Rev. Moon Sun-myung, who died Monday, was a controversial figure reviled as a cult leader by his detractors but who was also a shrewd businessman running a vast empire of businesses.

Moon founded the Unification Church in 1954 and has built it into a worldwide religious organization claiming up to 3 million followers around the world. Its followers are often derisively called “Moonies” after the founder.

The Unification Church is famed for mass weddings, which it trumpets as “dedicated to the creation of a peaceful world beyond borders and races.” Moon himself picked the spouses, who were often from different countries and did not share a common language, and presided over the ceremonies.

The church extols Moon as the “True Parent of Mankind” and “the King of all Kings,” leading the main stream Protestant churches to regard the Unification Church as a cult.

Born to a Christian family of patriots in 1920 Jeongju, North Pyeongan Province in today’s North Korea, he fled to the South at the outbreak of the Korean War to escape religious persecution, according to the religious group. He started his religious teachings in Busan and eventually moved to Seoul in 1954 where he founded the Unification Church. He reached out to the intelligentsia of the time and attracted many Yonsei and Ewha Womans University professors and college students. The two Christian universities expelled the students for their religious beliefs and successfully led a campaign against Moon that resulted in his imprisonment.

Persecuted at home, Moon turned his eyes abroad, beginning missionary work in Japan and the United States in 1958 and 1959, respectively. Today, Japan has the largest number of Unification Church believers.

In the U.S., the church enjoyed success in the 1960s and 1970s, holding a mass gathering of nearly 300,000 followers in Washington, D.C. in 1976. That same year, Moon was chosen as Man of the Year by Newsweek. In 1982, the first mass wedding outside of Korea was held at Madison Square Garden, New York, for thousands of couples.

However, the church has been accused of recruiting followers through dubious means and raising money from the faithful. In the West, especially the United States, parents of followers have alleged that their children were brainwashed into joining the group.

Moon’s shady business practices caught up with him in 1982 when he was convicted by the U.S. government for filing false federal income tax returns and for conspiracy. He was fined $15,000 and served 13 months of an 18-month sentence before being released to a halfway house.

In recent years, the church adopted a lower profile in the United States, focusing on building up its business empire.

Moon was a shrewd businessman whose business interests in Korea and the United States spanned a wide range ― from newspapers, a hotel, a ski resort, educational institutions and cultural institutions to a professional soccer club.

A fervent anti-communist, Moon met with the then North Korean leader Kim Il-sung in 1991. In his autobiography, Moon said he urged Kim to give up his nuclear ambitions. The Unification Church runs a joint-venture automobile plant in North Korea.

Moon had 14 children with his current wife, Han Hak-ja, and is survived by his wife and 10 of his children.

By Kim Hoo-ran (khooran@heraldcorp.com)