Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult
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North Korea’s founder cribbed much of his god-king persona from Protestantism, according to this stimulating debut history. Wall Street Journal reporter Cheng traces Kim Il Sung’s totalitarian ruling style back to his boyhood growing up in the thriving Presbyterian Church of Pyongyang in the early 20th century. Seeded by American missionaries, Korea’s Protestant churches stressed rapt devotion to Christ’s teachings, held tumultuous revivals featuring hysterical confession of sins, and provided a vehicle for Korean nationalism under Japanese colonial rule. Kim wooed Christian churches in consolidating his rule after WWII, Cheng argues, and then harshly suppressed them while transplanting their fervent religiosity into his communist dogma. North Koreans were required to render absolute obedience to Kim’s pronouncements, spend hours a day studying his writings, and participate in hysterical self-criticism sessions. Kim himself took on a Christ-like divinity in North Korean propaganda: his love, compassion, and wisdom were infinite, and he could fly, teleport, heal the sick with his touch, and “shrink a long range of steep mountains at a stroke.” Cheng paints a colorful and appalling picture of Kim’s cult of personality, but the book is as much about the revolutionary impact of American Protestantism in fostering values of egalitarianism, women’s emancipation, industriousness, and patriotism into traditional Korean society. The result is a fascinating account of the deep intertwining of religion and politics in forms both benign and nefarious. (Apr.)
Content retrieved from: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-524-73349-0.
