[imText1]America’s religious site “Adherents.com” pegged North Korea’s Juche (Kimilsungism) as a religion and announced statistical material that classified it as the world’s 10th largest religion.
Adherents.com, in the statistical report called “Major religions of the world ranked by number,” revealed that it was the 10th-ranked world religion at 19 million followers.
This site, regarding the reason for classifying “Juche” as a religion, stressed that “the Juche is the official philosophy promulgated by the North Korean government and educational system. Its promoters describe Juche as simply a secular, ethical philosophy and not a religion. But, from a sociological viewpoint Juche is clearly a religion.”
Further, it emphasized, there are more people who believe in Juche than in Judaism or Jainism. The Juche possesses a lot of followers and has a significant influence on people lives. It is a unique religion that is different from other religious systems.
The site added, ” in many ways is even more overtly religious than Soviet-era Communism or Chinese Maoism.”
Regarding this, defector Kim Young Jun (pseudonym) criticized North Korea’s reality, “Nobody really adheres to Juche nowadays. After the mass starvation period, there is a side that does not reflect civilians’ interest in Kim Il Sung or the juche system.” “If Juche is Roman Catholicism, the military establishment can be the up and coming religion.”
Adherents.com has statistical information on 43,000 data related to believers of over 4,300 religions.
According to the report, the world’s highest ranked religions are Christianity with 2.1 billion believers, Islam with 1.3 billion adherents, and non-religious at 1.1 billion.
Additionally, the 4th through 10th-ranked religions are: Hinduism (900 million), Chinese traditional religions (394 million), primal-indigenous religions (300 million), Buddhism (376 million), African traditional and diasporic religions (100 millino), Sikhism which was separated from Hinduism (23 million), and Juche (19 million).
