Talk:Heung Jin Moon

Early (May 2005) discussions

What a load of sentimental crap - surely not up to NPOV standards! [unsigned]

On Feb 20 1984 Ballerina Julia Pak married the ghost of Sun Myung Moon's dead son, Heung Jin Moon, in a tasteful necro-ceremony. The couple were engaged to be married, but the car accident in December intervened. Unfortunately in the Moonie religion, only married couples may enter Heaven, hence the need for this awkward rite.

• ghost
• tasteful necre-ceremony
• Unfortunately
• awkward

Would someone help me copyedit this passage? It seems snide, as if the writer were deliberately sniping at Moon & Pak. -- Uncle Ed (talk) 15:22, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

Hey, at least they said it was tasteful. How's this?

Moon's death came before his planned marriage to ballerina Julia Pak. According to the tenets of his religion only married couples may enter heaven. Therefore his parents conducted a post-mortem marriage ceremony three months later, February 20, 1984.

Any better? -Willmcw 17:19, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

Considerably - although the term post-mortem carries the connotation of "trying to figure out why he died". I don't think he's parents were really wondering about that...

In fact, we should mention in the article that his father noted the coincidence between the precise hour of (1) his son's car crash and (2) the start of a his crucial Kwangju speech at which (he claims) terrorists were planning to assassinate him. (Don't worry, I will not present it as FACT but as Rev. Moon's POV.) -- Uncle Ed (talk) 19:08, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

Well, post mortem literally means after death. In any case, if there is a theory that it was not an accident then it sounds like his parents were not sure why their son died. How did hitting a truck prevent an assassination? It's not clear from your comment as to who was giving the speech, what it was, or why it was crucial. Lastly, if the church does in fact believe that unmarried souls cannot enter heaven, then is it correct that Heung Jin Moon entered heaven immediately, even though the marriage did not occur until months later? It would be helpful to have some better explanation of that. Cheers, -Willmcw 19:38, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

Also, it'd be nice to get the usual biographical info - when and where born, attendance at college, etc. -Willmcw 19:39, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I'll get to that eventually. But getting bakc to "entering heaven" first:

In another article, I will have to clarify the Unification Church's concept of heaven and afterlife. The most commonly discussed idea in Christianity (or in atheistic critiques of Christianity) is that of a sharply bifurcated "either-or" division of the spirit world into Heaven and Hell. Glorious rewards for the good guys and unbearably nasty punishments for the bad guys.

Much of the criticism of this simple either-or division centers on the Rules used to determine one's fate. Did I "accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour"? (the fundamentalist question) Have I confessed my sins? (the factor that made Hamlet delay killing Claudius)

Why should a simple mental or verbal exercise have so profound an effect on a matter at least as weighty as whether a prisoner remains in or gets out of a Vietnamese Hanoi Hilton?

Anyway, this is not very relevant to the current article; perhaps I digress (as at prisoner abuse). But to return to the point at hand: the spirit world has various levels. It's not simply +1 and -1 (or even +1, 0 and -1 where 0 = Catholic purgatory). "The measure you give will be the measure you get," Jesus said, so the quality of one's afterlife is directly related to how well one has "lived for the sake of others".

The doctrine of "cannot enter heaven single" refers to an upper level of the already rather high level an unmarried saint would merit. Often these distinction don't survive translation from Korean very well. You'd have to be very familiar with UC doctrine to interpret an isolated quote like that.

I'm not saying it was taken out of context, since that would blame the reader / quoter. Rather, it was poorly translated or edited. So much of what Rev. Moon has said, simply isn't understood well because we followers have not made the effort to systematize our understanding. We merely compile his speeches, a process that works fairly well in Korean, but ...

Okay, back to work for me. I hope you caught my drift. And anyway, thanks for your conscientious efforts to bring accuracy and clarity into these articles. -- Uncle Ed (talk) 16:05, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. For the purposes of this article then, perhaps it would be sufficient to say that marriage is required in order to reach the highest level of heaven. I'll go ahead and insert that. Cheers, -Willmcw 20:29, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

We also need to know more about this assassiniation attempt, which I don't think is even mentioned in the article on Sun Moon. I think we can leave off the fact that he loved horses and stray cats. -Willmcw 20:33, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

He also like working on old junk cars, fixing them up. You know, nothing goes to waste? (Like stray cats.) Now he spends all his spare time rescuing lost souls from hell, when their descendants participate in the grace and repentance ceremony.

Okay, a lot of this is going to seem theoretical / theological. (I just wrote Fictionology, so I know how zany it all looks. ;-)

I'll go into assassination attempts as part of the Sun Myung Moon article. There have been several (to my knowledge). And I have no idea how many which were hushed up. Security guards once found a time bomb at the church's Belevedere Estate set so it would have exploded during Rev. Moon's speech to members, had it not been detected. (You're often better at digging up sources than I am; I wonder why that is so? I ought to be familiar with my own church! *sigh* Maybe I'm too close to the subject.) -- Uncle Ed (talk) 16:56, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

I finally found a biography of Rev. Moon, which I added to the external links of that article. I haven't had a chance to read it yet - there may be more info on the assassinations there.

Regarding Heung Jin, some mention should also be made of his posthumous books. I've seen some references which describe them as having been "channeled." Do you consider that to be an NPOV term? If we're going to include statements about his present activities, they'll have to be clearly attributed. Cheers, -Willmcw 21:37, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure "channeling" is a mainstream term. We speak of "dictating" and "recording", in our light-hearted confidence that a specific, known spirit man is transmitting messages to a particular earthly person. "Channeling" has a connotation of being rather haphazard, and I think it deserves this reputation.

Hm. Maybe I'll get into past lives (past life regression?) and reincarnation while I'm at it. The general public has practically no exposure whatever to the Unification Church's POV about a distinction between "returning resurrection" and reincarnation. -- Uncle Ed (talk) 19:06, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

Notability?

Is this article really necessary? --Nissi Kim 21:47, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Did you read the article?!?

"Heung Jin Moon is officially regarded to be the 'king of the spirits' in heaven (rather than Jesus)"

An argument can be made that Heung Jin Moon is to Unificationism what Mary is to Catholicism, the second most important figure in the history of the world after the messiah (for Unificationists, that's True Parents). I suppose his significance should be made clear in the first paragraph. Unless you think that Wikipedia should have no more than 2 or 3 articles on Sun Myung Moon and Unificationism (see the long list of - sometimes marginally notable - topics in category Unification Church), you really can't argue that Heung Jin Moon is not notable in relation to the Unification Church. He is central, both in terms of the beliefs of Unificationists and in the history of Unificationism. -Exucmember 17:23, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I've seen the Unification article and the Moon article. IMO, a merge could be a bit better for the content. In the mean time, can we have some specific cited notations for the certain key facts in this article? --Nissi Kim 22:32, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

It seems, though, that you did not go to Category:Unification Church, or you would have seen 89 pages (89 articles) on topics related to the Unification Church, and at that point I think you would have reconsidered the suggestion that the long Sun Myung Moon article and the long Unification Church article be merged (that is what you suggested, right?), because that would seem to imply merging all 89 articles into one.

On the second issue you raised, I've seen some Wikipedia articles that just list the references at the end (as this Heung Jin Moon article does) and other articles where the references are specifically footnoted with a one-to-one correspondence. I prefer the latter, but in some articles this method may be unwieldy, as textual material is supported by multiple references and/or vice-versa. If you mean to say that you would like to see the latter system used for this article, you could attempt to convert it yourself, if you are sufficiently interested in this topic.

On the original issue you raised, I have moved the sentence about his notability in the context of Unificationism to the first paragraph. -Exucmember 06:18, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Ed Poor's blanking of large section of sourced material

I am reluctant to criticize User:Ed Poor in such a harsh manner, in part because I appreciate his early work on Wikipedia, but the wholesale blanking of well-sourced material on this page is inexcusable. At the same time he added unsourced commentary that was clearly false. My biggest disappointment, however, is that his actions are not atypical for Unification Church members, who often deal with difficult problems by pretending they don't exist or didn't happen, and hiding all criticism (labeled "negativity") from the public and from the "younger" members. Such methods may work in authoritarian, backward, third-world settings, but they don't measure up to modern standards of ethics, and they will not help the Unification Movement to improve.

Ed, I really think it would be best for you if you just leave this article alone. Your views on this topic are way out of the mainstream even among Unification Church members. You have demonstrated repeatedly that you have some kind of inability to make constructive edits to this article in particular, and your recent actions are simply unacceptable. If you continue, I will report you. -Exucmember (talk) 09:25, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

---

A lengthy paragraph in this piece is credited to Larry Moffitt and is sourced to an un-bylined statement at TParents.org. Larry Moffitt is not the author, so it was deleted. No author is listed for that piece at TParents.org, at least that I could tell. Sanviejo (talk) 12:26, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Overlap

The majority of this article appears to overlap with the topic of Black Heung Jin Nim. Additionally, it appears to lack third-party sourcing (and frequently any sourcing at all). Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 15:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I've just spent hours working on this article. I deleted those portions discussing Black Heung Jin Nim (which seem to have been copied here from that article) that were not directly relevant to this article. The many references (including third-party by even the strictest definition) that had not been placed inline were transferred as appropriate.

All 3 of the issues mentioned in the template at the top of the article are, in my opinion, clearly no longer applicable, but I'll leave it there for now and let others voice their opinions. -Exucmember (talk) 04:53, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

While I don't completely disagree with Exucmember's assessment, I think there's sufficient 'devil in the details' to warrant closer examination.

1. This article essentially starts with Heung Jin Moon's death: 'Death at age 17' -- meaning that we have two articles on UC's beliefs about him post-mortem. This would seem to be a considerable overlap per WP:MERGE.
2. The longest section in the article is still the explicitly overlapping 'Members' channelling replaced by official "embodiment"'
3. The second longest section, 'Significance attributed to Heung Jin Moon's death' is sourced almost solely to UC sources (the sole exception itself being a quote from Bo Hi Pak).
4. The sections leading up to 'Members' channelling replaced by official "embodiment"' could reasonably be considered context (again per WP:MERGE for the Black Heung Jin Nim article.
5. The three third party sources are: (i) a brief report of his death, (ii) a roughly 50/50 mix of Black Heung Jin Nim & general post-mortem beliefs & (iii) an article focusing exclusively on Black Heung Jin Nim.

I would therefore suggest that:

1. Heung Jin Moon does not have notability independent of Black Heung Jin Nim; &
2. That there is a strong rationale for merging them together into a single article on the UC's beliefs on the spiritual ramifications of and communications from Heung Jin Moon's afterlife.

Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 06:02, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

How would people feel about a merged title of Unification Church beliefs about Heung Jin Moon? This would:

1. Clearly encompass the topic of Black Heung Jin Nim; &
2. Clearly indicate that it is not a biographical article about Heung Jin Moon (which the current title of this article appears to erroneously imply).

Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 07:26, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

(old) Merger proposal

As nobody objected to my proposal in the above section, and as this article contained no pre-mortem information on Heung Jin Moon, I have gone ahead and renamed this article, and am now formally proposing merging Black Heung Jin Nim here -- as both articles cover the UC's beliefs about Heung Jin Moon, post mortem. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 14:17, 8 March 2009 (UTC) [Oh and Exucmember, the refactoring template on your talkpage was not "disingenuous", it was in response to this refactoring of this comment. Please do not do so in future. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 08:25, 17 March 2009 (UTC) ]

• Strongly Oppose name change and Strongly Oppose merge. Heung Jin Moon is about Heung Jin Moon and beliefs about him. Per Redddogg, who hit the nail squarely on the head in saying "Many articles on religious figures are mainly about other people's beliefs about them after the person's death." Black Heung Jin Nim is about a phenomenon that occurred over a period of about a year which involved both beliefs about Heung Jin Moon and the actions of an African Unification Church member, and how the interaction of the two played out over the period. This particular phenomenon was covered heavily in the press, and was called "what some Unification Church members believe is the most momentous spiritual event in its 34-year history" by the Washington Post. Only one of the 6 sections of the Heung Jin Moon article deal with the Black Heung Jin Nim. -Exucmember (talk) 06:30, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was no move, but Black Heung Jin Nim may be merged with this article. Aervanath (talk) 05:10, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

---

Heung Jin Moon → Unification Church beliefs about Heung Jin Moon — article provides no pre-mortem information about Heung Jin Moon. After a short discussion of his death it concentrates on (i) UC doctrine about the significance of his death & (ii) claims of channeling of him from beyond the grave. As such, the article is not about Heung Jin Moon the person, but about UC beliefs about him. It is also intended that Black Heung Jin Nim be merged into this renamed article. — Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 09:53, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

• Oppose. Article names should be specific and short, but not ambiguous. Names of persons are normally just that, without a lengthy description in the title. It does not make any difference in naming the article what aspect of the person the article describes, or why there is an article about them. 199.125.109.102 (talk) 14:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
• Merge but don't rename Many articles on religious figures are mainly about other people's beliefs about them after the person's death. Should Saint Joseph be retitled "Christian beliefs about Saint Joseph"? Redddogg (talk) 14:28, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
• Strongly Oppose name change and Strongly Oppose merge. Heung Jin Moon is about Heung Jin Moon and beliefs about him. Per Redddogg, who hit the nail squarely on the head in saying "Many articles on religious figures are mainly about other people's beliefs about them after the person's death." Black Heung Jin Nim is about a phenomenon that occurred over a period of about a year which involved both beliefs about Heung Jin Moon and the actions of an African Unification Church member, and how the interaction of the two played out over the period. This particular phenomenon was covered heavily in the press, and was called "what some Unification Church members believe is the most momentous spiritual event in its 34-year history" by the Washington Post. Only one of the 6 sections of the Heung Jin Moon article deal with the Black Heung Jin Nim. -Exucmember (talk) 06:30, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

• In response to Redddogg's comparison to Saint Joseph: (i) Joseph lived 2000 years ago, not 20 & (ii) even for him, we able to glean some pre-mortem information. So I don't find the comparison to be particularly apt. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 14:44, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Largely after-the-fact-discussion of the failed renaming proposal

Moved here from my talk page:

"No discussion"? READ THE BLOODY TALK PAGE!

Your claim of "no discussion" was WRONG. Likewise your claim that it was "ill-advised" is WRONG in that the only thing that the article actually says about Heung Jin Moon is that he died. The rest of the article is about Unification Church beliefs about Heung Jin Moon after he died. If you can't be bothered discussing the article, let alone find on-topic information on it (i.e. about Heung Jin Moon himself, not about UC beliefs about him), then you can hardly be surprised if others take things into their own hands. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 09:40, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

What I meant by "discussion" was two or more people talking about something. I did not consider one person proposing something (and acting on it before any response) a "discussion". -Exucmember (talk) 06:14, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

GET A CLUE Get some slight understanding of the relevant facts and policy! <Hits Exucmember with a WP:TROUT> If you wanted "two or more people talking about something" then why didn't you discuss it yourself (instead of complaining after the fact)? "One person proposing something" and waiting two weeks for a response, and when they got none, going ahead is not unreasonable. I posted the proposal to talk, I waited a reasonable amount of time for comment, then I implemented it. WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM WITH THAT? Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 06:48, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Also Exucmember GET A CLUE get some slight understanding about what section this belongs in. This material is not about the merger proposal -- so please cease and desist in attempting to place it within that section. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 07:12, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

For someone who has an incredible fondness for wikilawyering, I find your obvious violation of WP:CIVIL surprising. "In the event of rudeness or incivility on the part of another editor, it is usually appropriate to discuss the offending words with that editor, and to request that editor to change that specific wording." I suggest you remove the phrase. "Get a clue". I also find the trout reference offensive and inappropriate. It doesn't seem to contribute to the quality of the article. The opening of the move request was made after your comment on my talk page (also a borderline violation of WP:CIVIL), and after I reverted your move. You combined the two, not me. Perhaps we should separate it into two sections. -Exucmember (talk) 07:32, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Execumember your demand that there be "discussion" before the move, when you you could not be bothered discussing it yourself (in spite of more than two weeks being allowed for you to respond) renders the three word reasonable response(per WP:SPADE). As you are so thin-skinned as to object to this, then I'll comply with your demand to change them. Neither the "move request" nor my 'reverted move' are relevant to the Merger proposal in the section above, so please STOP trying to merge this material into that section. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 07:50, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

[Edit conflict] In response to this edit, that the "comment had directly to do with the renaming" is irrelevant as the 'Merger proposal' section IS NOT ABOUT THE RENAMING! Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 07:38, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Objection to emphasis on significance as religious figure

I moved this template (below) from the article page, as it seems to me an inappropriate objection to an article about a religious figure. The issue can be discussed here. -Exucmember (talk) 07:19, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

A "religious figure" with no information about activities PRIOR to death?

In this edit, Exucmember asserts that it is "inappropriate for an article about a religious figure" to have information on "anything AT ALL about Heung Jin Moon BEFORE his death". I would assert to the contrary that it would be very rare (and possibly otherwise unknown) for a religious figure to be known for nothing before they died. While beliefs about their lives (and deaths) may grow after their death, it is always their actions and teachings while alive that forms the core of their notability, and of beliefs about them. Where is this "core" in the case of Heung Jin Moon? Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 07:26, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

As nobody has seen fit to attempt to rebut this point, I'm restoring the template. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 14:44, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

One united article

I suggest, and I hope Hrafn will agree, that we have one united article on Heung Jin Moon including all the material from the "Black Heung Jin Nim" episode, which I've gone ahead and renamed Return of Heung Jin Moon. I see considerable overlap, and in fact little more than overlap, between the two.

HJN's claim to fame is that after his death the church made a big fuss over him. This article and the spinoff are almost entirely about that fuss. I'll wait a week or two, and if there are no strong and reasonable objections, I plan to start doing the merge. --Uncle Ed (talk) 17:19, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

• Support merge. Both articles are really about the same thing. Besides which I have never heard an American member say "Black Heung Jin Nim." I only heard this (maybe once) from an Asian church elder, after the incident was over. Steve Dufour (talk) 16:20, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose merge. They are about two different people. Cirt (talk) 18:44, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Both articles are really about a large number of people, Heung Jin Moon and Cleopas Kundioni being only two of them. Neither article is primarily about one or the other. Steve Dufour (talk) 15:58, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

• Merge The largest section of this article is about the incident covered in the other. Anything else in that article could be added here and nothing would be lost. Readers would be saved from having to read the same information twice. Borock (talk) 17:20, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I pasted the entire other article into this one. I will get back to it to remove duplicated material.Borock (talk) 03:10, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Here's what I had to say above, which is directly relevant to this proposal:

• Strongly Oppose merge. Heung Jin Moon is about Heung Jin Moon and beliefs about him. Per Redddogg, who hit the nail squarely on the head in saying "Many articles on religious figures are mainly about other people's beliefs about them after the person's death." Black Heung Jin Nim is about a phenomenon that occurred over a period of about a year which involved both beliefs about Heung Jin Moon and the actions of an African Unification Church member, and how the interaction of the two played out over the period. This particular phenomenon was covered heavily in the press, and was called "what some Unification Church members believe is the most momentous spiritual event in its 34-year history" by the Washington Post. Only one of the 6 sections of the Heung Jin Moon article deal with the Black Heung Jin Nim.

The Black Heung Jin Nim is about a series of events, a chapter in the history of the Unification Church, considered by some to be among it's most important. For those on a crusade to delete as many Unification Church related articles as possible, a merge with Unification Church might make sense, but a merge with Heung Jin Moon makes no sense at all. -Exucmember (talk) 04:12, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that the "Black Heung Jin Nim" incident is a part of the larger Unification Church beliefs in him. However I see that there is no consensus so if you want to go ahead and undue the merge I will not object. Borock (talk) 05:16, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I just checked out this article and Black Heung Jin Nim. There is a section there that pretty much duplicates this article. Why not just merge the two together, rather than giving the same information twice? Borock (talk) 14:45, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

• Support: per WP:MERGE rationales "2. Overlap" (see Borock above) & "4. Context" -- Heung Jin Moon is mainly notable because of beliefs Unificationists have about Black Heung Jin Nim channelling him -- therefore it is best if he is treated in that context. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 15:12, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
• Support The merge makes sense to me. The other article gives much the same information as the section in this one. Any extra added here would not be a problem. Then no information would be lost and readers would not have to read the same material twice, or go to two different places for background. Kitfoxxe (talk) 15:53, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

• I've added the text from the other article here without removing anything, as called for by WP merge policy. Later the duplications can be taken care of. Borock (talk) 21:17, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Rewrite intro

I am going to rewrite the introduction so that it sums up all the material that is in the article, as WP policy suggests. Borock (talk) 12:28, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Fringe view removed

I took out the sentence about one reporter quoting one church member's opinion. I have never heard anyone else say this. Wolfview (talk) 09:11, 26 March 2011 (UTC)