Pyongyang wasn’t always a synonym for missiles and mass parades. Long before the Kim dynasty, it was called the Jerusalem of the East, packed with churches, schools, hospitals, and missionary energy that helped make Korea one of the most Christian places in the world. That single fact flips the usual “North Korea history” narrative on its head, and it’s where our conversation with Wall Street Journal journalist Jonathan Cheng begins.
Jonathan joins us to unpack his book The Korean Messiah: Kim Il-sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult, tracing how Protestant Christianity spreads in northwest Korea, how Japanese colonial rule turns the church into a shelter for national identity, and how shattered political hopes push some Koreans toward Marxism-Leninism. We also dig into Kim Il-sung’s origin story as Kim Song-ju, a boy steeped in the Bible, church music, and Sunday school, and why that background matters when he later builds a regime that functions less like a normal state and more like a political religion.
We talk about what a cult of personality looks like when it becomes daily ritual: portraits in every home, badges worn over the heart, bowing at statues, weekly sessions that resemble confession, and information control that keeps alternative realities out. Jonathan also shares what he saw on visits to North Korea, plus the strange late-life moments when Kim Il-sung invites Billy Graham and opens tightly managed churches that offer a narrow “crack of light” without real religious freedom.
Podden och tillhörande omslagsbild på den här sidan tillhör
Michele McAloon. Innehållet i podden är skapat av Michele McAloon och inte av,
eller tillsammans med, Poddtoppen.
