As mourning comes: each generation forges its own relationship with the monarchy

By Matthew Sweet

When North Korea wept for Kim Jong Il, the rest of the world sniggered. It was one of the oddest spectacles of 2011 (below). Citizen battalions reporting to their nearest bronze effigy to fill the air with lamentation. News footage that caught the mourners like an opera chorus addressing the people in the cheap seats. Were those real tears? Had they been coaxed from the body by decree, terror, brainwashing? Or was this the product of professional training – Pyongyang’s synchronised grieving team, going for gold?

The answers were beyond reach. We can know little of what it means to be sincere in North Korea, where the Kim family gazes down on every public and domestic space and exerts a power that must be inescapable, even in dreams. But we might admit this: even under absolute tyranny, it may be possible to take part in an act of collective mourning, to shed genuine tears and register the strangeness of your own feelings and actions.