Kim Jong Il, the Supreme Monocrat of North Korea

is dead.

One of the abiding strengths of Marxism Leninism is what Leonid Brezhnev called "Stability of Cadres", the party's ability to replenish itself via recruitment and self selection. However one of the great weaknesses of "Stability of Cadres" is that it all comes down sooner or later to the medieval concept of Primogeniture.

North Korea, case in point....Where Kim Jong Il is duly supplanted by his youngest son Kim Jong Un, age 28.

That makes the third generation of the Kim family to rule North Korea like a ramshackle plantation.

Well, you know what they say, from Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves in just three generations.