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 in one glance
In 1992 Billy Graham was invited to North Korea and, on landing, 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 birth" 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. After coming out he played dumb, saying he didn't know why he had been invited or where it would lead. The author's judgment is that he knew perfectly well: Kim Il-sung saw him as someone with a direct line to the American presidential level.
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"; the author's own phrase is "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, deaths were common, and spectators came to watch. The missionaries said the locals' enthusiasm for this lethal sport was like our enthusiasm for baseball. It turned out to be the flashpoint.
They prayed for revival and got collective loss of control
Presbyterians were famously strait-laced, nicknamed "the frozen chosen", and certainly never wanted this kind of emotional Christianity. The 1907 "Pyongyang Revival" is one of the most famous Christian revivals of the 20th century, but the missionaries had not 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 converts who had believed 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, confessing nearly every sin in the Ten Commandments. The wave swept from Pyongyang across the whole 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 the churches, because they had to perform for the West
When Korean nationalism arose, its vehicle was the Christian church. The reason is counter-intuitive: elsewhere Christianity came with the 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 the vessel of nationalist hope. To prove to Washington, London and Paris that it too was an enlightened coloniser, 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 an oath for independence, and prayed explicitly in the name of Jesus Christ.
Wilson's promise collapsed, so they turned to Lenin
1919 coincided with the end of World War I, and Wilson was in Paris selling national self-determination from his Fourteen 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 favourite 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 afterwards 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 corroboration; but that Kim Il-sung was willing to admit he was mythologising himself 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 uses the word cult sparingly, because it is too pejorative and too contested; he prefers "personality cult". 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 person in charge 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, instrumentalised, or, to put it more sharply, weaponised. He thinks Kim Il-sung had an insight (perhaps subconscious): to take your politics to a higher level, you have to religionise it. He quotes a line from Sam Altman's blog 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 bought 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 emphasising governance by elders, known for its strictness.
- YMCA
- A Christian youth organisation founded in the 19th century, which 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 word the author deliberately uses sparingly; it 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 "religionisation" becomes an underlying mechanism for organisational continuity.
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.