Agreed.
This may have been an attempt by the new leader, who has spent time in the West, to show the benefits of good international PR to his much older mentors.
I see no way this level of media attention could have happened without Kim Jong-Un’s explicit approval, and probably with his encouragement.
It should be interesting to see how his older mentors view this massive loss of public face.
I would not want to be one of the hairsprayed North Korean PAOs right now who were responsible for media management. The only worse job would be the North Korean bus driver who took media buses into the Pyongyang equivalent of slums while photographers snapped cameras. I'm guessing the bus driver will be driving something very different for a long time if he's still alive, and the same for a lot of female PAOs and male rocket scientists.
Korean kimchi temper is a terrible thing to behold.
Oh yes, I agree with all of that except the equivalent of slums.... he took them to the real Pyongyang after straying off of Potemkin Village Road. The PAO’s who didn’t take away the memory cards from the cameras is going to be in deep kimchi too.