{
  "id": 3619067,
  "title": "The gospel of the great leader",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/26/the-gospel-of-the-great-leader-3619067",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-08-26T23:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Free Malaysia Today",
    "slug": "free-malaysia-today",
    "url": "https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2026/08/27/the-gospel-of-the-great-leader"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "As US President Donald Trump seeks a fresh approach with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, his actions have created strained ties with South Korea and heightened concerns in Asia about the United States' unpredictable nature. By reducing joint military drills with Seoul, Trump may be inadvertently increasing instability in a region already fraught with tension.\n\nEven Chinese President Xi Jinping may not be pleased by Trump's move, given Kim's likely interpretation of it as a chance to gain more autonomy from China. Similar to the ongoing conflict with Iran, the Trump administration seems to have proceeded without a comprehensive evaluation of the possible ramifications of its decisions.\n\nNorth Korea remains as mysterious as Winston Churchill's famous description of the Soviet Union—an enigma that is often difficult, if not impossible, to navigate with a policy based solely on impressionistic judgments. To better understand this closed society, Jonathan Cheng's recently published book, Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea's Personality Cult, offers a valuable resource. Cheng's work delves into the origins of North Korea's communist regime, tracing how its founder, Kim Il-sung, harnessed a perversion of Christianity to create a personality cult that has persisted for nearly nine decades.\n\nBy examining the religious influence on North Korea's official ideology, Kimilsungism and Juche, Cheng places the regime's beliefs within a broader historical and geopolitical framework. This includes the region's imperial rivalries, Japanese colonial rule, the division of Korea, the Cold War, and the famine of the 1990s.\n\nCentral to Cheng's narrative is the story of how Christianity played a crucial role in shaping Il-sung's regime. The North Korean capital, Pyongyang, once nicknamed the \"Jerusalem of the East,\" became the center of the Kims' idolatry—ironically, a religious practice explicitly condemned by Christianity. Cheng's meticulous research, drawing from a vast array of archival documents, letters, photographs, diaries, and biographies, paints a vivid and rigorous picture of the period.\n\nThe Kim dynasty's Christian roots can be traced back to Samuel Moffett, an American missionary who arrived in Pyongyang in 1893, spreading the faith despite numerous obstacles. Korea's encounter with Christianity gained momentum after Japan's annexation of the country in 1905, which severed Korea's control over its foreign affairs. During this time, many Koreans found hope in Christianity, an unfamiliar Western religion in the midst of their nation's turmoil.\n\nIl-sung's father, Kim Hyong-jik, was initially a deeply religious man, and Il-sung himself was influenced by missionaries like Moffett and William Baird, who both aspired to become pastors. However, under Japanese rule, Christian missionaries were generally barred from engaging in politics and confined to religious affairs, which further alienated Korean nationalists seeking independence.\n\nThe situation worsened with the brutal suppression of the non-violent March First Movement in 1919, which led some Koreans to turn to socialism as an alternative. The tragic event of Reverend Son Chong-do's death in 1931, a close friend of Il-sung's father, marked a turning point in the young Kim's life. Soon after, Il-sung began to align himself with socialism, favoring the power of the masses over the gradualist approach of the enlightenment movement and the reliance on US support championed by future South Korean President Rhee Syngman.",
  "summary": "North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, drew on his Christian upbringing to develop and consolidate a personality cult that has endured for eight decades.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 2,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "Free Malaysia Today",
        "title": "The gospel of the great leader",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/26/the-gospel-of-the-great-leader",
        "published": "2026-08-26T23:00:00.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}