3 Takeaways - The Religious Cult Behind North Korea’s Power (#303)

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

We think of North Korea as a communist dictatorship. But Jonathan Cheng, the Wall Street Journal’s China Bureau Chief and former Korea Bureau Chief, says that misses the real story.He argues North Korea functions more like a religion -  complete with rituals, worship, and a ruling family treated like immortals. Once you hear it, you can’t unsee it.His new book is Korean Messiah. 

We think we understand North Korea. We call it communist. But is it? Hi, everyone. I'm Lynn Toman, and this is three takeaways. On three takeaways, I talk with some of the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, newsmakers, and scientists. Each episode ends with three key takeaways to help us understand the world

and maybe even ourselves a little better. Today, I'm excited to be with Jonathan Chang. John is the China Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal. Before that, he served as the paper's Korea Bureau Chief. He's also the author of the wonderful new book, Korean Messiah. Welcome, John, and thanks so much for joining three takeaways today. It's a real pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

It is my pleasure. John, what do most people misunderstand about North Korea? We call it communist, but is it? Well, it is communist to a degree. I don't want to suggest that it isn't altogether. It was founded under the auspices of the USSR at the end of World War II in 1945. But I think that when we misunderstand North Korea, we misunderstand it by thinking that it is primarily a communist or socialist or Stalinist state. It certainly is that.

And it certainly is a nation state. But I think perhaps even to think of it as a nation state, quite, in my opinion, get to the essence of what North Korea is. I would argue that what North Korea is at its root is it's a religious society. It's a country, yes, of 25 million people. It is cut off from the outside world. It does have many trappings of statehood. It has a seat at the United Nations. It has a flag. It has an anthem. It has a military. It has coinage. It has postage stamps. All of those are true. And yet when you really peel back the layers. What you get is a society that is built around the founding family, the Kim family.

We know Kim Jong-un is the third-generation leader of North Korea. But if you go back to his father and ultimately to his grandfather, the founder of the state, Kim Il-sung, that's really what this state is built around. It's built around what I might even go so far as to call worship of Kim Il-sung. That's really what lies at the center of this state. What are the roots of this worship, this belief system. Many people would be surprised to know that many of the ideological roots of this state religion, if you want to call it that, can be traced in a meandering way, but through American post-bellum Presbyterianism. And that's because after the Civil War in the U.S., you had many young men and women, Ivy League or college, university educated, who would

sailed to the ends of the earth to spread the Christian message. Among them was a young man from Indiana. He arrives in Korea in 1890. He's one of the very first, the first handful of foreign missionaries to ever arrive in Korea. He goes up to Pyongyang, today the capital of the Kim dynasty, and he does what missionaries do. He tells them about the Christian message. And it took hold there in Pyongyang in a way that it never really took hold almost anywhere else in all of Asia. It became a city that was so Christianized that it was known as the Jerusalem of the East. And out of that comes the family of Kim Il-sung, or if you want to put it in another way, the family of Kim Jong-un. They were among the very, very first families to convert to Christianity in Korea, and they were among the most fervent believers, such that when Kim Il-sung was born in 1912, he was born into a rich Christian environment.

grew up not only going to church on Sundays with his mother and his father, he grew up learning to play the organ in church. He grew up performing in church plays. He taught Sunday school. He spoke at the YMCA. He was a leader of a church youth group. He lived in the home of a pastor for several years. And this deep understanding of faith and how it works, I think played a pretty central role in the state that he created when he was catapulted to power in 1945 at the age of just 33 years old. And why do you think he adopted this essentially religious system of veneration of himself and his descendants? Well, I think partly because of the way he was raised, I think he had a really intuitive understanding of this idea that if you want to get people

to do what you want, if you want to control people, there is almost no better way than to look at religion, to look at faith. And I don't think this is a particularly novel idea. I think many men throughout history have figured this out. But I think Kimmel-sung uniquely was positioned, partly because of the circumstances of his upbringing, as well as the circumstances of how he came to power in 1945. When that happened, he did draw upon Stalinism,

but I think he did also draw upon his Presbyterian upbringing, and just this idea that if you can create the rituals and the doctrine, the cosmology of faith, of religion, that you can really get people to not only be loyal, but to devote themselves to you and to your cause. And that's something that he was expert at. You call your book Korean Messiah. Why?

And how did he get other people to see him that way? If you go back to the most famous Messiah, Jesus Christ, what's interesting, of course, is that he was regarded at his time as a political messiah, as somebody who could deliver Israel, the Jews, from Roman rule. And Kim Il-sung, in many ways, positioned himself as a political Messiah, freeing Korea, a country that had been colonized by the Japanese, he could rid Korea of the Japanese presence.

And later, the American presence, because the Americans took control of Southern Korea, South Korea today. But of course, Jesus Christ is a major figure in human history, not necessarily because of what he did politically, but for what he represented as a spiritual Messiah. And there too, Kim Il-sung presented himself as a kind of spiritual Messiah for the Korean people. He did try to set himself up as a figure who, if you were loyal to him, if you went even further and you put your trust, you put your faith,

you gave your life for him, you could attain some measure of transcendence, some measure of immortality through him. And you see this cosmology, this kind of theology, develop over the decades, because he did rule North Korea for a very long time. And he creates this cosmology where all ritual, all belief, all of life revolves around him. And of course, when he died, unlike Mao, unlike Stalin, he didn't have a successor who came along and tried to repudiate some of his own legacy. Kim Il-sung, of course, handed off power to his son, Kim Jong-il, who then handed off power to his son, Kim Jong-un. And so, in a certain sense, Kim Il-sung himself attained a measure of immortality because, after he died in 1994, the state rewrote its constitution to make him the eternal president of North Korea.

So even today, more than 30 years after he died, he is still, in essence, the leader of North Korea. he is still eternal and he is still among his people in his own way. So we're now at the third generation, Kim Jong-un. Is this system, do you think, driven more by belief or by fear? I think it's certainly driven to a large extent by repression, by fear, because North Koreans don't really have a choice. If you're to keep your head on your shoulders, you're going to engage in the rituals of Kim Il-sungism.

You are going to wake up and the first thing you're going to do is you're going to go to your living room and you're going to use a state-issued duster to carefully dust the portraits of Kim Il-and-sung and his son, Kim Jong-il that you have on your wall. When you have your graduation day, your wedding day, New Year's Day, you're going to go to the nearest statue of Kim Il-sung and you're going to present a bouquet of flowers and you're going to bow before that statue because that's what every North Korean is expected to do every day. you're going to memorize his words. You're going to sing his praises literally. This is what it means to be North Korean. And so is there much of a choice? I would say, no, there is no choice. But on the other hand, does it become real? I would say that after 80 plus years of this one system, without any loosening, without any relaxation in the ideology, for many people, if you're younger than 80 years old and you're North Korean. This is all you've ever known. This is your reality. And I don't know that you are even aware that you have any other choices. So I would say that, yes, in some respects, it is real.

It is within the narrow confines of the reality that they are permitted to understand. How early does the belief system start? What are kids taught in school? It really starts from the cradle. The very first words that you learn to speak if you're North Korean are praises to Kim Il-sung. You learn to say, thank you, Father Kim Il-sung, for the food that you get in nursery school. The first things you are taught to write when you're a young child in North Korea are to write the name Kim Il-sung. It is woven into the curriculum. You'll take Kim Il-sung 1. You'll take Kim Il-sung 2. You'll study the childhood of him. And almost any paper that you write will need to be prefaced with a quotation.

a choice quotation from the great leader of North Korea. By the time you're a grown adult, there really is no alternative. He really is almost like a genuine father figure. And as with the Christian context, there is an understanding in North Korea that you have a physical, biological father, just like all of us have a physical biological father, but you also have this other father, a spiritual heavenly father, you could almost say. And Kim Il-sung indeed instructed his. people to call him father, capital F. And so that is how he's regarded by almost all North Koreans.

Do you think that Kim Jong-un believes this narrative? I think he probably knows better. He did go to school in Switzerland. He did have some engagement with the outside world. But there is a possibility that at a certain point, you do start to believe your own legend. I don't know whether that's the case for him. I haven't had a chance to speak with him. But I would imagine that he is able to hold intention, this idea that he needs to serve as a messianic figure on his own. But of course, he must also be aware of his own frailties and of his own mortality as well. As much as he may want his people to believe that he is a deity of sorts, he too knows that he is flesh and blood

and that it is just a matter of time for him as well. How do you think his mindset shapes the way he makes decisions, especially when it comes to weapon systems and confrontation. Well, I think he is a risk taker. Kim Il-sung was very good at what he did. North Korea was devastated during the Korean War. It was surrounded on all sides by major world powers, including the USSR and the People's Republic of China. He was very skillful in playing off Mao and Stalin. And then you see his son, Kim Jong-il, also be very master. about this as well. And he really brought North Korea into the age of a nuclear program and a missile program. But it's really Kim Jong-un, the current leader, who has really stepped on the accelerator. And so we've seen him preside over a nuclear and missile program that is truly quite extraordinary.

I think North Korea is, like it or not, an established nuclear state. And so I think that that has effectively insulated North Korea from external threats. I think that any leader that may ever set foot in the Oval Office would be very, very, very, very hesitant to consider any sort of military movement on North Korea. Unfortunately, I think that ship has sailed. I don't know that that is a possibility anymore. And I think this is where it fits together with the cult of personality that the Kim family has developed. In the same way that you have nuclear weapons to forestall any sort of an external attack, the internal threat is neutralized in large part by the fact that you have such loyalty to this family that has run North Korea without interruption and without any liberalization for now more than eight

decades. It's amazing. It's amazing. Let's talk about how the North Korean people live. how does their standard of living compare to South Korea and the rest of the world? And do they have any idea of the difference? Certainly compared to South Korea, North Korea is lagging very, very, very far behind. Now, there was a time when the two Koreas were roughly at parity, but that would have been back in the 70s and the 80s, because the strength of a Stalinist system did allow North Korea to make some advances in the early years.

But by the 80s and the 90s, it was not a close battle anymore. And today, South Korea is far, far, far ahead of North Korea. That said, in the capital, Pyongyang, where Kim Jong-un is and where the elites live, there are pockets of wealth there, and there are places where the elite can feel comfortable and can say to themselves, maybe our standard of living is not up to what it might be in other countries, but it's pretty good. and it's good enough that I don't feel a need to run away or to rebel or to try anything foolish like that.

I have enough a buy-in in the system. Now, if you're on the edges of society in North Korea, I think it's a woeful and miserable experience indeed. And I don't know that I would recommend it to anyone, but I do think that partly because they simply don't have much of an awareness of where they stand relative to other countries around the world, I think in some senses, there may just be a feeling that, well, life is hard. but life is hard everywhere, and I'm going to make do with what I have, despite the fact that it is true that there are compatriots on the southern half of the Korean Peninsula, even on the margins of society in South Korea, are doing far better. But if they don't know, I suppose that there's some bliss in that ignorance, perhaps. When world leaders deal with North Korea, what do you

think the biggest mistakes that they make are? I think the biggest mistakes are to treat them as if they are willing to give up their system or to give up key planks in their system, whether it be their nuclear program, whether it be their control over their populace. I don't think the Kim family is interested in that at all. I don't know that there is a more clever way to get North Korea to engage and certainly their way of life and their system, the system of rule that they have. Why would they give that up? It's worked for so long. So I definitely think that that is one area where the misunderstanding is very deep. How do you compare the Kim family's leadership to other leaders?

Well, I think this commitment to not ever liberalizing is quite a bold one. If you look again at China, you look again at the USSR. When pressures built up in their system, even these autocratic authoritarian systems felt like there was a need to let off some steam, to have a safety valve so that people who are dissatisfied could express that. That's never happened in North Korea. And that's a bold gamble because one could see these frustrations perhaps being bottled up and boiling over at some point. And yet, perhaps it's because of the size of the country. It's smaller than the USSR. It's smaller than China, has far fewer people. Perhaps it's simply that repression works.

and they've learned that and aren't about to deviate from it. Why change the blueprint if the blueprint is working? And I think the commitment to this cult of personality is total. Unlike Khrushchev coming after Stalin and saying we need to rename Stalin grad and we need to pull down some statues of Stalin, we need to de-Stalin eyes, unlike Deng Xiaoping coming along in China and saying, we need to go in a different direction, we need to take down some of these Mao statues, we need to demowify.

there's never been any such process like that taking place in North Korea. And if they were to look back at the track record of these three countries, I think Kim Jong-Land would look at it and say, we made the right choice. He certainly did for his family. Certainly did. John, what are the three takeaways for understanding North Korea today? The first takeaway is that North Korea is at heart, a religious society. It is a nation state with all the trap,

of a nation-state, but we need to understand that it is a religious society built around worship of Kim Il-sung, the state founder and his successors, including the current leader Kim Jong-un. I think it helped to explain why there is so much devotion, so much willingness to endure hardship, and why all attempts to steer North Korea onto a different course have not succeeded over the decades. The second takeaway, I would say, is that North Korea in its current form is not going away anytime soon.

The third takeaway is that Kim Il-sung understood, it's more powerful, perhaps, to recognize the importance of religion, of faith, of belief, because only faith, unlike fame, power, sex, money, uniquely speaks to a question that I think every person has at some point, which is a simple question. What happens after we die? Faith purports to answer that. And if you can get people to believe in your faith, in your cosmology, in the doctrines and the rituals that you've created, I think you can make people do almost anything.

And Kim Il-sung understood that deeply. Thank you, John. This is eye-opening. I really enjoyed your book, Korean Messiah. Thanks. It's really great to be here, Lynn. and I hope you learn something. If you're enjoying the podcast, and I really hope you are,

please review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps get the word out. If you're interested, you can also sign up for the Three Takeaways newsletter at three takeaways.com, where you can also listen to previous episodes. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and Facebook. I'm Lynn Toman. And this is three takeaways. Thanks for listening.