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 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