Description
A landmark history of North Korea, told through the rise of the Kim dynasty and its surprising ties to American Christianitya spectacular, penetrating account of a world like no other
North Korea. The Hermit Kingdom. For nearly eight decades, it has marched defiantly to its own beat, shaking off its Soviet and Chinese sponsors to emerge as the worlds most enigmatic nationa 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 Maoone that traces its roots back to the Christian fervor of post-Civil War America.
Jonathan Cheng, the Wall Street Journals China bureau chief and former Korea bureau chief, takes us deep inside Pyongyang, a city once so dominated by Christianity it was known as the Jerusalem of the East. Cheng introduces us to Samuel Moffett, a Presbyterian missionary from Madison, Indiana, who would venture into Pyongyang at the turn of the nineteenth century and build a remarkable followingone that would include the Kim family that today presides over one of the worlds harshest persecutors of the Christian faith.
At the center of this story is North Koreas 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 Sungs legions of hagiographers, Korean Messiah tells the true story of a country shrouded in fictions.
Author: Jonathan Cheng
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 04/14/2026
Pages: 768
Weight: 2.18lbs
Size: 9.25h x 6.13w x 1.50d
ISBN: 9781524733490
Language: English
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