Blessing ceremony of the Unification Church was first held in 1961 for 36 couples in Seoul, South Korea by Sun Myung Moon and his wife Hak Ja Han, shortly after their own marriage in 1960. All the couples were members of the Unification Church. Moon matched all of the couples except the 12 who were already married to each other from before joining the church, which was officially founded in 1954. Later Blessing ceremonies were larger in scale but followed the same pattern with all participants Unification Church members and Moon matching most of the couples. In 1982 the first large scale Blessing held outside of
United States v. Sun Myung Moon United States v. Sun Myung Moon In 1984, Sun Myung Moon, the founder and leader of the Unification Church, was imprisoned in the United States after being found guilty by a jury of willfully filing false Federal income tax returns and conspiracy. Church members and supporters stated that the prosecution was politically motivated, discriminatory, and unfair. On October 15, 1981, Moon was indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with three counts of willfully filing false Federal income tax returns (for the years 1973, 1974, and 1975) under , and one count of conspiracy—under —to file false income tax