Is North Korea using doubles to hide the death of Kim Jong-Il?

What would be the strangest thing?

It's tempting to flag this - politics not hacking. However, North Korea is interesting in a special way - because it's so extreme. It's like one of those exercises where you run some code the way it's not meant to be run with the idea of "I wonder how far we can push this". Starving people, no foreign relations, extreme corruption, yet still it chugs along as it has for two decades. The horror is resiliant.

> Supposedly, schoolchildren there are taught that both > Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il are superhuman beings that > do not exercise the same bodily functions that > conventional humans do.

I think it's a lot more practical than this. North Korea is like one of those systems where you've deleted all the source code but the process is still running. So long as you don't stop the process, and can keep the power running, it just ticks along. Of course, you can't make change beyond that provisioned for before the problem developed. So.. you just run with it because you don't have any other options.

The interesting thing is - if it collapses the results could be profound for all of us. The south feels a strong companionship to the people in the north even though, for practical purposes they now have very little in common. The south is prosperous.and educated and liberal. Currently the humanitarian crisis is hidden behind the parallel, but as soon as the state flounders in the north then countries around the world (locals like the south, China and possibly Russia) will feel obliged to help, and the west will probably play a role too due to their close historical relationship to South Korea.

North Korea is a two-state society - the ruling group, and the rest. The ruling group will do whatever they can to stay in power. In the west, I wouldn't believe that a lie like this could be sustained. I've met people from former eastern-european countries who really do know how to keep a secret, and to separate their clan lives from their public face. Even if he's still alive then it's an amazing situation for the resolve he has shown to avoid the mistake (on a selfish level) of attempting gradual reform in a system that is beyond it.