<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">Hi colleagues,</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default"><br></div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">I wanted to spread the word on the release of my first book, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/558235/korean-messiah-by-jonathan-cheng/">KOREAN MESSIAH: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea\u2019s Personality Cult</a>, published by Alfred A. Knopf last week.</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default"><br></div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">The book brings to life Pyongyang's emergence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as the "Jerusalem of the East," and describes Kim Il Sung's upbringing in this milieu, tracing his ideological and spiritual upbringing and then exploring how it helped underpin the construction of his extraordinary cult of personality.</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default"><br></div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">Bruce Cumings, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/books/review/korean-messiah-jonathan-cheng.html">reviewing the book in <i>The New York Times</i></a>, called KOREAN MESSIAH \u201chighly original, deeply researched and cogently observed\u2026a brilliant history of North Korea.\u201d And Elizabeth Economy of the Hoover Institution, <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/korean-messiah-kim-il-sung-and-christian-roots-north-koreas-personality-cult">writing in <i>Foreign Affairs</i></a>, called the book "an extraordinary work of research\u2026Cheng demonstrates that Kim appropriated, transformed, and embedded Christianity in the structure of North Korea\u2019s ostensibly secular state.\u201d I hope you'll consider giving it a read.</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default"><br></div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">Full disclosure: I'm a journalist, not a scholar -- I've been the China bureau chief at The Wall Street Journal for the past seven years, and before that was the Korea bureau chief. Still, my path not taken was always a Ph.D. in history, which you'll see in the 768-page length of the book (including 145 pages of endnotes).</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default"><br></div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">I'm happy to share review copies as requested, and am currently in the midst of a book tour down the East Coast of the U.S., from Boston to Washington (I'm in Princeton now), with a final stop in Toronto early next month. I'll be back in Beijing for the Trump-Xi summit, but will plan on making trips to discuss the book in Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore, and elsewhere in the region before doing a U.S. Midwest/West Coast tour in October. My tour dates and other information on the book can be found here: <a href="https://koreanmessiah.com/">https://koreanmessiah.com/</a>.</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default"><br></div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">Best,</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">Jonathan</div><br clear="all"></div><br><span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr">Jonathan Cheng \u90d1\u5b50\u626c<div>China Bureau Chief \u4e2d\u56fd\u5206\u793e\u793e\u957f</div><div>The Wall Street Journal \u534e\u5c14\u8857\u65e5\u62a5</div><div>Mobile \u624b\u673a +86-186-0005-6330</div><div>E-mail \u90ae\u7bb1 <a href="mailto:jonathan.cheng@wsj.com" target="_blank">jonathan.cheng@wsj.com</a></div><div>Twitter/WeChat \u63a8\u7279/\u5fae\u4fe1 @jchengwsj</div><div><a href="http://www.wsj.com/news/author/1291" target="_blank">Read my WSJ profile here</a></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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