Korean Messiah: A Conversation with Journalist Jonathan Cheng

Hosts and Commonweal contributors Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Nick Tabor chat with journalist Jonathan Cheng, China bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, about his new book, Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea's Personality Cult (Knopf). Together, they trace Kim Il-sung's upbringing in Pyongyang - once known as the "Jerusalem of the East", and how a Presbyterian Sunday school teacher and church organist drifted from Wilsonian Christian nationalism toward Leninism, then built a cult of personality that borrowed the forms of the faith he left behind: hymnals, weekly public confession, sacralized scripture, and Ten Principles his own people came to call the Ten Commandments. They also weigh how much of this was conscious design, what sets Kim apart from Stalin and Mao, and what his "Kimilsungism" suggests about the entanglement of religion and politics in our own moment.Episode production and original music by Joel Myers.