North Korea: The World's Most Extraordinary Personality Cult

For nearly eight decades, North Korea has marched defiantly to its own beat, shaking off its Soviet and Chinese sponsors to emerge as the world’s most enigmatic nation—a nuclear-armed state ruled by a dictatorial dynasty. Underpinning the state is a personality cult more soaked in religiosity than those constructed by Stalin or Mao—one that traces its roots back to the Christian fervor of post–Civil War America. 

Join us for a conversation with Jonathan Cheng about his forthcoming book Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea's Personality Cult. Cheng is the China bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, and was previously the Korea bureau chief, running coverage of the Korean peninsula, including politics and society in both North and South Korea. 

Cheng's book presents a landmark history of North Korea, told through the rise of the Kim dynasty and its surprising ties to American Christianity. At the center of this story is North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung, son of two fervent Christians and progenitor of an ideology known as Kimilsungism, an exercise in idolatry that has elevated him, and his successor son and grandson, to Christlike status, from the humble manger where he was born to the subway seat on which the venerated leader once placed his posterior, cordoned off as if it were a religious relic. 

Drawing on letters, diaries, and never-before-unearthed archival material that temper and often contradict the glorious historical record promoted by Kim Il Sung’s legions of hagiographers, Korean Messiah tells the true story of a country shrouded in fictions.

The conversation will be moderated by Julian Simcock, who directs the Program on Diplomacy and Statecraft.