Love and Fear in North Korea: The Kim Dynasty's Cult of Personality

North Korea remains one of the most confounding geopolitical challenges that the world faces—and at its heart is a system that is deeply misunderstood. North Korea is a country, yes, but it is perhaps more properly understood as a religious society—one built around worship of its founding god-king, Kim Il Sung. For nearly half a century, he presided over a society of 25 million people, almost entirely cut off from the outside world and inculcated on the teachings that he alone could offer a measure of salvation—all before handing off control to his son and then his grandson. Drawing on a raft of historical sources, Jonathan Cheng unpacks the story behind a country that has defied every prediction of its demise in his first book, KOREAN MESSIAH (Alfred A. Knopf).

Jonathan Cheng is the China bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, overseeing the Journal’s coverage of the world’s second-largest economy across a range of areas including politics, economics, business, technology, and society. He oversees a team of more than 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 Seoul bureau chief for the Journal, running coverage of the Korean peninsula. Jonathan speaks English, Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, French, and Korean. A native of Toronto, Canada, he graduated from Princeton University with a degree in history. He lives in Beijing and has traveled to North Korea twice.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Center for East Asian Studies