Sun Myung Moon by the governments of both North and South Korea. Businesses he promoted included News World Communications, an international news media corporation known for its American subsidiary "The Washington Times", and Tongil Group, a South Korean business group (chaebol), as well as various related organizations. Moon was born in what is now North Korea. When he was a child, his family converted to Christianity. In 1947 he was convicted by the North Korean government of spying for South Korea and given a five-year sentence to the Hŭngnam labor camp. In 1954, he founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of
Sun Myung Moon World Peace Academy, an organization founded by Moon, sponsored a conference in Geneva to debate the theme "The situation in the world after the fall of the communist empire." In April 1990, Moon visited the Soviet Union and met with President Mikhail Gorbachev. Moon expressed support for the political and economic transformations under way in the Soviet Union. At the same time the Unification Church was expanding into formerly communist nations. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, some American conservatives criticized Moon for his softening of his previous anti-communist stance. In 1991, Moon met with Kim Il