Gary Leupp has the scoop here. He makes a good case that North Korea is a religious state rather than a Marxist-Leninist one.

He concludes:"In any case, the confrontation here isn't between 'freedom' and 'one of the world's last communist regimes,' nor even between fundamentalist Christian Bush and Kim Il-songist Kim Jong-il. It's between a weird hermetic regime under threat and determined to survive in its small space, using a cult to control its people, and a weird much more dangerous regime under the delusion that God wants it to smite His enemies and to control the whole world. Both are in the business of peddling 'illusions of happiness.' Neither is much concerned about the 'real happiness' of people. Both ought to be changed---by those they oppress, demanding an end to conditions requiring illusions."

I agree. What else is there to say?