Hysterical weeping at news of Kim Jong-il's death

I suppose, to be strictly correct, he is Kim Jong Dead now.

North Koreans weeping hysterically over the death of Kim Jong-il - YouTube

 

if they don't weep and wail in front of the cameras.... they are in deep trouble?

thats the impression I got based on the BBC1 news reports

intersting to see what will happen now ... some comments on conspiracy forums say that his son (who is now in power), may be overthrown by his sister and her husband, .... as Kim's son is 'weak' and not a leader

 

He told them he was ill.

 

We stiff-upper-lipped Brits did our share of blubbing when Princess Diana died. (Not me though.) I might shed a tear when the Queen goes, she has been on the throne for my entire lifetime. No, I'm not a royalist, but I do like stability. Not much of that in N. Korea tonight, although they might enjoy a change from a stable situation of starvation, oppression and social control.

 

I don't remember synchronised blubbing when Di carked it,though. People did face in different directions from time to time.

 

Hi, I agree looked very false. Not landscape or gardening related but currant (I mean current)

 

Yeah, it looks completely weird. But then, it's a very different culture and we're seeing it from the outside. And they're not exactly putting it on, they're not acting, so one one level it is genuine, even if inexplicable from our point of view. And that sort of thing is catching, emotions can spread like wildfire through a crowd making them behave in ways they wouldn't have done as individuals. It's a bizarre phenomenon but I'm not sure I think it's false, exactly.

Surely you've expressed one emotion whilst also feeling other conflicting ones? Or suppressed one set of feelings because they're less acceptable while allowing the socially correct ones to rise to the surface? Cried at a wedding or laughed at a funeral?

Oh. Just me then.

 

Wouldn't you hate to be the one North Korean in the crowd who collapsed in a fit of uncontrollable laughter?

 

You couldn't make it up.

Oh wait, you could...

"According to his biography, he first picked up a golf club in 1994, at North Korea's only golf course, and shot a 38-under par round that included no fewer than 11 holes in one. Satisfied with his performance, he reportedly immediately declared his retirement from the sport."

"He was suspected of killing his younger brother Kim Shu-ra when he was five after the child drowned in the family's swimming pool in their Pyongyang mansion. The claims were never proved."

"According to his official biographers, his birth in Baekdu Mountain was prophesied by a swallow and heralded with a double rainbow and a new star in the heavens."

"His private train journeys were as luxurious as befitted a leader of North Korea, despite the millions left behind starving due to famine: one Russian emissary who travelled across Russia by train with Kim described how live lobsters were airlifted daily to his train."

"At university it was claimed in his biography that he wrote no fewer than 1,500 books in three years"

Rip Kim, if only you had a couple more years left you may have cured cancer. And AIDS. And won the world cup single handedly for North Korea (as long as the Russians weren't watching).