North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Jonathan Cheng: The Christian roots of North Korea’s personality cult

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

NK News founder Chad O’Carroll begins this week’s episode by discussing the death of North Korea’s longtime representative to the International Olympic Committee, a South Korean helicopter’s accidental flight into the demilitarized zone during a firefighting mission and Seoul’s expression of regret over civilian drone incursions. In the second half, Jonathan Cheng, the China bureau […]

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Each design is a conversation starter. Find yours at shop.nknews.org. Again, that's shop.nknews.org. Hello, listeners, and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jacko's wetsuit. And today it is Tuesday, the 7th of April, 26, and I'm here in the studio with Chad or Carol. Chad, welcome back.

Good morning. How's it going, Jacko? Not too bad, Chad. Chad, I see that you've posted a long series of videos about how you found that MK News up on Instagram. How's the reaction been so far? Yeah, it's been quite good, actually. I posted the first yesterday.

I've been working on this for several months. And basically it's like a series showing how and why I started the website, how we sort of got through all the initial startup hurdles, what it was like working with the North Koreans, going to North Korea and press delegations, all that kind of stuff. There's some really funny stories in there. So I encourage people to check it out as, hopefully it won't be boring.

It came from basically people suggesting many times, like you should write a book sometime. But I thought that it's more interesting to do it in visual form because you can show photos and videos and stuff like that. So, yeah, first one went up last night. First of 22, right? 22, yeah. Okay.

There's 21 more to come. So check him out on the NK News Instagram account. Yep. Okay, we've got lots of news to get through today. I thought I'd start with a story that it's not very, it's not earth-shattering news, but it's kind of one of those human interest stories that I've been kind of expecting for a long time, and that is that the longtime North Korean representative to the International Olympic Committee has died at the age of 87.

His name was John. And some people like myself will remember when he came to South Korea in 2018 for the Pyongchung Winter Olympics. He was a very striking figure, almost 190 centimetre, so over six foot tall. And for a man born in 1938 in Pyongyang, that was extremely tall for his generation. former basketballer, former captain of the national team, and former head of the International Tequandor Federation, he took over after Chahonghi, the founder of International Tequado Federation,

founder of Tequandor. After he died, this man, Zhang Ung took over, and he was elected to the International Olympic Committee back of the 1990s. The same year that Samsung number two, Samsung son of the founder, Egonhi, who died a few years ago, he was also elected into the IOC the same year as Zhangong. So Zhangung lived for many years.

in Lausanne in Switzerland, spoke English, spoke Japanese, very comfortable talking to media. It was clear when he came here to Incheon International Airport in 2018. He was just sort of chatting away with the South Korean journalists. And it turns out that he was involved over the years with lots of attempts to create unified Olympic teams and inter-Korean sort of sports delegations, the 1991 joint tequandor, sorry, joint ping pong table tennis team. He was behind that and in 2000 when the two careers marched together into the Olympics in Sydney, he was part of the negotiations for that, as well as of course the 2018, the Winter Olympics here in Pyongchong. So he was behind a lot of this.

And he died at 87 and I kind of think that probably in his last years he would have been sad to see the way that the two careers were growing further apart and the turn away from peaceful unification in North Korea. We don't know. what he was thinking he hasn't you know spoken to the media for quite a while and in fact even in peong chung he didn't stay to the closing ceremony he went back apparently for health reasons but certainly a very urbane and worldly north korean yeah i don't really know much about him but i did read up a little bit this morning and i did seem like a very interesting profile in history he's had and yeah like you said if he was focused on unification teams etc i can imagine that big pivot away from

unification would have been difficult. I do remember going in 2017, I believe it was, to an inter-Korean ice hockey game in Kangnan ahead of the Pyongcheng Olympics and the North Korean team was there. And I wonder if he was there as well at the time. Perhaps he would have been attending to observe. But that was also a funny trip because one of the people in our, one of the people I'd traveled with to that, this was under President Pat Gunhey. One particular guest unfolded a North Korean flag. You might know who this is. And he tried to wave it by the ice. And suddenly he was surrounded by, I actually got this all on video, what appeared to be like undercover NIS folks. Wow. Who told him to put the North Korean flag away. And when he wouldn't, and there were some

pro-North Korea people behind him cheering him on, they just started roughing him up and snatched the flag from his hands. Wow. We got it all on camera and I subsequently contacted the Ministry of Unification saying, look, this is an Olympic, pre-Olympics ice hockey match. What the hell are you guys doing? I mean, are people not allowed to cheer on North Korea in South Korea? It doesn't seem like the IOC would be very happy about that. And it actually all turned out to be down to some technicality about, so they said,

it's okay to fly the flags at the game, but you can't transport them in South Korean territory, which made their ownership technically. It was very far-fetched, and I think it was just an example of how ridiculous the Park Gennay government was about hosting an international event like that, and then trying to ban spectators from observing. Sorry, we've swerved off topic.

If you had been to, if you'd gone to Los Angeles, Switzerland in late March this year, just a week ago, really, you would have seen the flags at the International Olympic Committee flying at the half mask, half mast to, you know, as a symbol of respect for Zhangong, he was apparently quite well respected within the IOC, and he served up until the mandatory retirement age of 80. And at that point, I think he went back to North Korea. But he had a son and a daughter, his son went into football, and his daughter went into volleyball. So it's quite a sports legacy that it is behind. Wow. Yeah. Well, RIP, I guess. Yes, rest in peace, Zhang Ung. Now, let's talk about helicopters over the demilitarizer on, Chad. You've been looking at this. Yeah, so we had a news

yesterday confirmed that a South Korean chopper basically strayed into DMZ airspace while undergoing or conducting like a kind of firefighting mission and the pilot hadn't requested permission from the United Nations command. It's a breach of the armist's disagreement, right? Yeah, and fortunately nothing happened but it was a bit of a wake-up call, I think, to some about the risk because there have been accidents and incidents in the past when shoppers have strayed into DMZ. Yes, I'm thinking about Bobby Hall in 94, who he and his co-pilot, whose name I can't think of right now, were shot down, and the copilot died, Bobby Hall survived and was held

by the North Koreans for a couple of weeks, so that was probably the worst one in recent years. Yeah, so there is precedent for bad news to emerge and it comes in a context of drone incidents, which we can talk about. But I think the North Koreans have made clear a number of times recently like if South Korean aircraft, manned or otherwise drift even a millimeter into North Korean airspace. It can provoke real retaliation, shoot first questions later kind of thinking. Being in the DMZ airspace itself doesn't actually mean you've crossed. the MDL though, the military demarcation line. So there probably was some wiggle room, but still these things should be announced and confirmed by UNC in advance, I assume, so that the North Koreans can be informed.

From my interviews with past UNC people, it's all about communication, and they always let North Koreans know, you know, we're going to be crossing into this area at this time to conduct this whatever, you know, repair or exercise or firefighting exercise, because that's the that happens actually more than we think because there's so much brush and vegetation in the demilitarized zone and winter and spring are quite dry months or the early part of spring brush fires happen a lot and sometimes these choppers go in there to try to put them out using water from the air yeah yeah so i guess they should be more careful and you know it was 2023 under yun sakiol when the cma comprehensive military agreement was torn up right one source who was up

Korsong at the Unification Observatory at the time. Over on the East Coast. Which is really far up on the northeast of South Korea. Took a photo and sent it to us of, I think it was like two or three choppers flying towards the Unification Observatory. And you've been there. That's very, very close to the border. And I think some of the people we spoke to for that article at the time, including

a former UNC staff, James Minnick, he, you know, yeah, and I think we spoke to Chun and Bums well. They both pointed out that this is very high risk, and I think it was Daniel Pinkston in the same article said, you would only do this in exceptional circumstances, not as a sort of regular sorty, but I guess there was a fire that this pilot was responding to. So perhaps that was the exceptional circumstance this time around. Yeah. Yeah, now speaking of drones and the demilitarized zone, we have sort of a semi-apology from South Korean President Yi Jiam Yong about the drone incursions by civilians.

Yeah, so this all kicked off earlier in the year and basically created a lot of consternation on the North Korean side that they found these drones sent from South Korea. It turned out allegedly to be civilians sending the drones. People should go and read the long form story that Yifang Bremma wrote about the South Korean gentleman who's accused of flying drones, I think, from Kanghua Island over into the North Green's aerospace, right? Yeah, I highly recommend Yifang's piece. It's a long read, but well worth it to get into the mind of the person who did it. And it touches on some of the groups who is affiliated with, which I have big question marks about their potential involvement. Anyway, it turned out there were some rock military and NIS by service people somehow involved with or connected to the two guys that sent these drones into South Korea and Airspace. sorry, North Korea airspace, and they've faced...

But not acting in an official capacity, right? Right, right. Going rogue? No. Going off script? No. Apparently they just knew about it, and I think some are given some informal advice about drones, etc.

But long story short, this wasn't an incident that fit with the E.J. Myeong administration's vision of warmer inter-Korean relations. So it must have been very frustrating for the Blue House that this occurred under their watch. And basically, E. Jamian has done all he can really do. He can't apologize for this because it wasn't allegedly. It seems his fault, his administration's fault, but he has expressed, his government has expressed regret, which is diplomatic parlance for sorry without fully saying sorry. Right. But it went down well.

The North Koreans seemed to have appreciated it. Kim Jong put out a statement late on Monday night, basically thanking him for apologizing. It's a wise thing to do, blah, blah, blah. Why am I feeling deja vu there, chat? Is there a pattern here of I Jem Yong apologising to North Korea and Kim Jong accepting it? I can't think, sorry, on the spot, so, Ellie. I can't think which one you're talking about. I don't have the specifics that hand either, but I just thought there was one at least a month or two ago that maybe it was a leafleting thing or a radio thing,

and E. Jam Yong apologized about that one, and Kim Jong said, well, you know, it's terrible, but what are you going to do? Yeah. But I just feel like this isn't the first time. It's not. And the North Koreans have also expressed regret to South Korea in the past, for example, when the South Korean tourist was shot dead in a home facility resort in 2008. It took a while, but the North Koreans got there as well, and they issued regret over that. I think that did over the, well, I'm thinking earlier, the submarine that was beached off of the East Coast in 1996.

The first two I came to Korea. There were those two submarines. Yeah, they did. I reread that the other day, and it was quite funny, given the gravity of the incident. An incredible story, yeah. For those who read Dutch, I recommend the book, North Korea's echnoy, sorry. North Korea never says sorry by Dutch journalist,

which is the most complete account I've ever read of that submarine incursion incident and what happened to all the men on board. Was there ever an English edition? No, no, every year or so I ask him, hey, is there going to be an English edition? And apparently there's no appetite for it, but there was a Finnish translation release.

Very interesting. It's an unusual one. Okay, next story we got here, is a South Korea non-profit says that it wants to hold an electric vehicle expo in North Korea? Yeah, basically, this is a great example, I think. I'm going to be blunt here of people receiving government money who have absolutely no clue about what they're talking about. You mean in terms of North Korea or in terms of electric vehicles? They probably know a lot about EVs, but when it comes to North Korea, inter-Korean relations,

this is just an example of an organizational people that have zero clue, completely detached from reality, just probably know that the E.J. Mung administration favors inter-Korean reconciliation, and it's at a bird's eye level, a strategic goal for South Korea. But if they'd done even one hour of homework, if they'd done one chat GPT query, what are the prospects for this and what are the hurdles? they would presumably see very quickly, they'd see in great detail if they were using our NK Pro intelligence suite tool.

They would see very clearly that there are major sanctions risks with doing something like this. Yes. UN sanctions do not allow cars to enter North Korea from overseas right now. So, you know, there's a load of other sanctions legislation that would make this very complicated. Well, we know that a lot of things are able to get from China to North Korea against sanctions. Correct. That's true.

but South Korea is a more, I guess, respectful to UN sanctions regime, member of the international community than maybe parts of China in the current international environment. The other thing is, though, just much bigger from the South Korean perspective than sanctions is Kim Jong-un made clear two years ago that there's going to be no reunification and the DPRK has repeated several times recently that they see South Korea as the number one enemy. So that would be the equivalent from the North Korean perspective of Israel inviting Hezbollah and Hamas for an EV spectacle conference in Tel Aviv. It's just not going to happen.

It's quite an analogy. Okay. But then thinking of it from the perspective of the South Korean group that wants to do this, I imagine that, you know, any South Korean group committed to doing engagement with North Korea will clutch at any opportunity to do it, whether that involves, you know, EVs, or bird watching or environmental issues or energy. I mean, they'll just look for any opportunity. And so this is one, maybe not the ideal one, but you take what you can get, right? Yes.

The problem with this is that they built a public event, press materials went out, and it's based on basically a kind of very optimistic vision about some form of vehicle-based into Korean Economic Corporation. Has North Korea issued an invitation to them? From what I gather, from I spoke to someone who is there, the person told me that the organisers seemed absolutely totally clueless about sanctions, that some of them didn't even know about Kim Jong-man's pivot away from reunification.

So when working at this kind of level, we're just wasting our time. We're wasting the time of journalists writing about it. Right. We're wasting our time, probably talking about it, but it's fun to talk about. the government presumably unification ministry has had to be appraised of this and they're wasting time everyone's wasting time and the thing is it's it's like a kind of vision statement objective conference that just has zero chance now if it was that if it was say some NGO do-gooders here who had a track record in humanitarian work and had a concept that they wanted to do a trial balloon regarding

some form of like preventative health care cooperation, especially about something that could be transmitted by wildlife or birds between it, that might maybe have a chance of getting some positive reaction from the North, but doing something like this, it just seems like a ridiculously absurd trial balloon. Sorry to be blunt, but yeah. Pie in the sky. Well, and on that not very hopeful note,

We'll have to end our episode today. Thanks very much. Chatter, Carol, and we'll see you again soon. Thanks, Jacko. For most people, North Korea is the world's most secretive communist dictatorship. But what if some of the roots of its political system actually lie in Christianity? Long before Kim Il-sung built the North Korean state, the city of Pyongyang was known as the Jerusalem of the East, one of the most vibrant centers of Protestant Christianity in Asia. My guest today, Jonathan Cheng, the China Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal, argues in his new book, Korean Messiah, that the Kim Dynasty's personality cult may have drawn heavily from that Christian past.

Jonathan, welcome, and thanks for coming on the podcast. It's been a long time coming. Thank you. Yeah, I'm a big fan of the show, and it's an honor to be here. If you had to explain North Korea's personality cult to someone in one sentence, would you say that it's closer to communism or to religion? To me, it always struck me as having just this really heavy dose of religiosity, the bowing before the statues, the pinning of the badges over the heart, the ceremonial dusting of the portraits in everyone's home.

You open up the newspaper, there he is, the singing of his praises, the quoting of his words. You even see the bolded words of Kim Il-sung, sometimes in red letter, which is definitely an act. of Christianity. Some of those features, though, could be seen in Stalin's Soviet Union, though, couldn't it? And also even afterwards, when Stalin's body was embalmed, as with Leonard's body and lay in state. So does it have something in common with other forms of communism around the world?

It definitely does. And there's no question about that. I'm not trying to argue in this book that Christianity is the skeleton key, the be-all-endall for the North Korean state. It definitely isn't. but it is, of course, wrapped up in Kim Il-sung's person. He was the man who founded the state at just 33 years old, or 33 years old when he came to power in 1945, founded the state, of course, three years later,

ruled it for basically half a century and, of course, bequeathed power to his son and to his grandson. So when you look at Kim Il-sung and his own personal role in this, you have to look at his upbringing, his childhood, and the fact that as I lay out in Korean Messiah, the first 20 years of his life were effectively within the church. He grew up in this milieu that was so deeply Christianized. It was the Jerusalem of the East, as you said.

His father, his mother were both very devout. And so this was definitely a part of his upbringing, and it left an indelible mark on who he was. Was Kimmel-Song secretly a Christian throughout his entire life? I don't know that I would go that far. Obviously, Kim Il-sung has been dead now for more than 30 years. I've never met him. I have his memoirs purportedly written in his name,

but I have not had a chance to talk to him. I don't know. That's honestly within himself. I mean, perhaps he himself doesn't even know. But whether or not he would consider himself a Christian, I don't think he would. I don't think he ever said that at any point. And I don't know perhaps when he was young.

When he was a boy, perhaps he would have considered himself a Christian. Was there ever a time in which he publicly repudiated Christianity or said, you know, that's a part of my past, but communism of the future or something like that? What's interesting is that towards the end of his life, Kimmel Sangha really just starts to open up about his own personal debt to Christianity. He talks about going to church with his mother as a child. He talks about the sermons that he used to hear. He talks about all this sort of stuff. And he talks a lot about how Christians are patronage. as well, that Christians weren't just, contrary to the North Korean propaganda for many years, that weren't just imperialists dressed in priests robes who were trying to advance American imperialist, you know, sort of goals, right?

Really, it was that many Koreans were actually Christian and many of them were actually patriotic. And so he goes out of his way to say that, but at the same time, he acknowledges his own debt to Christianity. And he says that I myself, my parents, even though they went to church, they weren't actually Christian. My father was an atheist. My mother went to church because it was a nice place to go on Sunday. It was a place where she could rest.

And for Kim Il-Sum, he said it was a place where I was inspired. I was surrounded by patriots. But not all Christians were patriots, but not all Christians were imperialists either. That's sort of the line he's trying to walk. Now, as we've said a couple of time, Pyongyang used to be known as the Jerusalem of the East. Why was Christianity actually stronger in northern Korea than in the South before 1945? It's a great question, and a lot of people have tried to answer that question.

You have sociologists, you have historians, you have Christians who try to explain this. The reason if you want to go beyond saying, for example, that God wanted it to be that way, is that people will point to Pyongyang as this kind of neglected city in Korean history. Certainly starting in the 1390s, you had Seoul become the capital of Korea. And even though the founder of the Chosen dynasty was from the northeast, he discriminated pretty heavily against northerners. And so northerners had this real big chip on their shoulder. They were excluded from power, despite the fact that in many of their examinations, the civil service examination, they did quite well, but many of them were barred from higher office. At the same time, you had many of them

positioned close, of course, to the border with China. Many of them smuggled a ginseng. They smuggled salt. They smuggled these sorts of things going over the border. So in the northwest of Korea, historically, you have this place that was not only neglected and looked down upon by the capital and the elites in the capital. You also had this kind of up by the bootstraps, capitalistic kind of wild west sort of a feel there, where people were willing to embrace new teachings. So when you had this Protestant Christianity come in, and it really arrived in earnest in Korea in the 1880s, you had people in Seoul look at it,

but they were sort of interested, but they weren't particularly drawn to it. You had missionaries going down to Busan in the south, and they found even less receptivity there to the Christian gospel. They just weren't interested. And then you had this one missionary, 26-year-old Samuel Moffat from Madison, Indiana. He goes up to Pyongyang and he finds a completely different atmosphere there. He finds

a hunger for this message that he's preaching and they want to know more. So it was there from the very beginning of the Protestant missionary experience in Korea. And of course, that went right up through Kim Il-sung's family because his grandparents and his parents were among the very first Korean converts to this faith. Now, what kinds of Christian ideas or practices would Kim Il-sung himself have encountered growing up as a young boy and a young man in Pyongyang. So he would have been a part of this church community, this church world. That would be very familiar even today to many South Korean Christians. If you go to a big megachurch, if you ever want to attend a Sunday morning service,

you'll see a lot of these same practices. Certainly, you'd have a very strong pastor with this great sermon, a call to arms, but you'd also have praying out loud together. You have a sanctuary, a room full of hundreds of worshippers, each of them praying out loud simultaneously on their own. It sounds like a cacophony, but it actually just, it's just a part of their practice. Waking up in the middle of the night, waking up and starting to do prayer at four in the morning,

three in the morning, five in the morning. This sort of pre-dawn prayer ritual was very much a part of Korean Christianity. And actually, Kim Il-sung himself and North Korean literature, itself describes a pre-dawn prayer meeting when Kim Il-sung's father was imprisoned at one point. All the Christians in his village got together, woke up before dawn, and prayed for his release. And so you have all of these. And of course, learning to play the organ at church, Kim Il-sung learned to play the organ. He was taught by his father.

He played hymns. He taught Sunday school when he was in a Korean church in Manchuria. He engaged in all of these sorts of Christian practices that would be familiar to people even today. There's even evidence that he performed in a church play. I don't know if it was a nativity play. I don't know if he was Joseph or one of the wise men or something like that. But Kim Il-sung was very much a part of this church community. And as I write in this book, he would write-

Did you say, Jonathan, that he actually taught Sunday school himself? He did. And he taught Sunday school. He taught Sunday school with another young man named Son Juan I, who then went on to found to start the South Korean Navy. So you can just imagine these two Sunday school teachers at this Korean Methodist Church in Manchuria. One of them goes on to become the leader of North Korea.

The other one goes on to start the Republic of Korea Navy, which, of course, fought against North Korea in the Green War. Now, in your book, you suggest that the North Korean personality cult around Kim Il-Song and then later on around his son and his grandson, that borrowed from Christian symbolism. What are the clearest examples of that sort of borrowing, that debt that is owed to Christian symbolism? So a lot of people will, of course, talk about the Holy Trinity. God, you know, God, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, in Christianity is sort of mirrored in North Korea with its Trinity.

Although, actually, people don't agree on exactly what that Trinity is, but they'll say Kim Il-the-son, the father. They'll say Kim Jong-il, the son. And then the third one, sometimes they'll say, Chu Cheh ideology, that's the Holy Spirit. Or sometimes they'll say it's the state, or sometimes they'll say it's Kim Jong-Suk, the mother of Kim Jong-il. It's a little bit amorphous there. you'll have people talk about confessing your sins. They'll have people talking about singing hymns. You know, people make the comparison to reading scripture.

But, you know, I have to agree that a lot of these, and you know, this book is not predicated on the idea that you say, look at what Christianity does and look at what North Korea does, I don't know that there's a direct causal link. And I don't want to try to make one because, frankly, I don't know where many of these practices come from. I think we can infer that a lot of it is probably, the product of Kim Il-sung and his upbringing and what he just grew up knowing and knowing intuitively

about what works. He saw firsthand the power of Christianity. He saw its ability to command the loyalty and the faith of hundreds of thousands of people. And so I think he really wanted to tap into that. And I think that was a subconscious thing at some level. Perhaps it was conscious. We do have one speech that he gives where he instructs his cadres to follow the example of what church leaders would do to bring in more children and more young people and keep them engaged in the church. So there is an element here where he's very explicitly modeling the practices of the North Korean state after the practices of the church. But a lot of it is people pointing to one thing and then pointing to another thing and saying

this looks like a similarity. And actually the most powerful, of course, is from the North Koreans themselves. when they first flee North Korea and encounter Christianity, they say to themselves, my goodness, it's so similar. Right. Now, you've kind of preempted the next question, but I'll ask it anyway. So it seems like you're suggesting that rather than this being a deliberate borrowing, it just happened because the society and Kim and his family had and were familiar with Christian

cultural patterns. Would you agree with that sort of summary? I think that's a very good theory. I think the basic answer is that we simply don't know what motivated all of this. I mean, the North Korean literature is vast. I mean, you can go to the Central Library in Seoul and you can go through all of the North Korean material that they have there. They never really pull back the curtain and tell you, well, this is what we try to do to do this. You'll see these hints.

And I mentioned some of them, like Himil Song, telling his cadres in the 1950s and giving them the example of pastors bringing in young people into the church using songs and using gifts. using prizes and these sorts of things and saying maybe you should consider doing this as well. But for the most part, we don't really have that direct sort of causal link. But I think that what you say is actually very sensible. The same receptivity that the Northern Koreans had towards the church was the same receptivity that I think Kim Il-sung, when he created his state, sought to tap into among the people north of the 30th parallel to command their loyalty. and to bring them into this faith of Kim Il-sungism.

Now, you describe early North Korean propaganda portraying Kim Il-Song as kind of like a secular Christ, and that's a very striking idea. What do you mean by that? Can you flesh it out a little bit? Yeah, you have some of these quotes from North Korean media, where they draw a direct contrast between, you know, the Christian tropes and the Christian imagery, and they tie that directly to, you know, sometimes they draw a contrast, but effectively they try to set Kim Il-sung up as an alternative in many ways.

Certainly, you'll see that when they unveil the first statue, according to Bruce Cummings, the first statue of Kim Il-sung in 1949, they do it on Christmas Day. And you have the Workers Daily, you know, the Nodong Sinu that comes out and says, don't go to Jerusalem. If you're looking for Christians of the world, if you're looking for the Holy Land, come to Pyongyang. This is where it is. You see this direct contrast being set up here. And really, you just have, you have Kim Il-sung again and again early on in his tenure as leader. We're talking

in the 1940s even, even before the Korean War, where he is quoting scripture to pastors in the north who are opposed, for example, to him holding an election on a Sunday. So one of the first elections that North Korea holds, November the 3rd, 1946, was a Sunday, and the many, many, many Christians of North Korea decided to boycott this election. And according to North Korea's own official propaganda, Kim Il-sung summons some of these pastors into his office. And he says, let me quote scripture for you. Doesn't Jesus heal on the Sabbath?

Doesn't he do this? Doesn't he do that? And the North Korean literature is so interesting. It sort of says the pastors were sort of jaws agape. They couldn't believe that Kim Il-sung would know their scripture so intimately and be able to quote it back to them. And according to the North Korean account, they walked out of the room, utterly transformed and convinced that they've seen the light because Kim Il-sung was able to quote scripture and to sort of throw it back at them. Now, I also find it interesting, this idea in North Korean ideology of eternal life, that there's a kind of eternal life. Now, not in a physical eternal life as Christianity teaches, but a sort of a spiritual

or even that might be the wrong word, but it's a way that a person in North Korea who does well is remembered forever and that debt of gratitude is there for the next generations. And we also have those statues, those Yongsankt up, the statues of eternal life. And Kim Il-Song was proclaimed the eternal president after he died. So is that kind of a secular rewriting of something? some of the one of the core Christian concepts? Yeah, I think that's definitely right. You saw this sort of ideology really emerged in the mid-1980s.

There was one document in 1986 that really started to systematize this. I think the word you were looking for is, and this is the North Korean phrase that they use, one's sociopolitical life. So like Christianity, they talk about this idea that we have a physical biological life, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We will all die one day. We all know that. but there's another life that we have,

a socio-political life that can transcend the physical life. So really, it's talking about transcendence, and transcendence is really another word for immortality. So you may die, for example, rescuing a portrait of Kim Il-sung when a flood comes to your home and you bundle it up in some plastic and you hold on to it and you drown and you die, but you've protected Kim Il-sung's sacred image.

And therefore, your biological life, be gone, but you've attained a socio-political kind of transcendence. So this sort of doctrine, theology, you could almost call it, is very explicitly laid out in the North Korean literature. I'll point to one other quick example here, too, which is that just like Christianity, you're sort of taught as a North Korean that you have two fathers. You have a biological father, your physical father, your dad, but you also have kind of a heavenly father, a sacred father, another father, and of course, that's Kim Il-sung.

So you have these sorts of parallels with Christianity. And again, I can't prove that one led to the other. But when you look at the person Kim Il-sung and the grip and the hold that he had over this country for its first 49 years of existence, including going back to 1945, I don't think it's an accident. Now, one of the other interesting parts of your book is about how Kimmel-sung's story, his life story, was rewritten after he took power. How did the North Korean system transform him from a humble guerrilla fight up in the northeast of Manchuria into the central figure of Korean history? Well, yes, this is this was a big process, and I don't want to claim credit for having uncovered this. Obviously, this has been well told by many other scholars. I mean, Fyodor Tertitsky has done great work on this, and I want to make sure that we acknowledge all that.

But you really have Kim Il-sung, almost from the very beginning, recognizing how important it is to have, his story woven into the story of Korea. And so you have the General Sherman, this American ship that sails up the Tadung River to Pyongyang in 1866. And so now you have Kim Il-sung's own family members, supposedly leading the charge against this, you know, first American imperialist expedition. But you have these things rewritten. You have Kim Il-Sung's own personal history backdated to when, you know, he first. started to go on the revolutionary path. You have his own father, Kim Jong-jik, who is now revered in North Korea, but who was really

a very, very devout Christian. I don't think there was any real doubt about this. If you look at any of the records, he went to Sung Shil Hatang, Sung-Sil Academy, which was founded by Samuel Moffat and his best friend, William Baird, these two Indiana missionaries, all the records, they were very clear. And which now exists and sold. And which now exists and sold. Or its descendants has existed.

It was reconstituted after after the Korean War. But of course, you have this whole story, which is all rewritten. But he understood like many nominally communist countries, China, the country that I'm in, history is really, really important. And so they recognized from the very beginning we need to make sure that this is told properly. And of course, by properly, they mean the way that we would like to be told. And of course, it was not easy at first. because many people in 1945, in 1948, in 1950, they had lived through all this stuff that is being rewritten.

So they had to be careful about it and they had to be piecemeal about it. But eventually you could see step by step over the decades how thoroughly was rewritten to the point where the Soviets had no role at all, for example, in liberating the Korean Peninsula or the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. But that was a gradual process because, as we all know, or as many of us will know, Kim Il-sung continued to praise Stalin, continued to praise the Red Army for many years after the initial liberation of Korea. But eventually that was supplanted by his own triumph over the Japanese.

Now, Brian Myers, the author and academic, whom you also know in his work, has highlighted the borrowings of the North Korean system from Japanese imperialist fascism, if that's the right word. How do you see that together with what we're talking about today, the borrowing is from Christianity? Do they sit side by side? Is there a blending? is one more clearly stronger than the other? Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right about the syncretism. That's the word that we use for mashing together all sorts of different belief systems.

Certainly, I think what I would call Kimosungism, you could call it, juce ideology, you could call it, whatever you want to call it. But I think it does, of course, have borrowings from any different influences. I don't think it would make any sense to say that it doesn't have any communism in it. It doesn't have any Japanese imperial worship in it. It doesn't have any Confucianism. in it. Of course, it's a product of all of its antecedents. As to what the percentage is, I'm not going to say, oh, well, it's 28% this. It's 34% that. Of course, that's a fool's errand.

I think the contribution I'm trying to make here is that if you were to talk to, for example, Kim Jong-ji, the father of Kim Il-sung, if you had asked him, are you a Confucianist, he would have said, no, we've rejected that. We've moved past that we're modern. We're now, we've turned away from Confucianism. Are you a shamanist? He would have said, oh, all the more so am I not a shamanist? If you had asked them, are you a communist? He would have said, no, I'm not a communist.

I'm an anti-communist. Maybe you had asked them, are you a Japanese imperial worshipper? He would have, that would have gotten the biggest rise at it. You would have been really upset at that because he would have said, no, I'm a Korean patriot. If you asked him, are you a Christian? He would have said, yes, I'm a follower of Jesus Christ and he died for my sins. That's what Kim Jong-jik would have said. Now, I'm not saying that.

his self-reporting is gospel, as it were, but I think that what has been so neglected in the scholarship and in how we think about North Korea is just how important this upbringing, this infusion of Christianity was in northwestern Korea, in the Pyongyang area, and specifically in and around the family of Kim Il-sung, the founder of the North Korean state,

how important that was in manifesting itself and what we now see is North Korea. Now, how did this quasi-religious framework make it possible for North Korea to become perhaps the only hereditary communist state in the world? Well, I think most communists would say that that is a deviation from standard Orthodox communism. And indeed, many of his one-time compatriots, if any of them turned away from Kim Il-sung at some point, usually in exile, the whole question of the hereditary rule was a big part of this dissatisfaction. I think there we don't look at Christianity per se, although as discussed, we do have this father, son, and Holy Spirit sort of framework from Christianity. But I think you can look at what I think is the standard explanation, which is that Kim Il-sung's initial succession plan was for his brother, Kim Jong-ju, to take over. But at some point, he switched horses and went with his son, Kim Jong-il.

I think there was never really much of a chance for Kim Il-sung to hand off power to somebody outside his family. So perhaps you could say that it was baked in already, this hereditary succession. It was just a question of whom he passed it down to. But I think certainly he looked at what happened with Khrushchev coming as he did after Stalin's death in 1953. You look at Dams Xiaoping and what Deng Xiaoping did after Mao's death in 1976. And I think what he recognized was, I must have somebody succeed me who is going to be a custodian of my legacy, who is going to protect what I have built. And so I don't know that there's a direct biblical antecedent. And again, I'm not going to try and say Christianity explains everything in North Korea.

It certainly does not. But you can say that, I think one thing we can say for sure is that Kim Il-sung and his successors have been. able to pivot away from orthodox socialism, orthodox, whatever it is as needed. They're very pragmatic in many senses. I've got just a couple of minutes left and just a couple of questions remaining. If the North Korean system borrowed elements from Christianity, as it seems to have done, what does that tell us about how the system works today? Well, I think the North Korea of Kim Jong-un is very much still the North Korea of Kim Il-sung,

his grandfather. We obviously know that Kim Jong-un modeled himself his comportment, his haircut, his style, his manner from his grandfather. That's pretty well documented. And there are moments. You see these old pictures of Kim Il-sung and you do a double-take and you say, my goodness, that is almost Kim Jong-un incarnate there. But of course, there's been changed since 1994 in this world. And North Korea is no exception to that. Obviously, we have the internet, we have cell phones, we have many things that we didn't have in 1994. At the same time, this is still very much Kim Il-sung's state. Kim Jong-il and then Kim Jong-un had to really work within the confines of what Kim Il-sung had built.

We do start to see some deviations from Kim Jong-un now. Obviously, the repudiation of unification as an explicit goal, the fact that he's brought female family members and made them so prominent. That's deviation from Kim Il-Sung-Ir, from Kim Jong-il. I don't want to say that nothing has changed and it's utterly static. But still, for the most part, these are the exceptions to the rule, right? And so you mostly have a state that is generally the one that Kim Il-sung himself laid down in so many aspects. And so I'm not going to try and argue that Kim Jong-il or that Kim Jong-un have any Christian influences in their life.

Although Anna Fai Field in her book about Kim Jong-un does mention that Kou Yonghi, the mother of Kim Jong-un, did grow up. singing in the choir of the Korean church in Osaka where she grew up. So that's a tangential link. I'm not going to, again, I'm not going to, I don't have any evidence and I'm not going to suggest that Kim Jong-un was somehow raised in the church in some way, although if he was, that would be, that would have a nice rhyme to it. But certainly the Kim Jong-un-run North Korea is still very much the North Korea of Kim Il-sung. Interesting.

Now, after researching and writing this book for over a decade, Jonathan, do you think, that Kim Il-sung himself believed in the mythology that grew up around him? It's interesting. There are a couple of moments where he peels back the curtain, and you can see him. The gears turning in his head. There's this great anecdote. I believe it's from volume one, or it may be from volume down. I'm almost certain it's from volume one of his memoir with the century,

reminiscent of the century, Segewa-d-d-Belvro, which is available in Korean and English. I think it's available in full text on the internet. It's available in full text in Arabic and Spanish and Russian and Chinese. You read it in any language you want to read it in. But there's this great scene that I can't get it out of my head where he meets a man who has his myth around him. And he's known as Cholli Cha. So Mr. Cha who could cover Cholri, a thousand re or a long distance in one day. And so there was this mythology around him.

And so Kim Il-sung, when he is young in his teenage years, according to his own memoir, meets this Mr. Cha. And Mr. Cha quietly confides in him and says, you know, I can't actually cover that distance. But Kim Il-sung says, but I liked that he allowed the people around him to continue to believe this. And then immediately after, there's this other scene where Kim Il-sung is in the next room, and he hears this simple peasant, who is a follower of him and his guerrilla rebels. saying to one of Kim Il-sung's lieutenants saying to him, oh, I heard Kim Il-sung can walk on water. I heard he can dodge bullets. I heard he can do this.

I heard he can do that. And Kim Il-sung's lieutenant says to this simple peasant, oh, yes, he can. Oh, yes, he can. Oh, yes, he can. And Kim Il-sung talks to his lieutenant afterwards and says, why did you lead this simple peasant on into believing that I could do all these things? And the conclusion that Kim Il-Sung, of course, comes away with is

the people needed a Messiah. They needed a messianic figure. And who am I to deny that? Who am I to rob them up his hope? And so you see these two anecdotes that really just bring it to life. And to me, what it says, of course, is it says that he knew what was going on,

but the means justified the ends, I think, is what he would say. Or the ends justified the means. I'm sorry. Well, and also it's almost a kind of spiritual capitalism. Because you could say that he was meeting the needs of the people. So supply meets demand. That's right in the world capital. Last question for you. Why is your book Korean Messiah scheduled to come out on April 14th?

Well, I did have to pick a date for the release of the book. I had to pick it more than a year in advance. My publisher, Alfred A. Knapp, they wanted it in the spring. And so I'm looking at the calendar for spring 2026. And the book is about Kim Il-sung. So I said, you know, El-sung himself. I mean, you could almost look at this as as my tribute to the great leader certainly is because april 14th is his birthday yes that's right so certainly this is the the he is the central protagonist of this book and you know i'm not trying to to certainly not trying to praise him but neither am i trying to you know i'm trying to take him seriously in many ways because he was a serious person and he is a consequential person. In fact, I would argue he is the most consequential Korean person of the 20th century

for better or for worse. I dare anyone to actually challenge that because I don't know that there is a more consequential person in Korean history in 20th century. So it's a nod to the fact that he is the Korean Messiah at the center of this book. That's the reason why I gave it that title. And of course, readers can read into that how they like. I'd love for everyone to read the book and to give me their feedback because I've tried to write it in a neutral, this passionate way. But there's a lot that can be interpreted either way. And I don't want to say that either he was a Christian or he wasn't a Christian. I simply don't know.

But certainly he was a complex man and he was a significant man. And so in a certain sense, it is a backhanded tribute to him. Well, thank you. That's what we're going to have to leave it today. Jonathan Cheng, author of Korean Messiah. You can find a book in bookshops from the 14th of April. And you can also find him on Twitter at J. Cheng, W. SJ for Wall Street Journal. Jonathan, thank you so much for joining me today in the podcast.

Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure. In the intricate world of Korean Affairs, tailored intelligence makes all the difference. Korea Risk Groups Consulting Services offer specialized actionable intelligence designed to guide your career-related decisions. We provide bespoke consulting services that cater to your unique challenges and goals. From policy analysis to market entry strategies, we bring clarity to complexity. Transform uncertainty into opportunity and visit careerpro.com solutions today. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the end of our podcast episode for today.

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