Kidnaping of a Moonie

For the past 20 years. Bo Hi Pak. a onetime South Korean army officer, has been the trusted adviser of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, spiritual leader and founder of the Unification Church. One evening last September. Pak, who has been acting as leader of the church while Moon serves an 18-month sentence in federal prison for tax evasion, was abducted outside a Manhattan hotel. Blindfolded and handcuffed, Pak was driven 80 miles to a house in Slate Hill, N.Y., where his kidnapers tortured him with electric shocks. Two days later, Pak's abductors ordered him to fly to Washington and transfer $500,000 in church funds to a numbered bank account in Switzerland. They threatened to harm Pak's wife and six children, who live in suburban Virginia, if the ransom was not paid.

The FBI, notified by church officials of Pak's disappearance, contacted him in Washington. Pak revealed the kidnap plot to the FBI and canceled the wire transfer of the ransom money. Through his identification of the kidnapers, two of whom he knew personally, investigators tracked down and arrested six men. They included Unification Church Associates Sang Whi Nam and Yung Soo Suh. An attorney for Nam said that the abduction arose out of an internal church dispute and was an attempt to change Unification Church policy. Joy Garrett, a church spokeswoman, said that Nam's claim was "absolutely false," adding, "As far as we are concerned, this is not a church matter."