Videos/Tweets: Weeping and Laughing for the 'Dear Leader'
North Koreans have entered 12 days of mourning in honor of their longtime leader Kim Jong Il — a complex dictator known as much for pursuing nuclear weaponry while his people starved as his zippered jumpsuits and obsession with Hennessy cognac.
On Monday, state television reported that the 69-year-old “Dear Leader” died from a heart attack on Saturday. A tearful newscaster made the announcement in this video below:
Within hours of the news, North Korean state TV released a message urging people to unite behind Kim’s baby-faced youngest son, the enigmatic Kim Jong Un. Another video showing crowds of mourning citizens in Pyongyang was released. The Washington Post questioned the authenticity of the grief. Take a look for yourself. What do you think?
As news of Kim’s death swept the internet, not everyone was quite so teary. In what seemed like a 140-character stand-up show, professional comedians, journalists and just plain funny people took to Twitter to crack jokes about the personal eccentricities of the late dictator: