CKR Book Talk: Korean Messiah

On October 30, the Centre for Korean Research will host Jonathan Cheng's talk on his first book, Korean Messiah.
About this Event

Jonathan Cheng, the author of Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult (Alfred A. Knopf), takes us deep inside Pyongyang, a city once so dominated by Christianity that 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 end of the nineteenth century and build a remarkable following—one that would include the Kim family that today presides over one of the world’s harshest persecutors of the Christian faith.

At the center of this story is North Korea’s 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.

Jonathan Cheng is the China bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, overseeing coverage of the world’s second-largest economy across politics, economics, business, technology, and society. Jonathan leads a team of two dozen correspondents and researchers in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, and New York, with responsibility for the Chinese mainland and Taiwan.

Previously, Jonathan was the Korea bureau chief for The Journal, running coverage of North Korea and South Korean politics and business. He began his career as an intern in The Journal’s Hong Kong bureau and also worked as a markets reporter in the Journal’s New York office.