After 400 years of Kingly rule, shut off from the outside world, Korea was pried open by western imperialists in the 19th century. As soon as the doors were cracked Christian missionaries entered with the zeal of Middle Age crusaders. Their goal was to save as many souls as possible from the uncivilized waste of heathenism. By the 1890s Protestantism was experiencing explosive growth. While there must be numerous explanations for why trading indigenous beliefs for a belief in a savior and everlasting life after death, it is not the point of the book.
Rather, Jonathan Cheng’s painstaking, and often tedious, research is aligned to suggest that Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s first dictator in the line of Kims was not only raised in a Protestant environment, but also modeled his cult of personality on Jesus. Cheng puts so much emphasis and effort on maintaining the thread of Christianity as explainer for the last 150 years of Korean history that he shortshrifts myriad other forces at play: the rise of communism in Asia; political maneuvering between China, Russia, and the U.S.; dictatorial cults of personality look pretty much the same around the globe and throughout history, Christian forbears notwithstanding; severe Japanese occupation and oppression prior to WW II; and perhaps some inbred Korean character traits.