India/western Sociology

[dhu]

Kim Il-sung came from a deeply Christian background. In the early 1900s, Pyongyang was known as the "Jerusalem of the East" because of its proliferation of churches, so his father was undoubtedly a devout Christian and his mother was the daughter of a prominent Presbyterian elder.[11] In those days, rumors even circulated in Pyongyang that the Korean people were actually the thirteenth—or "lost"—tribe of Israel. By the late 1980s, Kim Il-sung became quite nostalgic about his youth and parents,[12] not surprising given the well-known tendency among older Korean men to want to return to their home village and its memories. Moreover, in Kim's background there were undeniably expectations among devout Koreans of the coming of the messiah. Needless to say, there is a religious utopian ideal underlying North Korean society, whose impulse likely came from the Christian origins of Kim's family in Pyongyang. In his final three years, Kim welcomed a series of visits by religious leaders, including two from the Rev. Billy Graham, in 1992 and 1994,[13] a large delegation from the U.S. National Council of Churches, as well as discussions on religion with former President Jimmy Carter. But the most important of these series of meetings was with Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church as well as the Universal Peace Federation, in late 1991.