Christianity Shaped North Korea’s Cult of Personality
Angry Planet
Matthew Gault
4.2 • 898 Ratings
🗓️ 8 May 2026
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kim Song Ju, the man who would become Kim Il Sung, was born to devout Presbyterian parents. Billy Graham’s wife was born to christian missionaries in China and went to high school in Pyongyang. American protestants once spread the gospel in northwest Korea and found fertile ground for their gospel message. Kim listened, learned, and used those teachings to shape a cult of personality that rules North Korea to this day.
On this episode of Angry Planet I’m joined by Wall Street Journal China bureau chief Jonathan Cheng to talk about his new book Korean Messiah. Cheng’s work is an exploration of the origins of North Korea and Kim’s deep ties to American Christianity.
- Angry Planet as dress rehearsal
- Billy Graham in the Hermit Kingdom
- 19th century Protestant missionaries in Korea
- Presbyterians in the untamed northwest
- Untangling the history of a self-made godking
- The Kim Song Ju nativity
- Women without names
- Attending church during the Fire and Fury period
- The Soviet era
- Leading from beyond the grave
- Kim bombs his first public appearance
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. |
| 0:17.6 | Hello and welcome to another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. |
| 0:21.3 | I am Matthew Galt. |
| 0:22.8 | It is Easter Monday morning, which I did not realize this episode was going to be recorded on Easter Monday morning when we scheduled it like a month, two months ago, something like that. |
| 0:33.8 | Something like that. |
| 0:35.4 | Jonathan, will you introduce yourself to the audience? |
| 0:40.0 | Sure. My name is Jonathan Chang. I'm the Wall Street Journal's China Bureau Chief. I'm typically based in Beijing, but I am here |
| 0:46.1 | on the East Coast because I've written a new book on North Korea. It dates from my time when I was |
| 0:52.6 | the Korea Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal |
| 0:54.6 | based in South Korea in Seoul. But it took me a long time to write the book. And so I've now |
| 1:00.4 | been in China for seven years, but here I am on the East Coast about to launch this book. And I'll |
| 1:06.1 | be traveling down the East Coast from Boston to Washington, talking about it, starting here in |
| 1:11.5 | Boston on Easter Monday. |
| 1:14.9 | This isn't your first stop. |
| 1:16.5 | Is it, am I the, am I the dress rehearsal for all the other, like, conversations, interviews? |
| 1:22.5 | You are, I think, yes. |
| 1:24.8 | I think we can say that, actually. |
| 1:26.2 | I certainly have done a couple other podcasts so |
| 1:28.0 | far, even before I took off across the Pacific. But this is the first I'm doing here in the |
| 1:35.6 | United States of America. Yeah. That's amazing. Thank you so much for coming on. The book is |
| 1:41.6 | Korean Messiah, Kim Il-sung in the Christian roots of North Korea's |
| 1:47.2 | personality cult. |
... |
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