A Seoul court convicted Han Hak Ja on Monday and handed her a two-year prison sentence on bribery charges. The verdict marks a significant legal reckoning for the leader of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, the organisation more widely known as the Unification Church.
Han is the widow of Sun Myung Moon, who founded the church in South Korea in the 1950s and at times claimed to be the second coming of Jesus. Since Moon's death, Han has led the organisation, which has grown into a global movement with adherents across dozens of countries.
Prosecutors accused Han of passing several expensive gifts, including a designer handbag, to Kim Keon Hee, the wife of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, in exchange for political favours. Han has denied the charges. She insists she did not pass any items to Kim via an intermediary. Her lawyers announced after the verdict that they will appeal.
The case does not stand alone. Kim Keon Hee was herself convicted of graft charges in January and received a 20-month prison term for accepting gifts from the Unification Church. An appeals court in April went further, increasing her sentence to four years in prison after convicting her of additional charges.
Kim's husband, Yoon Suk Yeol, was removed from office in 2025 following an unsuccessful attempt to declare martial law in South Korea. He is currently in jail. The chain of convictions now links the leadership of a major religious institution to the highest levels of a government that has since collapsed.
The Unification Church has drawn global scrutiny before. In 2022, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated by a man whose motivation, investigators established, was rooted in his family's deep ties to the church. That killing prompted a wave of political and public examination of the church's influence in Japan.
South Korean prosecutors have pursued the church's connections to political figures as part of a broader corruption inquiry. The conviction of Han herself, the organisation's supreme leader, represents the most senior legal outcome from that process so far. Whether she will serve the sentence or remain free during appeal proceedings is not yet clear.
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