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Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
It was a pretty fascinating thing to watch. The soldiers marching were well fed and extremely uniform in their look I assume that they are the ceremonial units from around North Korea, they are not fighting units they practice parading for hours a day and are picked to look good.
It was interesting that the other sons were not at the funeral this is now completely Kim Jong Un's show.
Symbolically it was very noticeable that his uncle was right beyond the new Great Leader, it was also the first public appearance of Kim Jing Il's sister in the uniform of a field marshal.
There's no doubt that there was some crying on demand, but most of these people have only known the Kim's for their whole life and they've been indoctrinated for their whole lives that they are gods, there's no doubt in my mind that the grief had a root in legitimacy.
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Defectors have mentioned that there is pressure to perform and "outcry" and "outgrieve" the person next to you because North Koreans know they are always being watched. When his father died in 1994, there were several catagories of loyalty that people were classified into and there were rumors that your level of grief was one factor in how you were classified.
A schoolteacher who defected to the South mentioned that she even saw young school-children putting saliva on their faces to make it look like they were crying.