North Korea as a "Mafia State"

All that Hennessy Kim Jong Il drank still has to be paid for

If we listen to North Korea, this not apparent. North Korea often talks as if it were a militant, revolutionary state. It threatens war and nuclear destruction, claims the South Korean Government to be illegitimate puppets, extols a semi-divine royal family (the Kims) in the world's most servile personality cult and uses extreme rhetoric. This talk is mirrored in the frightening, if highly stylised, portrait of its military goose-steeping before Olympian elites.

But talk is cheap. Exaggerated claims (eg. that its recent nuclear test was a hydrogen bomb) are easy to make and hard to disprove in such a closed society. That they are inaccurate is irrelevant, as with threats to use nuclear weapons against the US or turn Seoul into a 'sea of fire.' North Korea's actions do not suggest a reckless imperialist ready to burn down the region. Rather they suggest canny, criminalistic elites looking to hold their rickety regime together and enjoy the good life.

http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2016/03/16/North-Korea-as-a-mafia-state.aspx