GAPYEONG: Twenty-five years after her parents were married, Iasmin Lumibao travelled from Macau to South Korea to follow in their footsteps and marry alongside thousands of others in a mass wedding that has come to exemplify the South Korea-based Unification Church.

On Monday, about 1,000 couples were married at a ceremony in Gapyeong, northeast of Seoul, while another 3,000 couples renewed vows. In all, 64 nationalities were represented.

From the early 1960s until he died in 2012, the church’s founder and self-declared messiah, Sun Myung Moon, played matchmaker, pairing couples who had never met and sometimes did not even speak the same language.

The second generation couple decided to get married in 2017 after they met at a church programme in Austria in 2014.

But they came to the decision by themselves, rather than having their parents or the church decide, which become more common for young people in the church after Moon died.

Critics have for years vilified the movement as a heretical and dangerous cult and questioned its murky finances and how it indoctrinates followers, known in derogatory terms as “Moonies”.

But Lumibao, who said she never considered finding a husband outside the church, said the new generations should continue the marriage traditions.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2018