A World Without Kim

Grant at least this much to Kim Il Sung: he certainly knew how to go out with a bang. The last Stalinist dictator managed to die just when the parts of the world most unsympathetic to him would miss the ultimate totalitarian the most. A god-king to his own people, a monster to those he waged war on and a riddle to almost everyone else, the only leader that communist North Korea has ever known perished at such a delicate point of diplomacy that even his sternest ill-wishers were praying that it was not true. Late last week, as Radio Pyongyang...