Moon's teachings and your whole family goes to hell!" — then forced into marriage against their will.
So the husbands randomly assigned at these mass weddings are steeped in that ideology too — I doubt the women got treated well.
The media used to run those spectacular shots of couples in morning coats and wedding dresses lined up in a stadium-sized plaza — what was the tone of the coverage back then, again?
Seems like Junko Sakurada was the poster girl for it.
Keiko Iiboshi — wasn't she the one whose novelist father fought desperately to talk her out of it and get her deprogrammed?
Wait, hold on — if you still believe in this religion, then you haven't suffered any psychological distress, so you shouldn't be able to claim damages lol.
Or is it more like, "I still believe, but I still want the money"?
The people actually filing claims broke free of the brainwashing a long time ago.
Hiroko Yamazaki's husband was "Tesshi," aka Teshigahara, if I recall right.
I wonder if that's what got him into covering this issue in the first place — and whether his sister's marriage itself came about because a relative was already in the church.
With a bit of luck I might've ended up with a cute young wife.
And if it didn't work out, I could always just quit the church afterward.
Yeah, fair 🦀 (the crab emoji is slang shorthand for "tashikani" — "true, fair enough")
That's exactly how much devotion the church demands of you. In other words: rack up good numbers on donations and recruiting new members — and this is the prize you get for it.
Background and Key Points of Debate
The former Unification Church was ordered dissolved by the Tokyo District Court in 2023, and liquidation proceedings for the group have been underway since. The mass weddings, called “Blessings” bestowed by founder Sun Myung Moon, have continued since the 1960s, and as the article notes, participant numbers surged around 1988-95. Worth noting: while at least around 10 people are reported to have consulted Zenkoku Benren, the figure of roughly 7,000 Japanese women who went to Korea is only an estimate. On the thread, opinions split over why male believers rarely come up in the discussion, and over how someone who still holds the faith could seek damages. On that point, according to the legal team, those preparing to file claims are mostly former believers who have already broken free of the brainwashing — continuing to believe and seeking damages aren’t legally contradictory. It’s also worth flagging, as background the article text alone doesn’t fully convey, that many second-generation believers were effectively forced into these marriages from childhood by the church’s doctrine.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “[Former Unification Church] Women in South Korea from “Mass Weddings” to File Compensation Claims, “Need Support” — Roughly 7,000 Japanese Women Believers Went to Korea.”
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