Tears of the son.

• Author: Steigerwald, Lucy
• Position: Artifact - Kim Jong-un mourns death of father - Brief article

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ON DECEMBER 28, North Koreans bid a formal farewell to Kim Jong-il with a massive, regimented display of ritualized grief. Photos and video of bawling mourners flooded the state-run media, usually the only source of images from inside the Hermit Kingdom. Western observers were intrigued: Was all this hysteria over the death of one of the world's worst totalitarians the product of fear, social pressure, or--perhaps most confusing of all--sincere grief expressed according to Korean tradition?

Amid the uniform sobbing, one person's sadness looked less theatrical. At his father's funeral, the newly dubbed Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un had the ugly, blotchy face of someone who has truly been crying. And why not? Like his father before him, Kim, who is about 27 years...