Tongil Group Tongil Group Tongil Group is a South Korean business group (chaebol) associated with the Unification Church. (“Tongil” is Korean for “unification,” the name of the Unification Church in Korean is “Tongilgyo.”) It was founded in 1963 by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon (following the purchase of a surplus Japanese lathe in 1962) as a nonprofit organization which would provide revenue for the church. Its core focus was manufacturing but in the 1970s and 1980s it expanded by founding or acquiring businesses in pharmaceuticals, tourism, and publishing. In 1998 Tongil Group was about 35th in size among South Korean business
Sun Myung Moon also drew criticism, especially after they involved members of other churches, including Roman Catholic archbishop Emmanuel Milingo. He was also criticized for his relationships with political and religious figures, including U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, North Korean President Kim Il Sung, and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Sun Myung Moon was born Moon Yong Myeong on 25 February 1920, in modern-day North P'yŏng'an Province, North Korea, at a time when Korea was under Japanese rule. He was the younger of two sons in a farming family of eight