If some of the stories that the North Koreans told their people about Kim Jong Il’s life are true, Michael Malice jokes that everyone in the country would have to be “high-functioning learning disabled.”

He points to a story he read from 1982, when the Dear Leader was presiding over the construction of the Tower of the Juche Idea in Pyongyang.

“In the books they say he came up with the idea to make it the tallest tower, which no one had ever thought of previously,” he said. “Are you telling me these other architects never considered making it the tallest?