North Korea

<span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">When Kim executed his uncle, Jang Song-thaek, in late 2013 for insubordination, mainstream news feeds reported Jang and five aides had been stripped naked and fed to 120 starving dogs. The story went viral, before it was traced back to a Chinese satirist’s blog on Tencent Weibo. <span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">Only this month, South Korea’s national intelligence agency reported Kim had publicly obliterated another insider, general Hyon Yong-chol, with an anti-aircraft gun. The story was widely circulated before the agency adjusted its claim: Hyon had been “purged” for “dozing off” at official events, but might still be alive. <span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">Men are not forced to cut their hair like Kim Jong-un. Women can wear pants. It is safe to be a tourist, if you don’t hand out bibles. It is forbidden to film portraits of the Kims soft-focus or cropped. People like to dance in public, not just when told to by the state. The country is poor, but not everyone is starving or in chains: an estimated 100,000 North Koreans are imprisoned, with a further 8.3m lacking adequate food and shelter. The remaining 16.6m rely on a growing black market economy and lead “normal” enough lives to go to the movies.