Why does “Unification Church × Politics” become a national issue in South Korea—
but not in Japan?

—The democratic blind spot revealed by comparing counter-espionage laws

1. The real issue is not “religion,” but a state’s capacity for self-audit

In South Korea, controversy surrounding the Unification Church (formerly the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity) has resurfaced, and in that process connections to Japanese politicians have been mentioned.

In Japan, the reaction tends to be: “Here we go again,” followed by a quick drift toward quiet resolution.

But what we should be asking is not:

• “Is the Unification Church dangerous?”
• “Which politician was involved?”

The core question lies elsewhere.

Why is religious political influence treated as a national issue in South Korea, while in Japan it gets reduced to individual explanations—and ends there?

This is not a difference of religion. It is a difference in whether a country can institutionally examine itself.

2. Why South Korea can problematize politics–religion entanglement

In South Korea, even if the actor is a religious organization, if it affects politics, security policy, or national decision-making, it is treated as a public matter.

One background factor is the existence of the National Security Act.

This law is controversial, and it has long been criticized for risks to freedom of expression. Yet it also reflects a decisively different premise from Japan:

Focus on actions, not labels.
Even if an actor is religious, even if it is right-leaning, if it exerts improper influence on the state, it can become subject to scrutiny.

In South Korea, those who influence politics can, in principle, be investigated—whether individuals or organizations.

3. Why Japan’s debate ends with “individual explanations”

In Japan, when the Unification Church issue surfaces, the debate almost always collapses into a familiar checklist:

• Was there a relationship or not?
• Was anything illegal or not?
• Was “accountability” satisfied?

Once someone is deemed to have “explained,” institutional verification rarely begins.

Because Japan largely lacks:

• an ongoing mechanism to investigate politics–religion entanglement,
• a third-party framework to examine foreign political interference,
• an institutional apparatus designed to doubt and test the government’s explanations.

4. A Fundamental Distortion Surrounding Spy Protection Laws

In this context, one fact deserves particular attention:
the long-standing support and expectation expressed by the Unification Church in Japan for the enactment of a spy protection law.

At first glance, this may appear counterintuitive.
In principle, a spy protection law is meant to
prevent foreign interference and illicit intelligence activities that distort national decision-making.

Japan, however, presents a different situation.

Debates over spy protection laws in Japan have often been framed not as questions of institutional design, but through ideological labels, such as:

• “patriotic or unpatriotic”
• “ally or enemy”
• “defender of the state or a suspicious actor”

Once this framework is established, a critical reversal occurs.

Religious organizations or political actors positioned close to state power are,
by default, placed on the side of those who are presumed to be ‘protecting’ the nation—and thus escape scrutiny.

Anti-Communism as a Political Exemption

There is another factor that must not be overlooked:
anti-communism as a political exemption.

The Unification Church has long promoted a strong anti-communist ideology.
In post–Cold War Japanese politics, “anti-communism” has frequently been interpreted as
a position aligned with national interest.

This has produced a distinctive dynamic.

Questioning actors perceived as “fighting the enemy” becomes institutionally uncomfortable.

Anti-communism is treated, implicitly, as if it were a justification for excluding
financial flows, mobilization networks, and policy influence
from systematic examination.

Yet what should be examined is not ideological alignment, but conduct.

Whether an actor is anti-communist cannot serve as a legitimate exemption from scrutiny over undue influence on state decision-making.

Anti-communism, in this sense, is not merely a slogan.
In Japan, it has taken institutional form through so-called “Victory over Communism” (Shōkyō) movements—extra-institutional political activities that have functioned as
circuits through which political and religious proximity could be more easily legitimized.

When a Protective Law Becomes a Law of Selection

Under such conditions, debates surrounding spy protection laws become structurally distorted.

In theory, such laws should apply equally to any individual or organization whose actions exert undue influence on national governance.

In Japan, however, a reversal remains possible:

those who most strongly advocate for a spy protection law are not necessarily the first to be examined under it.

The law ceases to function as a shield safeguarding democratic integrity and instead risks becoming
a tool for selecting who is subject to suspicion and who is not.

The danger lies not in the law itself, but in
an institutional design that lacks mechanisms of prior and continuous verification.

This structural distortion helps explain why spy protection laws in Japan have repeatedly generated deep public distrust.

As the next chapter demonstrates, this contrast becomes even clearer when compared with institutional frameworks in Germany and France.

5. Japan’s uniqueness, revealed by comparison with Germany and France

International comparison sharpens the picture.

Espionage and foreign interference are severe risks for any democracy. The key is not whether a risk exists, but what design philosophy governs the response.

Which countries have “anti-spy laws” (or their functional equivalents)?

So-called “anti-spy laws” are not one uniform statute. Many countries do not have a single law literally titled “Anti-Spy Act.” Instead, they distribute provisions across criminal codes and security frameworks, such as:

• rules that punish espionage (cooperation with or acting for foreign intelligence services),
• rules that punish leaking state secrets or defense information,
• frameworks that criminalize or expose foreign interference.

Representative examples include countries that clearly criminalize espionage and/or classified-information leaks:

• United States: frameworks punishing disclosure of defense information (e.g., the Espionage Act and related statutes)
• United Kingdom: updated frameworks addressing espionage and hostile foreign activity (National Security Act 2023)
• Germany: criminal-code provisions including activity conducted on behalf of foreign intelligence services
• France: criminal-code provisions addressing treason/espionage and provision of sensitive information to foreign powers
• Canada: national security / information-protection frameworks criminalizing espionage (including economic espionage)
• Australia: reforms establishing espionage and foreign-interference offenses

The crucial point is not simply “there are penalties.” Many of these countries attempt to pair stronger security enforcement with designed oversight and control.

Germany: a strong state paired with strong restraints

Germany treats espionage and national-security violations with strict legal reach. At the same time, institutional restraints on state power—especially on how authorities handle sensitive information—tend to be robust.

The premise is clear:

The state needs authority. But the state can also be wrong.
Therefore, mechanisms that “protect the state” must include mechanisms that “bind the state.”

Because this design exists, security debates are less likely to rely on ideological labeling. The focus shifts to what was done and where the brakes exist.

France: security policy combined with a firm separation from religion

France also maintains strong security legislation. But it is equally strict about keeping religion at a distance from political legitimacy.

• Religious groups have little room to claim political authority.
• Religious actors have limited space to enter security discourse by presenting themselves as “defenders of the nation.”

Because of that separation, political influence by religious organizations is less easily shielded by vague appeals to “freedom of religion.” Freedom of belief is protected, while organizational political effects remain open to public scrutiny.

Japan’s position, as revealed by the comparison

This comparison is not about ranking countries. The point is how often “strong law” and “strong oversight” are designed as a package.

In Germany and France (and in many cases the UK, Canada, Australia, and others), counter-espionage measures tend to be paired with institutional designs meant to prevent state power from drifting.

In Japan, the sequence often flips:

• a “threat” is emphasized,
• stronger law is demanded,
• but the questions of “who operates it” and “who stops it” remain weak.

Japan’s peculiar vulnerability appears here:

“Laws that strengthen the state” are sought first,
while “institutions that doubt and control the state” recede into the background.

To be clear: this does not mean Japan is an authoritarian state. Japan is plainly a democracy.

Yet when the design to continuously verify power remains weak for long periods, features seen in authoritarian systems—namely a situation in which “doubt itself is not institutionally assumed”—can begin to appear partially inside a democracy.

In other words, the issue is not “identical regimes,” but that Japan has unconsciously preserved—in the form of institutional absence—space where authoritarian-style behavior can slip in.

This positioning leads directly to the next chapter’s theme: what Japan lacks is not “a law,” but a design philosophy.

6. What Japan lacks is not “a law,” but a “design philosophy”

Seen through this comparison, Japan’s problem becomes clearer.

Japan faces a double vacuum:

• no comprehensive counter-espionage legislation, and
• weak institutional capacity to continuously oversee power.

This is often framed as a simple deficiency—“Japan is defenseless because it lacks an anti-spy law.”

But the core problem is different.

What is missing is the design philosophy of how to doubt state power and where, institutionally, to stop it.

Why only “law” tends to be demanded first

Whenever security threats are emphasized in Japan, debate quickly shifts to “we need a new law.”

But questions like these remain underdeveloped:

• Who will operate the law?
• How—and to what extent—will that operation be overseen?
• Who can stop misuse or drift?

As a result, Japan repeatedly falls into a reversal:

Rather than designing how to restrain power,
only laws that empower the restraining side get demanded first.

What happens when law comes before design

If oversight design remains weak while strong law arrives first, the law begins to acquire functions beyond its stated purpose:

• a law to deter foreign powers can chill domestic speech,
• a law to “protect the nation” can become a tool for sorting critics,
• under the banner of security, “the suspicious side” can become fixed.

At that point, law can shift from a shield for democracy into a device that pre-selects who gets doubted.

This is not merely theoretical. In societies where institutions to doubt power are weak, such drift is structurally likely.

Why it is hard for Japan to treat this as a problem

Why does the absence of design itself fail to become an issue?

Because Japan’s political culture has often been built on an implicit assumption:

• “The state basically acts in good faith,”
• “Major deviation is exceptional.”

Within that assumption, institutional doubt looks like “distrust,” “division,” or “overreaction.”

So problems are routinely processed as:

• reduced to personal responsibility,
• followed by “explanations,”
• then closed before verification begins.

What remains is stability maintained by not doubting power—yet it is a fragile stability built on the abandonment of verification.

The Unification Church issue exposes precisely this design vacuum.

7. The question the Unification Church issue truly forces upon Japan

This is not a debate about whether religion is good or bad. Nor is it merely a moral trial of individual politicians.

The deeper question is this:

Can Japan generate—by institutional design—questions that are inconvenient for those in power?

In Japan, “accountability” is demanded whenever scandal arises. Yet “explanation” rarely becomes the start of institutional verification.

Explanation should be the beginning. In Japan, it functions as closure:

Explained. Apologized. Relationship ended. —And that is that.

What appears here is a distorted state: one that requests explanations but does not design verification.

Why “structure” disappears

This issue is repeatedly broken down into “individual ties.” That is not accidental.

To ask about structure inevitably forces questions such as:

• Why did it go unchallenged for so long?
• Why did it align with particular political forces?
• Why are money, mobilization, and endorsements not examined as a flow?
• Why does the same pattern recur?

Ask these and the focus shifts from individuals to the political system’s design itself. Japan has remained stable by not institutionally generating that question.

What “freedom of religion” ends up protecting

In Japan, “freedom of religion” is often invoked. But what is at issue is not what individuals believe.

The public question is what an organization, as an organization, has done to politics.

By collapsing the issue into “freedom of religion,” politics escapes verification. What is protected is not faith but the governing habit of ending with explanations.

Conclusion

—Will Japan remain a state that does not doubt?

Whether Japan has an “anti-spy law” is not the essence. Whether the Unification Church is uniquely problematic is not the essence.

The real question is:

Is Japan willing to build institutions that doubt—even those close to the state—without exception?

A state that does not doubt can look calm and stable. But that stability is silence maintained by abandoning verification.

A country where explanations end everything. Where verification never begins. Where structure is never asked—and the same problem repeats.

This is not a past scandal. It is a present design problem.

If Japan looks away again, the next case may involve a different religion, a different organization, or a different foreign actor. But if structure does not change, the ending will remain the same:

Explanation. No verification. Forgetting.

Whether we continue to call that “democracy” is the line Japan is now standing on.