Gifts of Deceit

Last updated
Gifts of Deceit
Gifts of Deceit book.jpg
Book cover
Author Robert Boettcher
LanguageEnglish
Subject Politics, South Korea United States relations, Unification movement
Genre non-fiction
PublisherHolt, Rinehart and Winston
Publication date
1980
Publication placeUnited States
Media typeHardcover
Pages402
ISBN 978-0-03-044576-7

Gifts of Deceit: Sun Myung Moon, Tongsun Park, and the Korean Scandal is a 1980 non-fiction book on Koreagate and the Fraser Committee, a congressional subcommittee which investigated South Korean influence in the United States by the KCIA and the Unification movement, written by Robert Boettcher, with Gordon L. Freedman. Freedman had served on the U.S. Senate Watergate Committee staff and had been a producer for ABC News 20/20 prior to his service on the subcommittee. [1]

Contents

About the author

Boettcher graduated with an M.S. in international relations from Georgetown University and served as a United States Foreign Service officer. [2] Boettcher later was the staff director to the House Subcommittee on International Relations, which headed an investigation into Tongsun Park, Sun Myung Moon and the Unification movement. [2] The subcommittee was chaired by Congressman Donald M. Fraser. Boettcher died in a fall in 1984. [3]

Cited by secondary works

Boettcher's work is cited extensively in Farrell's Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century. [4] The book itself was noted in United States Congressional investigations on "The Cult Phenomenon in the United States", in 1979. [5] Gifts of Deceit is also cited in Breen's The Koreans: Who They Are, What They Want, Where Their Future Lies, [6] Anderson's Inside the League, [7] and is recommended reading by Olsen's Korea, the Divided Nation [8] and Kim's Dictionary of Asian-American History. [9]

In addition to political books, Gifts of Deceit is cited in books which analyze new religious movements, including Another Gospel , [10] The Future of New Religious Movements, [11] Crime, Values, and Religion, [12] Spiritual Warfare, [13] and more recently in Jenkins' Mystics and Messiahs, in 2000. [14]

Reception

In his work, The Ethics of Citizenship, James Stockdale recommends Gifts of Deceit and states that it is "very revealing", and deals with the "questionable conduct." [15] The New Republic called it a "most complete account." [16] The Washington Post reviewed the work, but stated that portions of the Koreagate Scandal may have been due to media hype. [17]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brainwashing</span> Concept that the human mind can be altered or controlled


Brainwashing, also known as mind control, menticide, coercive persuasion, thought control, thought reform, and forced re-education, is the concept that the human mind can be altered or controlled by psychological techniques. Brainwashing is said to reduce its subject's ability to think critically or independently, to allow the introduction of new, unwanted thoughts and ideas into their minds, as well as to change their attitudes, values, and beliefs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sun Myung Moon</span> Korean religious leader (1920–2012)

Sun Myung Moon was a Korean religious leader, also known for his business ventures and support for conservative political causes. A messiah claimant, he was the founder of the Unification Church, whose members consider him and his wife Hak Ja Han to be their "True Parents", and of its widely noted "Blessing" or mass wedding ceremonies. The author of the Unification Church's religious scripture, the Divine Principle, he was an anti-communist and an advocate for Korean reunification, for which he was recognized 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 other related organizations.

The Subcommittee on International Organizations of the Committee on International Relations was a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives which met in 1976 and 1977 and conducted an investigation into the "Koreagate" scandal. It was chaired by Representative Donald M. Fraser of Minnesota. The committee's 447-page report, made public on November 29, 1977, reported on plans by the National Intelligence Service (KCIA) to manipulate American institutions to the advantage of South Korean government policies, overtly and covertly.

Bo Hi Pak was a prominent member of the Unification Church. During the 1970s and 1980s, he was a major leader in the church movement, leading projects such as newspapers, schools, performing arts projects, political projects such as the anti-communist organization CAUSA International, and was president of the Unification Church International 1977–1991. He was also the president of Little Angels Children's Folk Ballet of Korea.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Unification Church</span> International new religious movement

The Unification Church (Korean: 통일교) is a new religious movement derived from Christianity, whose members are called Unificationists or sometimes informally Moonies. Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) began gaining followers after the Second World War. On 1 May 1954 in Seoul, South Korea, Moon formally founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC), the Unification Church's full name, until 1994, when it was officially changed to the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. It has a presence in approximately 100 countries around the world. Its leaders are Moon and his wife, Hak Ja Han, whom their followers honor with the title "True Parents".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steven Hassan</span> American mental health professional, writer

Steven Alan Hassan is an American writer and mental health counselor who specializes in the area of cults and new religious movements. He worked as a deprogrammer in the late 1970s, but since then has advocated a non-coercive form of exit counseling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hak Ja Han</span> Korean religious leader (born 1943)

Hak Ja Han Moon is an international religious leader. Her late husband Sun Myung Moon was the founder of the Unification Church (UC). Han and Moon were married in April 1960 and have 10 living children and over 30 grandchildren. In 1992, she established the Women's Federation for World Peace, and traveled the world speaking on its behalf. Since her husband's death, she has assumed leadership of the Unification Church, whose followers call her "True Mother" and "Mother of Peace".

A cult is a group which is typically led by a charismatic and self-appointed leader who tightly controls its members, requiring unwavering devotion to a set of beliefs and practices which are considered deviant outside the norms of society. It is in some contexts a pejorative term, also used for new religious movements and other social groups which are defined by their unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or their common interest in a particular person, object, or goal. This sense of the term is weakly defined – having divergent definitions both in popular culture and academia – and has also been an ongoing source of contention among scholars across several fields of study.

Tongsun Park is a former South Korean lobbyist. He was involved in two political money-related scandals: Koreagate scandal in the 1970s, and the Oil-for-Food Program scandal of the 2000s. Park had a reputation as the "Asian Great Gatsby".

A doomsday cult is a cult that believes in apocalypticism and millenarianism, including both those that predict disaster and those that attempt to destroy the entire universe. Sociologist John Lofland coined the term doomsday cult in his 1966 study of a group of members belonging to the Unification Church of the United States: Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith. In 1958, Leon Festinger published a study of a group with cataclysmic predictions: When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World.

"Koreagate" was an American political scandal in 1976 involving South Korean political figures seeking influence from 10 Democratic members of Congress. The scandal involved the uncovering of evidence that the Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) was allegedly funneling bribes and favors through South Korean businessman Tongsun Park in an attempt to gain favor and influence in American politics. Reversing Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter's pledge to withdraw American military forces from South Korea is thought to have been one of their primary objectives.

Nansook Hong, is the author of the autobiography, In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Family, published in 1998 by Little, Brown and Company. It gave her account of her life up to that time, including her marriage to Hyo Jin Moon, the first son of Unification Church founder and leader Sun Myung Moon and his wife Hakja Han Moon.

Michael Breen is an English author, consultant and journalist covering North and South Korea.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Unification Church of the United States</span> Religious movement in the United States

The Unification Church of the United States is the branch of the Unification Church in the United States. It began in the late 1950s and early 1960s when missionaries from South Korea were sent to America by the international Unification Church's founder and leader Sun Myung Moon. It expanded in the 1970s and then became involved in controversy due to its theology, its political activism, and the lifestyle of its members. Since then, it has been involved in many areas of American society and has established businesses, news media, projects in education and the arts, as well as taking part in political and social activism, and has itself gone through substantial changes.

Daniel G. Fefferman is a church leader and activist for the freedom of religion. He is a member of the Unification Church of the United States, a branch of the international Unification Church, founded by Sun Myung Moon in South Korea in 1954.

Young Oon Kim (1914–1989) was a leading theologian of the Unification Church and its first missionary to the United States.

P'ikareum is a controversial religious practice in some new religious movements of Korea. As defined by British religious scholar George Chryssides, the practice consists "of a female neophyte engaging in ritual sexual intercourse with the messianic leader [of the movement], in order to restore – either literally or symbolically – the sexual purity of the woman". Chryssides also notes that there were cases where the messianic leader was female and the neophyte male. The person so initiated will then have intercourse with his or her spouse, and the purity acquired from the messianic leader will be transmitted to both the spouse and the progeny. The spelling p'ikareum was used in McCune–Reischauer transliteration until 2000; however, it is also spelled p'ikareun, as well as pigareum in modern-day Revised Romanization.

Gordon Freedman is an American educator, producer, writer and investigator. He is currently the president of the National Laboratory for Education Transformation.

References

  1. ↑ Olsen, Edward A. (2002). Toward Normalizing U.S. Korea Relations: in due course?. Lynne Rienner Publishers. p. 36. ISBN   1-58826-109-3.
  2. 1 2 Maurer, Harry (1998). Strange Ground PB: An Oral History of Americans in Vietnam, 1945-1975. Da Capo Press. pp. 6, 290–294, 302, 622. ISBN   0-306-80839-0.
  3. ↑ Staff (May 30, 1984). "Robert Boettcher, Staff Chief In House Inquiry, Dies in Fall". The New York Times .
  4. ↑ Farrell, John Aloysius (2001). Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century. Back Bay. pp. 729, 730, 746. ISBN   0-316-18570-1.
  5. ↑ United States Congress, Biographical Sketches of Participants, "The Cult Phenomenon in the United States", February 5, 1979, Senator Bob Dole, presiding.
  6. ↑ Breen, Michael (2004). The Koreans: Who They Are, What They Want, Where Their Future Lies. St. Martin's Press. pp.  271, 272, 274. ISBN   0-312-24211-5.
  7. ↑ Anderson, Scott; Jon Lee Anderson (1986). Inside the League . Dodd, Mead. pp.  297. ISBN   9780396085171.
  8. ↑ Olsen, Edward A. (2005). Korea, the Divided Nation. Praeger/Greenwood. p. 184. ISBN   0-275-98307-2.
  9. ↑ Kim, Hyung-chan (1986). Dictionary of Asian American History. Greenwood Pub Group. p. 528. ISBN   0-313-23760-3.
  10. ↑ Tucker, Ruth A. (1989). Another Gospel . Zondervan. p. 446. ISBN   0-310-25937-1.
  11. ↑ Bromley, David G.; Phillip E. Hammond (1987). The Future of New Religious Movements. Mercer University Press. pp.  233. ISBN   0-86554-095-0.
  12. ↑ Day, James M.; William S. Laufer (1987). Crime, Values, and Religion. Praeger/Greenwood. p. 188. ISBN   0-89391-411-8.
  13. ↑ Diamond, Sara (1989). Spiritual Warfare. South End Press. pp.  252. ISBN   0-89608-361-6.
  14. ↑ Jenkins, Philip (2000). Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History. Oxford University Press. pp.  275. ISBN   0-19-512744-7.
  15. ↑ Stockdale, James B. (1981). The Ethics of Citizenship . University of Texas Press. pp.  141.
  16. ↑ Staff (May 17, 1980). "Brief Reviews". New Republic.
  17. ↑ Marro, Anthony (April 20, 1980). "Messiahs, Manipulators and Media Hype". The Washington Post . pp. Section: Book World.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.