When the international media writes about North Korea, it habitually claims that the country is “run by a hereditary elite, who enjoy a life of privileges and luxury”. Well, to an extent, this statement is correct: few people would doubt that the North Korean elite is hereditary, and social mobility in the country is close to zero.

Nonetheless, these oft-repeated claims still need qualifications and caveats – especially when we are talking not about present day North Korea and its increasingly corrupt and market-oriented elite, but about their parents and grandparents who ran the country for nearly half a century during the Kim Il Sung era.