Source: The Economist:
WHAT is the tenth most widely followed religion in the world? According to www.adherents.com, a site which gathers data on faith from many sources, that honour goes to juche, the national ideology of North Korea, which is credited with 19m followers. As the site’s editors explain, “from a sociological viewpoint, it is clearly a religion”. Juche is more obviously religious in character than either Soviet communism or Maoism. Thomas J Belke, an American Protestant theologian who has writen a book about juche, agrees that it’s a religion. “It has a comprehensive belief system, holy places, distinctive customs…and it displaces other religions.”
Categories: Asia, North Korea
Viewing it as a new religion to me is totally wrong. To declare a cult as religion one has first to see if some one is claiming himself as founder of any new religion or not. No such claim of any Korean leader has been stated by the writer so it dispels straight away the concept. Unquestionable allegiance to leaders is common in many religious groups as well in some countries. It all depends on the population mind set. As long N Koreans remain aloof such allegiance likely to prevail but is just worldly thing and not basing on any new religion.