How Kim Jong Un builds his personality cult

FEW could hope to rival the engineering feats of Choe Song Chon. One was a device to hoist a 45-tonne red metal flame atop the Juche Tower in Pyongyang, the showpiece capital of North Korea; the pillar, named after the country’s clunky state ideology, was built with 25,550 blocks of granite—one for each day to the 70th year of Kim Il Sung, the country’s founder and eternal president. Other exploits were the city’s May Day Stadium, the world’s biggest, and a 22-metre bronze statue of Kim outside his mausoleum.

So it was only fitting that Kim Jong Un, Kim’s grandson, who took power in 2011, should send flowers to Mr Choe’s funeral on May 28th. Among North Korea’s pre-eminent architects, Mr Choe helped build the props to make Pyongyang less a city for people to live in than a gigantic stage upon which to glorify the Kim dynasty.

After American bombs flattened Pyongyang during the Korean war...