Today, North Korea announced that Kim Jong Il had passed away over the weekend. While most people I talked to today were undoubtedly surprised by this sudden turn of events, nobody really displayed much emotion…yes, one person was genuinely concerned with how the markets are reacting, but most people’s reaction were more or less “Yay, he’s dead. It’s about time…”
However, in North Korea, as you can imagine, the mood could not be more different:
And a quick Google search turns up an eerily similar scene 17 years ago when his father, Kim Il Sung died:
And going back another 18 years, on the other side of the Yalu river, you have the mass hysteria from Mao’s death:
Yes, history repeats itself.
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