Kim Jong-Un, supreme leader of North Korea

North Korea is a fenced-in country that no one really knows much about. What is increasingly unclear is whether its dictator Kim Jong-un is a human being. Its official news agency recently reported that he climbed the country’s tallest mountain, Mount Paektu, which is just under 3,000 metres high. Accompanying photos showed him somewhat remiss of a mountaineer’s attire. He looked cheerful and comfortably clad in a topcoat and leather shoes. Did he climb it dressed like that, or is it, as the South Korean news agency Yonhap is alleging, a photoshopped image? It pointed out that he was not wearing a hat in that freezing sea of ice and that his shoes looked like they had just been polished.

But he might have indeed climbed the peak because Kim Jong-un has always been prone to doing fantastical things. Like driving a car when he was only three years old, as North Korean textbooks testify. It is when you hear of such incredible feats that you thank your stars that India is a democracy. Otherwise, imagine constantly having to clap for all the extraordinary deeds of your supreme leader and having to believe these because not a single voice of dissent is allowed to trouble your ears with doubt.

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