Interviews | Politics | Society | East Asia

The Christian Roots of Kimilsungism

Insights from Jonathan Cheng.

American evangelist Billy Graham meets with North Korean leader Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, North Korea, Mar. 31, 2992.

The Diplomat author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Jonathan Cheng – China bureau chief and former Korea bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal and author of “Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult” (Knopf 2026) – is the 504th in “The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.”

Explain the impact of Protestant Christianity and American evangelist Billy Graham on Kim Il Sung.

North Korea’s founder Kim Il Sung was raised in a devout Presbyterian household on the outskirts of Pyongyang. Many of the first Protestant Christian missionaries to take up residence in Korea were American Presbyterians who arrived in Seoul beginning in 1884. While Christian missionaries had found only mixed success in China, India, and Japan, they were extraordinarily successful in Korea – nowhere more so than in Pyongyang. Kim Il Sung’s grandparents were among Korea’s first converts, and Kim was steeped in Christian teachings not all that different from what Billy Graham heard growing up in North Carolina.

The impact of American missionaries in Pyongyang was so pronounced that the city became known as the “Jerusalem of the East.” It was home to Billy Graham’s wife Ruth Bell, a missionary’s daughter who attended a Presbyterian-run high school there. I don’t purport to know whether Kim Il Sung ever considered himself a Christian, but he was certainly comfortable in the church – teaching Sunday school and playing hymns on the organ.

As Billy Graham brought his evangelistic “crusades” to the Soviet Union, Poland, and the socialist bloc in the 1980s, he reached out to North Korea – which had built a pair of Protestant churches in Pyongyang by then, including one on the birthplace of Kim’s mother.

Billy Graham first traveled to Pyongyang in 1992, preaching from John 3:16 and getting plenty of time with Kim Il Sung. Graham reminded Kim of the faith of his youth, while the North Korean leader regaled Graham with memories of his childhood pastor. Graham gave him a Bible and his 1953 book, ”Peace with God.”

What is the origin of the “gospel of Chuch’e (Juche)” and “The Jerusalem of the East?”

Before it became the capital of the Kim dynasty, Pyongyang was known during the first half of the 20th century as the “Jerusalem of the East.” Originally, Pyongyang had a reputation as the Las Vegas of its day, full of drinking, carousing, and prostitution. But after it was destroyed during an 1894 battle between Japan and China, citizens flocked to the Christian faith under the guidance of a 20-something Indiana missionary named Samuel Moffett. For the next half-century, Pyongyang gained its new status as the center of Christendom in Asia – home to the world’s largest Presbyterian missionary compound, its largest seminary, and some of its largest churches. Christian leaders from around the world flocked to Pyongyang to witness the vibrancy of the faith there.

After Kim Il Sung came to power in 1945, he remade the city as the holy capital of what some call “the gospel of Chuch’e” (often spelled Juche), a word frequently translated as “self-reliance,” and which became part of North Korea’s increasingly idiosyncratic ideology, built around worship of the former Sunday school teacher.

Examine the evolution of North Korea’s personality cult from its Christian roots to a national religion and ideology.

Kim Il Sung’s personality cult........

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