Last April, big images of Marx and Lenin were removed from the capital's Kim Il-sung Square. Instead, the regime has reverted to the doctrine of juche, which means national primacy rather than "self-reliance". There is even a Tower of the Juche Idea in Pyongyang, each of its 25,550 concrete blocks symbolising a day of Kim Il-sung's life. For juche is indistinguishable from "Kimilsungism", the belief that the family's primordial dynast was superior in every respect to Soviet or Chinese exemplars. 

This doctrine relies on what one might dub an autocephalous view of Korean history. There was no such thing as prehistoric migration. Since legend has it that the first Korean state was established by Tangun, son of a god and a female bear, in 1993 archaeologists discovered the very cave (near Pyongyang) where Baby Tangun and Mummy Bear dwelled in 3000 BC. Since great rivers are cradles of civilisation, so a "Taedong River Culture" was invented to rival those of the Mesopotamia, Nile and Yellow rivers. All external influences on the Korean language and early state formation (notably those of the Han Chinese) are erased in favour of autogenesis, with each sign of progress miraculously coterminous with the grim state north of the 38th parallel.

Kim Jong-un seems to have made short work of anyone who questioned his fitness for office. The purged army chief died in a gunfight with security agents, while his army vice-minister was obliterated by a mortar round after Kim said he wanted "no trace of him, down to his hair". Kim has decreed that farmers can keep a greater proportion of crops that otherwise go into a state rationing system. Apparently 60 per cent of defectors to South Korea admit to getting food from markets outside that system anyway. So the "Shining Sun" Kim Jong-un is not going to suffer total eclipse, and all those who condescendingly titter about this weirdly murderous enclave of chauvinism and paranoia will have much more to laugh about in future. But their wishes will not become reality.