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 that he had been given by Jesus the mission to spread the message of a "new Israel" throughout the world. Around this time Moon changed his given name to Sun Myung. Following World War II, Korea was divided along the 38th parallel into two trusteeships: the United States and the Soviet Union. Pyongyang was the center of Christian activity in Korea until 1945. From the late forties 166 priests and other religious figures were killed or disappeared in concentration camps, including Francis Hong Yong-ho, bishop of Pyongyang and all monks of Tokwon abbey. In 1947 Moon was convicted by the