North Korea's religious dictators

More than three decades after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the USSR, the North Korean regime remains steadfastly in place, defiantly ploughing its own path some eight decades after its founding. What might explain this remarkable longevity? In Jonathan Cheng's new book, Korean Messiah, the Wall Street Journal correspondent argues that it owes much to the enduring cult of personality around its founder, Kim Il-sung, who took inspiration from his own Christian roots to create a modern religion that endures to this day. Jonathan is a finalist for the 2026 Cundal History Prize, and in today's episode of the History Extra podcast, he discusses these ideas with Rob Atar. Jonathan, when we think today of the Christian nations around the world, North Korea doesn't tend to figure in that narrative.

But this wasn't always the case, was it? How did Pyongyang once come to be known as the Jerusalem of the East? Well a lot of people if you know South Koreans or people from South Korea, either in the UK, the US or otherwise, many of them you'll find are Christian or are tied to the church in some way, and that comes back to that same legacy. You're absolutely right that North Korea is not known as a land that's very friendly towards Christianity today, but if you go back to before the end of World War Two, if you go back a hundred years ago, there were indeed a lot of Christians in Korea, but they were in the North, not in the south. And very specifically, they were in the Northwest and in in and around. the city of Pyongyang, which of course today is now better known as the capital of the Qim Dynasty, the nuclear armed Kim Dynasty, where you see the missile launches and you see the Kim ruler, whoever it may be, Kim Jong Min right now, but it was Kim Jong Mil, it was Kim Mill sung before, watching all these soldiers goose stepping by, that Pyongyang was once

The most Christian city in all of Asia. And how far did that Christianization owe to the United States and the influence of American missionaries? Quite a bit. And and and that's one of the things that I loved so much while I was researching this book is as somebody who works for the Wall Street Journal, I've been to North Korea and reported on North Korea throughout that entire Trump Kim first the fire and fury phase and then the rapprochement between the two men to think about how different the two countries appeared. on the surface and then to go back in time and realize how joined at the hip they were in a certain sense, because as you suggest right there, it is in fact only because of American missionaries

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