Minjung Noh is a Korean student from the Seoul National University who, as part of KAICIID’s “Talking Dialogue” project, has been conducting archival work in New York, USA. Her research for the Talking Dialogue project was centred on the Universal Peace Federation (UPF), one of the world’s youngest interfaith organisations. Founded in 2005 by Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon and his wife, Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon, UPF works to supplement the work of the United Nations in matters of interreligious dialogue promotion and the strengthening of marriage and family as instruments of peace and human development.

Greetings from Tarrytown, New York.

The days I have spent at the UPF (Universal Peace Federation) office since the 7th of July have been very fruitful. Although my expectations have not entirely been met, I have managed to deal with a mixture of modernized digital archives and document boxes in the warehouse with help from the office staff. In this report, I am going to briefly describe what I found in the UPF archives, as well as the general orientation of my fieldwork there.

The Archive

The UPF headquarters in Tarrytown are perhaps better described as an office than an archive. It is a lively workplace where the devoted staff conduct their daily tasks planning UPF events and acitivities, such as the biannual World Summit, UN-related conferences, and events concerning family and youth. Therefore, its “archive” and perusable materials are dispersed in several places: in office cabinets, on their website, hard drives, and even in a nearby warehouse. Of these various formats, digitized material on the Web takes up the greatest part. Mrs. Pople, the director of the UPF Office of Publications, said that she tried to upload as much of the  available resources to the Web archive of UPF, maximizing the quantity of searchable documents  on the Web. As a result of her efforts, Mrs. Pople can carry out most of her tasks from home.

 

a. Ms. Pople working at her home workstation

However, digitizing the material is still a challenge: during the course of my research, I found that a considerable amount of material still wasn’t digitized, was digitized but hidden away on a staff member’s hard drive, or was lost with a broken Web link. I reported several of these dead links on the Web archive to Mrs. Pople. Moreover, the earlier the content, the less likely it was to be digitised. For example, between 2000 and 2005, a period during which events important to the founding of UPF occurred, very few documents can be found on the Web.

Since the most important events in  the foundation phase of UPF occurred during this period, I needed to visit the UPF warehouse, which is located about 10-minutes’ drive from the headquarters in Tarrytown. Though the warehouse was a repository of materials, it had not undergone any organising work beforehand. Boxes full of documents, photos, and audio records were stacked in the warehouse, and only categorised by year. Therefore, one would encounter “A Year 2005 Box,” and have to explore them without the help of any indexing. Despite some obstacles, I was fortunate enough to discover 2005 UPF Inaugural Conference documents, which are the most relevant sources for the research investigating the founding of UPF. This would not have been possible without the help of Dr. Frank LaGrotteria, the director of the Office of Operations, Finance, Legal Affairs, and Human Resources in the UP

 

b. boxes in the warehouse

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c. The cabinet where I found the important documents

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The People

Founded by Unification Church in 2005, UPF has focused on the practical dimension of interfaith activities. It focuses on concrete initiatives such as promoting family values, youth awareness, and establishing peace in certain regions with various religious entities. This focus of UPF demands extra effort from the staff who have to organise and run dozens of events and conferences every year. Mr. Taj Hamad, the Secretary General of UPF, described his staff as spiritually motivated and deeply devoted people, and is very proud of them. Dr. Thomas Walsh, the president of UPF, directs the conferences and the organisation’s agenda, . Dr. Frank LaGrotteria described himself as the “body” of UPF, administrating the practical, hands-on activities of the organisation. Ms. Genie Kagawa has also been an important UPF activist from the beginning, and has managed cooperation with external individuals and organisations such as the UN .  As we’ve seen earlier, Ms. Pople is in charge of the UPF archives, but she also supervises all official UPF publications. Finally, many other hard-working staff members, such as Mr. Alberto Faccon (Graphics and Print Productions), Ms. Ann Gagne (Office of Finance), and Mr. Kensei Ito (IT and Web Engineering) help make every event convened by UPF possible.

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d. from the left: Mr. Kensei, Mr. Alberto, myself, Dr. Walsh, Mr. Hamad, Dr. LaGrotteria, Ms. Hong, Ms. Gagne.

My fieldwork concerning the founding of UPF has gone smoothly. As UPF was founded relatively recently, many witnesses were available and willing to share their testimonies. Indeed, the people who have been working here from the start had significant experiences to share and I realised that they were, in a way, part of the UPF archives, too. Through initial research, several staff meetings, and conversations, I got a better idea of the circumstances surrounding the creation of UPF. Unification Church has promoted the inter-religious agenda since the 1970’s, founded on its strong conviction that humanity is one under God, but around 2000 it went through important changes which stress the importance of its cooperation with the United Nations. At that time, Unification Church had carried out its interfaith activity under the name of IIFWP (Interreligious and International Federation of World Peace). After 9/11, however,[1] these interfaith activities became even more vital: IIFWP immediately convened a Summit of Muslim Leaders in Jakarta. These events were key to the founding of UPF, and help us gain a better understanding of the role played by UPF in the history of interreligious dialogue. In September 2005, exactly 4 years after 9/11, UPF was founded, with the inaugural conference and ceremony held at the Lincoln Center in New York.

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e.  The sample of discovered & digitized documents in the fieldwork

I found a series of unpublished documents relating to the 2005 inaugural conference, such as the list of participants, drafts of UPF articles, a thank you letter, seminar session handouts, and so on. They were mostly found in the warehouse, and had not been digitized yet. So I scanned and digitized them, securing primary materials for the final essay, and I plan to share the items with UPF for archiving purposes. Furthermore, I conducted three interviews with core members of UPF. As the living history of UPF, they provided me with the most useful resources. The total amount of documents and sources that the UPF office holds is yet to be determined, since the comprehensive archiving and categorizing of the materials has not yet been completed. The disorganised state of the materials was definitely the greatest challenge to my research, though I was able to compensate for these lacunae through effective communication with staff members. Still to be done are regular analyses of the materials, transcription of the interview records, and the final essay. All in all, the interaction with UPF staff, as well as wider experiences I have had here have allowed me to better understand the spiritual conviction which serves as the foundation to the main structure and activities of the organisation.

^[1] In addition, the end of the Cold War and resurgence of religion in 1990’s also sculptured the initial settings of interreligious dialogue.