North Korea Is Not a Nation-State, It's a Religious Society
Kim Il-sung was not a Stalinist but a third-generation Christian steeped in 19th-century American evangelicalism; after overhearing a peasant believe he could walk on water, he decided to play along with the legend.
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Billy Graham saw through that thatched hut at a glance
In 1992 Billy Graham was invited to visit North Korea, and the moment he landed he was taken to the thatched hut outside Pyongyang where Kim Il-sung was born. He said on the spot that all it lacked was three wise men from the East and a manger — directly calling out that this "humble nativity" narrative was imitating the birth of Christ. He preached at Kim Il-sung University, and also preached John 3:16 in the two Pyongyang churches built in Kim Il-sung's later years. Afterward he played dumb, saying he didn't know why he had been invited or where it would lead. The author judges that he knew perfectly well: Kim Il-sung saw him as someone with a direct line to the American president.
Pyongyang was Korea's Sodom, and the only product-market fit
The missionaries had modest results in Seoul and almost nothing in Busan, waiting five years for their first baptism. So they decided to try north, sending the newly arrived Moffat to Pyongyang. Pyongyang's reputation at the time was "the Sodom and Gomorrah of the Korean peninsula," or in the author's own words "the Las Vegas of Korea": the best taverns, the best gisaeng, and street brawls — hundreds of men splitting into two sides and throwing stones at each other, with deaths common and spectators coming to watch. The missionaries said the locals' passion for this lethal sport was like our passion for baseball. It turned out to be the flashpoint.
They prayed for revival and got collective loss of control
Presbyterians were famously stiff, nicknamed "the frozen chosen," and wanted absolutely none of this emotional Christianity. The 1907 "Pyongyang Revival" is one of the most famous Christian revivals of the 20th century, but the missionaries hadn't expected to get this — the author says you could call it mass hysteria, and the missionaries themselves described it that way at the time. New believers who had been Christian for only two or three years rushed the pulpit and smashed their heads on the ground, confessing in public from murder and adultery to theft, owning up to nearly every sin in the Ten Commandments. The wave swept from Pyongyang across the entire Korean peninsula and burned all the way to Manchuria, with Western church leaders flocking to watch. The missionaries eventually gave up trying to suppress it, saying it was probably God's will.
The Japanese didn't smash churches, because they had to perform for the West
When Korean nationalism arose, its vehicle was the Christian church. The reason is counterintuitive: elsewhere Christianity came with gunboats, because the imperialist powers were basically Western Christian nations; but in Korea the imperialist was Japan, which brought Shinto, so Christianity instead became a patriotic fortress and a vessel for nationalist hope. To prove to Washington, London and Paris that it too was an enlightened colonizer, Japan shut down almost all of Korean civil society but left space for the churches. Kim Il-sung's father, Kim Hyong-jik, was exactly this kind of "Korean Christian nationalist": he performed a blood oath ritual at the tomb of Gija, piercing his skin to write out a vow for independence, and prayed explicitly in the name of Jesus Christ.
Wilson's promise collapsed, so they switched to Lenin
1919 coincided with the end of World War I, and Wilson was in Paris selling national self-determination from his 14 points. The author pointedly notes that Wilson himself was the son, grandson and nephew of Presbyterian ministers. But after 1918 and 1919, not all small nations got self-determination — Britain, France and Italy all refused to give up colonies, and Japan asked why it should give up its own. Wilsonian idealism collapsed, and the Korean Christian nationalists who had put their hopes in Wilson's basket (including Kim Il-sung's father) had to switch baskets, so they looked to Moscow, to Lenin, who had just succeeded in 1917. The author adds a historical footnote: the idea of national self-determination actually came from Lenin first, and Wilson picked it up later.
He decided to play along with the legend
The author says this is his favorite moment in the whole book, and the key to the Kim Il-sung myth: he overheard a peasant who believed Kim Il-sung could teleport and walk on water, and afterward wrote in his memoirs, "If people believe a legend, we must say the legend is true — why deny these facts and discourage him?" and said, "I made up my mind not to betray the people's expectations and trust." The author cautions that this passage comes from the eight-volume "With the Century," which most scholars have largely dismissed for decades because much of its battle description has no independent documentary support; but that Kim Il-sung was willing to admit he was self-mythologizing is itself quite rare, and this passage occurs before his public appearance in Pyongyang, in a period about which the outside world knew almost nothing.
A cult is just a religion you think is illegitimate
In the book the author deliberately avoids the word cult, because it is too pejorative and too contested; he prefers "cult of personality." He offers a layman's definition: a cult is a religion you think is illegitimate, or that the speaker thinks is illegitimate. He says almost no one joins a cult voluntarily — they join a movement or association they believe in, and only after leaving do they say "I was in a cult back then." There is a real intersection between Jonestown and Kim Il-sung: Jim Jones adopted three Korean children, repeatedly named and praised Kim Il-sung in his sermons, and even considered moving the settlement from Guyana to North Korea; the head of Jonestown also met multiple times with North Korea's embassy in Guyana, exchanging notes on how to run a small religious society.
North Korea looks more like a religious society than a nation-state
The author's core conclusion: North Korea is in many ways less a nation-state than a religious society. Religion can be used, instrumentalized, or in sharper terms, weaponized. He believes Kim Il-sung had an insight (perhaps subconscious): to take your politics to a higher level, you have to religionize it. He quotes a line from a Sam Altman blog post from over a decade ago — successful people build companies, very successful people build nations, the most successful people build religions — and says Kim Il-sung built both, but what endures is the religion.
— Jonathan ChengIn their own words · checked verbatim
He says, all they're missing here are the three wise men in the manger.
Jonathan Chang4:14
The missionaries called it the Sodom and Gomorrah of the Korean Peninsula. I would perhaps just call it the Las Vegas of Korea.
Jonathan Chang21:01
They were calling for revival. They were praying for a revival. And yet what they got just overwhelmed them.
Jonathan Chang28:28
if people believe in a legend, we must say the legend is true, why deny these facts and discourage him?
I made up my mind to live up to the people's expectations and trust.
a cult is simply a religion that you think is illegitimate and or that the speaker thinks is illegitimate
Figures
| Billy Graham Seoul crusade attendance | about 1.1 million | 2:04 |
| Land Moffat purchased in Pyongyang | 120 acres | 25:13 |
| Date Moffat arrived in Incheon | January 1890, his 26th birthday | 16:46 |
| First Sino-Japanese War | 1894-95 | 24:12 |
| Signatories of the March 1st Movement declaration of independence | 33 | 44:31 |
| Year Kim Il-sung was born | 1912 | 44:31 |
| Kim Il-sung's birth name | Kim Song-joo | 1:05:25 |
| Length of Kim Il-sung's rule | 49 years | 1:16:51 |
| Time the author spent writing the book | 12 years | 1:37:32 |
| Page count of the finished book | 768 pages | 1:47:08 |
Glossary
- Presbyterian
- A Protestant Christian denomination emphasizing governance by elders, known for its strictness.
- YMCA
- A Christian youth organization founded in the 19th century that ran education, sports and religious activities in Korea.
- Jonestown
- The 1978 mass suicide of the Peoples Temple in Guyana, in which more than 900 people died.
- cult
- A term the author deliberately avoids; refers to a religion or movement considered illegitimate.
How to listen
Readers interested in North Korea's origins, the relationship between religion and politics, or 20th-century East Asian history; founders can see how "religionization" becomes an underlying mechanism for organizational survival.
If you only care about contemporary North Korea's nuclear issue, skip the 19th-century missionary details and go straight to after 1:00:12.