It didn’t take much prodding for her to admit their ambivalence toward Kim Jong-il. They blamed him for the famine and a series of calamitous economic policies. “When Kim Il-sung died, I cried desperately. I didn’t know how we could go on living. When Kim Jong-il died, I cried too, but not so much,” she told me. Kim Jong-un’s resemblance to his grandfather was his greatest asset. “We don’t mind that he’s fat,” another woman assured me.
