It doesn't really matter whether the thousands of North Koreans meant it when they wept openly, convulsively, and often convincingly in front of cameras over the death of Kim Jong Il. A New York Times article on the mass mournings suggested much of it was genuine, though many may have cried "as they think they should or because they are being watched," according to a South Korean analyst. Some writers dismissed the grieving as staged obedience, others saw it as an effect of "airtight propaganda."
The distinction is academic. Mourners who acted earnestly were shaking with grief for a man who had devastated their society several times over and made everyone who does not share his last name dramatically worse off. Those who played along, many of them so skillfully that even the most unconvincing acts seemed to rapidly become authentic, were surrendering even their own emotions to the implicit commands of the state. Whether someone is aware that he is enslaved, not just in action but in thought, to a family that has done more harm to him them than any other individual or group in the world, he is still a slave.
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