Book Talk - The Korean Messiah

 

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.
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.

 

 

Jonathan 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. A native of Toronto, he lives in Beijing. He has traveled to North Korea twice. Korean Messiah is his first book.

 

Lynette Ong is Distinguished Professor of Chinese Politics at the University of Toronto, and Director of China Governance Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.