A striking feature of North Korean communism has been the remarkable measure of physical security enjoyed by the uppermost reaches of the brutal and repressive regime.

Elsewhere in the communist world, the highest tiers always enjoyed physical comforts. But the tumultuous, cutthroat nature of communist politics meant that their physical fate, up to and including cause of death, remained perilously contingent. (As the Bo Xilai affair in China underscores, this is still the case under "reform socialism.")

By contrast, North Korea's "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung laid down a system of dynastic succession that protected not only the revolutionary royals but also those aristocrats closest to them.