Sun Myung Moon by the governments of both North and South Korea. Businesses he promoted included News World Communications, an international news media corporation known for its American subsidiary "The Washington Times", and Tongil Group, a South Korean business group (chaebol), as well as various related organizations. Moon was born in what is now North Korea. When he was a child, his family converted to Christianity. In 1947 he was convicted by the North Korean government of spying for South Korea and given a five-year sentence to the Hŭngnam labor camp. In 1954, he founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of
Sun Myung Moon stance. In the 1990s when Moon began to offer the Unification Church marriage blessing ceremony to members of other churches and religions he was criticized for creating possible confusion. In 1998, journalist Peter Maass reported that some Unification Church members were dismayed and grumbled when Moon extended the Blessing to non-members because they had not gone through the same course that members had. In 2001, the Unification Church came into conflict with the Roman Catholic Church when Catholic archbishop Emmanuel Milingo and Maria Sung, a 43-year-old Korean acupuncturist, married in a Unification Church Blessing ceremony, presided over by Rev. and