Jonathan Cheng

It is woven into the curriculum.

You'll take Kim Il-sung I. You'll take Kim Il-sung II.

You'll study the childhood of him.

And almost any paper that you write will need to be prefaced with a quotation, a choice quotation from the great leader of North Korea.

By the time you're a grown adult,

there really is no alternative.

He really is almost like a genuine father figure.

And as with the Christian context, there is an understanding in North Korea that you have a physical biological father, just like all of us have a physical biological father, but you also have this other father, a spiritual heavenly father, you could almost say.

And

Kim Il-sung indeed instructed his people to call him Father, capital F. And so that is how he's regarded by almost all North Koreans.

I think he probably knows better.

He did go to school in Switzerland.

He did have some engagement with the outside world.

But there is a possibility that at a certain point, you do start to believe your own legend.

I don't know whether that's the case for him.

I haven't had a chance to speak with him.

But I would imagine that he is able to hold in tension this idea that he needs to serve as a messianic figure on his own.

But of course,

He must also be aware of his own frailties and of his own mortality as well.

As much as he may want his people to believe that he is a deity of sorts, he too knows that he is flesh and blood and that it is just a matter of time for him as well.