Re #29
Do you know that Kim Jong-il used to be a propaganda artist, an art director for state opera? I sometimes feel that he is living through his propaganda opera.
He goes in great length to project the image of a N. Korea exhorting and bearing down at its bigger neighbors, who are cowering under its feet.
Even when millions starved to death, economy is in a free fall, and they are begging/extorting food from outside donors, the twin doctrines of N. Korea are, "Kang-sung-dae-gook"(Strong prosperous great country) and "Sun-goon-jung-chi"(Military first policy.)
An opera director ?!? I just KNEW these things had to be more sinister than just a bunch of overweight people yelling at each other in foreign languages !
More seriously, I really didn't know that. That's an interesting background for a ruthless dictator : he never had to cope with reality, and always had the right to direct what people should do or wear or say... His Ju-che (self-sufficiency) dogma would earn his author a long stay in a psychiatric ward in any Western country.
Stalin was an opera fan, too. Go figure. His favorite was "Boris Godounov", a tale of treason, murder and assorted crimes...