KOREAN MESSIAH: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult

North Korea remains one of the most confounding geopolitical challenges that the world faces—and at its heart is a system that is deeply misunderstood. North Korea is a country, yes, but it is perhaps more properly understood as a religious society—or, if one prefers, a cult. North Korea has a flag, an army, an anthem, and a seat at the United Nations. But it is also a society of 25 million people, almost entirely cut off from the outside world, inculcated for eighty years with the belief that its founding god-king, Kim Il Sung, can offer a measure of immortality through faith in his teachings. Drawing on a raft of historical sources, and an interest stretching back to his Princeton history senior thesis, Jonathan Cheng unpacks the story behind his first book, KOREAN MESSIAH (Alfred A. Knopf).

Jonathan Cheng is the China bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, overseeing the Journal’s coverage of the world’s second-largest economy across a range of areas including politics, economics, business, technology, and society. He oversees a team of more than two dozen correspondents and researchers in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, and New York with responsibility for the Chinese mainland and Taiwan. Previously, Jonathan was the Seoul bureau chief for the Journal, running coverage of the Korean peninsula, including North Korea and South Korean politics and business. He began his career as an intern in the Journal’s Hong Kong bureau, and has also worked as a markets reporter in the Journal’s New York office. Jonathan speaks English, Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, French, and Korean. A native of Toronto, Canada. He graduated from Princeton University with a degree in history. He lives in Beijing and has traveled to North Korea twice.