Extraordinary scenes on BBC news right now…… Korean people all crying in public… I just find it very strange. Mind you its a very strange society/country!

What dies it all mean for the future for North Korea vs the West?? Quite scary if you ask me!

Isn`t it more a case of cry or be shot?

I just find it very strange.

I think you end up spending a couple of decades in a forced labour camp if you don’t display you emotions like that in public after the death of a leader.

Sadly it looks that way…… poor people

The food at the wake will be the dogs bollocks!

I imagine there will be similar scenes here when Thatcher dies and several STW ‘big hitters’ realise they’ll have to get a new hobby 😉

look few people deep and there isnt much grief – looks like the people on the front of the lines have been told to act in grief but those behind are just looking on plain faced.

People wept openly in the streets around the world when Michael Jackson died, could be they’re told to could be the grief.

People wept openly in the streets around the world when Michael Jackson died

They did that when Diana died as well. I still don’t really understand getting that upset about someone you’ve never met. I may go as far as to think, ah! that’s a shame, but that would be it.

Im sure some people have genuine grief over his death. He was their “great leader” and they may never have felt(been allowed)the need to look outside what they know.

Do you think one of his last wishes would have been to be strapped to a nuke and fired at the south? Just an idea.

“Isn`t it more a case of cry or be shot?”

No, it’s not as simple as that. The same phenomenon was observed after Stalin’s death (and, I’m sure, many other occasions about which I am ignorant) where even many dissidents and people who had suffered terribly under Stalin were inconsolable after his death. Sakharov, for example.

There’s a bit of Stockholm Syndrome, a bit of something to do with having something sudden happen to you without quite knowing what it means, a bit of petrifying fear about what happens next in a country at war with (what its citizens are told, at least) nuclear psychopaths that recently engaged in a war which killed 100,000 civilians, a bit of contagious crying (because it’s pretty freaky to be surrounded by thousands of other people crying), and a bit of something else.

Edit: this book puts it better, more succinctly and with more sources – http://books.google.com.au/books?id=IsNPwrLwmIcC&lpg=PA152&ots=I7k-un_wyS&dq=sakharov%20cried%20after%20stalin%20death&pg=PA152#v=onepage&q=sakharov%20cried%20after%20stalin%20death&f=false

I still don’t really understand getting that upset about someone you’ve never met

I was genuinely upset when John Peel died. Because he was someone I’d sort of ‘grown up’ with, who’s voice I listened to so many evenings, who introduced me to so much great music.

Even I thought it was weird how I could be upset over someone I’ve never met, but I spose if a person figures in your life to some extent, then you may well feel a sense of emotional attachment, even if it’s just subconciously.

I imagine there will be similar scenes here when Thatcher dies

Quite the opposite; I imagine here will be scenes of outpourings of Great Joy across the land. 😀