Sun Myung Moon much more quickly." In 1971, Moon moved to the United States, which he had first visited in 1965. He remained a citizen of the Republic of Korea and maintained a residence in South Korea. In 1972, Moon founded the International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, a series of scientific conferences. The first conference had 20 participants, while the largest conference in Seoul in 1982, had 808 participants from over 100 countries. Participants included Nobel laureates John Eccles (Physiology or Medicine 1963, who chaired the 1976 conference) and Eugene Wigner (Physics 1963). In 1974, Moon asked church members in
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