So North Korea's 'great leader' departs, fairly prosaically as it turns out, handing the reins over to one of his sons in the bizarrely paradoxical way of Marxist hereditism which characterises the leadership of the place. I shall be re-watching Team America in his 'honour', and urge you to do the same. As a piece of satire, reducing a man whose cult of personality deifies him in his own land to a figure of mockery, it's matchless. But the real world will be watching to find out if the next in line is a moderniser or merely a clone of his father politically, ripe for further attention from Messrs Parker, Stone and Brady.
Team America had Hans Blix's meddling in Kim Jong-Il's affairs punished by his being fed to sharks, of course. In reality the Swede lives on to see, like the rest of us, his puppet nemesis no doubt turned into a god by his cowed people just as his father was. There's an extremely interesting 15-minute piece on the Beeb website at the moment about the country, giving a glimpse into this oddest of nations.
Given the highly militaristic nature of the place (a country of about 22 million people in which the armed forces number over a million!), the outside world is a bit concerned that North Korea is developing (or could develop) a nuclear ICBM capability, so the choice of successor and his likely direction are of considerable interest to other governments.
I've said before that our politicians may be grasping, corrupt, careerist dogmatists, but at least we are free to say as much, and don't have to go and bow before statues of them. We are fortunate indeed to live in a place not governed by people like that loon - I may think little of our current PM, but at least he isn't feeding UN Weapons Inspectors to his pets. Oh, hang on, that was the film, wasn't it? Anyway, you take my point..
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