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
Heung Jin Moon was a providential act allowed by God in order to protect [Sun Myung] Moon's calling", and that there was a karmic connection between the two events: A week later Sun Myung Moon taught that Heung Jin Moon "had a new mission and was free to travel between his spirit world and our physical world". He also "proclaimed that Heung Jin became a leader to Jesus in the spirit realm". Longtime president of the Korean Unification Church Young Whi Kim wrote: "They all refer to Heung Jin Nim as the new Christ. They also call him the Youth-King of Heaven. He