Sun Myung Moon, the founder and head of the Unification Church, has died at the age of 92.
The self-proclaimed messiah, who turned the church into a worldwide religious movement, died at a retreat near the South Korean capital.
His death came two weeks after he was hospitalised for pneumonia. His wife and children were at his side.
During his time as leader of the church, Mr Moon befriended North Korean leaders as well as US presidents.
Mr Moon, who was born in a town that is now in North Korea, founded his religious movement in Seoul in 1954.
He preached new interpretations of lessons from the bible.
The church gained fame and notoriety in the 1970s and 1980s for holding mass weddings of thousands of followers, often from different countries.
Many of those whom Mr Moon married were matched up in an attempt to build a multicultural religious world.
The church was accused of using devious recruitment tactics and duping followers out of money.
Parents of followers in the US and elsewhere expressed worries that their children were brainwashed into joining.
The church responded by saying that many other new religious movements faced similar accusations in their early stages.
In later years, the church adopted a lower profile and focused on building a business empire that included the Washington Times newspaper, the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan, Bridgeport University in Connecticut, as well as a hotel and a fledgling carmaker in North Korea.
It acquired a ski resort, a professional football team and other businesses in South Korea, and a seafood distribution firm that supplies sushi to Japanese restaurants across the US.
The Unification Church claims millions of members worldwide, although church defectors and other critics say the figure is no more than 100,000.
