RELIGIOUS FIGURES from North Korea

Top 2

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary North Korean Religious Figures of all time. This list of famous North Korean Religious Figures is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Sun Myung Moon (1920 - 2012)

With an HPI of 61.49, Sun Myung Moon is the most famous North Korean Religious Figure.  His biography has been translated into 35 different languages on wikipedia.

Sun Myung Moon (Korean: 문선명; Hanja: 文鮮明; born Moon Yong-Myeong; 6 January 1920 – 3 September 2012) 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. Moon was born in what is now North Korea. When he was a child, his family converted to Christianity. In the 1940s and 1950s, he was imprisoned multiple times by the North and South Korean governments during his early new-religious ministries, formally founding the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, simply known as the Unification Church, in Seoul, South Korea, in 1954. The Unification Church teaches conservative, family-oriented values from new interpretations of the Christian Bible mixed with theology from Moon's own text, the Divine Principle. In 1971, Moon moved to the United States and became well known after giving a series of public speeches on his beliefs. In the 1982 case United States v. Sun Myung Moon, he was found guilty of willfully filing false federal income tax returns and sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. His case generated protests from clergy and civil libertarians, who said that the trial was biased against him. Moon was criticized for making high demands of his followers, and at many times requesting their life savings be donated to church activities. These demands led to many struggles for families of those who donated. Many of his followers were very dedicated and were often referred to in popular parlance as "Moonies". His wedding ceremonies also drew criticism, especially after members of other churches took part, including the excommunicated Roman Catholic archbishop Emmanuel Milingo. He was also criticized for his relationships with political and religious figures, including US presidents Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush; Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev; North Korean president Kim Il Sung; and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

2. Francis Hong Yong-ho (1906 - 2013)

With an HPI of 52.19, Francis Hong Yong-ho is the 2nd most famous North Korean Religious Figure.  His biography has been translated into 19 different languages.

Francis Hong Yong-ho (Korean: 홍용호 프란치스코; Hanja: 洪龍浩; born 12 October 1906 – death unknown, but acknowledged in June 2013) was a Roman Catholic prelate in North Korea who was imprisoned by the communist regime of Kim Il Sung in 1949 and later disappeared. After his disappearance, he was for many years listed as the Bishop of Pyongyang.