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 mentions that Moon could have avoided the trial if he had remained outside of the United States. Sherwood sums up his views by writing: In 2015 Matsuo Machida, a Unification Church member from Japan, walked across the United States from San Francisco to Washington to protest Moon's conviction and also to promote world peace. 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