Billy Graham's 1992 visit was not just diplomacy but a meeting between America's foremost pastor and Kim Il-sung, who was raised Christian. Graham noted eerie parallels between Kim's humble birthplace narrative and the story of Jesus, highlighting the shared religious grammar between the two figures.
American missionaries like Samuel Moffat were driven by a powerful mix of religious fervor and Manifest Destiny. They viewed spreading the gospel to the "ends of the earth" like Korea as a high-risk, high-reward venture, requiring a "burn the boats" commitment akin to the founder energy of modern tech entrepreneurs.
Initially known as the "wickedest city in Korea" for its saloons and brawling, Pyongyang experienced a massive Christian revival under American missionaries. This created a cultural script of intense religious fervor and mass devotion that was later co-opted by the Kim regime.
Unlike in many colonies where Christianity accompanied Western imperialists, in Korea, the imperial power was non-Christian Japan. This unique context allowed Christianity to become a patriotic bulwark and a vessel for nationalist hopes, as it was the one institution Japan hesitated to crush due to Western pressure.
In his own memoirs, Kim Il-sung describes a pivotal moment hearing a peasant ascribe godlike powers to him. Instead of correcting the myth, he decided to embrace it, realizing the strategic value of living up to the legend and fulfilling people's need for a savior figure.
Early Korean nationalists, many of them Christian, placed hope in US President Woodrow Wilson's promise of self-determination. When that ideal failed after WWI, many—including those influencing Kim Il-sung—turned to Lenin's anti-imperialist communism as a more practical path to independence.
While Kim Il-sung created the personality cult, his son, Kim Jong-il, was the master propagandist who scaled it. A film buff, he understood the power of iconography and implemented the mandatory lapel pins, revolutionary operas, and movies that cemented the cult's dominance across generations.
Jim Jones, leader of the People's Temple, was a vocal admirer of Kim Il-sung. He praised Kim in sermons, adopted Korean children, and considered moving his Jonestown settlement to North Korea, recognizing a shared mastery of belief, control, and personality worship.
The Kim dynasty's remarkable longevity, surviving famine, the USSR's collapse, and the founder's death, is attributed to its fundamental structure. It functions less like a political state and more like a religion, which provides a more durable foundation for power, belief, and succession.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quoted a maxim: successful people build companies, the very successful build countries, and the most successful build religions. This framework perfectly explains Kim Il-sung's enduring legacy; he succeeded in founding both a country and a religion, ensuring its survival beyond typical political timelines.
His birth name was not Kim Il-sung but Kim Song-joo. Contrary to later propaganda that it meant 'pillar of the state,' the name translates to "holy pillar," a choice by his Christian father reflecting their faith. This embeds his origins in the very ideology he would later supplant.
In a strange exception to totalitarian rule, state-sanctioned churches in Pyongyang operate as spaces where citizens are not required to wear the mandatory loyalty badges of the Kim family. This carve-out for genuine—though heavily monitored—worship suggests a complex, perhaps nostalgic, relationship with the state's Christian roots.