Amy Davidson ponders the footage of North Koreans weeping after Kim Jong-Il's death:
How does a whole crowd fake tears? Barbara Demick, in “Nothing to Envy,” her book on the ravaged social landscape of North Korea, collected accounts of how ordinary North Koreans set themselves to just that task after the death of Kim’s father, Kim Il-sung, back in 1994: “It was like a staring contest. Stare. Cry. Stare. Cry,” a student told her. “Eventually, it became mechanical. The body took over where the mind left off and suddenly he was really crying. He felt himself falling to his knees, rocking back and forth, sobbing just like everyone else.”
Daniel Foster isn't convinced that the crying is fake or even forced:
[W]hile I agree that there is certainly enough terror to go around in the DPRK that the average citizen (if you can call them that) is like to do everything in his or her power to weep harder than the next guy, I think we also have to consider a possibility much more disturbing: The tears are real. North Korea can be looked at as the most successful cult in the world, and after bribing the military and other key allies, the vast majority of the state’s resources were dedicated to (1) raising the Kims to divinity and (2) hermetically sealing the state to outside discourse. After nearly three-quarters of a century of wholesale brainwashing, it is highly likely that a huge swath of the population of North Korea is in the grips of a kind of mass psychosis.
Derbyshire agrees, and recounts discussions with Chinese friends and relatives about "similar displays" of collective grief after Mao's death.
The Dish 