You cannot take the sun from the sky
According to a report in today's Washington Post, it seems that Kim Jong-Il was not properly addressed as Great Leader in a recent propaganda broadcast. DPRK watchers seem to conclude that KJI may be seeking to step down and away from deification.
As to the reasons why, there are or may be several: a more progressive image for outside investors, or perhaps pressure from the PRC. Intriguingly, the paper speculates that perhaps KJI is stepping back from divinity to focus more official adulation towards his father, the Great Leader and Eternal President Kim Il-Sung. By doing so, he concedes ground to some cult-weary and famine-stricken discontents: according to defectors, some North Koreans no longer buy the whole Kim cult.
But count on the DPRK's diplomats to reassure a world hungry for more Kim cultism: reacting to the notion that perhaps KJI was going to abandon the personality cult, a DPRK diplomat angrily denounced the notion as "false information." Moreover, "you cannot take the sun from the sky!"
As to the reasons why, there are or may be several: a more progressive image for outside investors, or perhaps pressure from the PRC. Intriguingly, the paper speculates that perhaps KJI is stepping back from divinity to focus more official adulation towards his father, the Great Leader and Eternal President Kim Il-Sung. By doing so, he concedes ground to some cult-weary and famine-stricken discontents: according to defectors, some North Koreans no longer buy the whole Kim cult.
But count on the DPRK's diplomats to reassure a world hungry for more Kim cultism: reacting to the notion that perhaps KJI was going to abandon the personality cult, a DPRK diplomat angrily denounced the notion as "false information." Moreover, "you cannot take the sun from the sky!"