North Korean history holds many secrets. How and when did Kim Il Sung decide to make his son his heir? Was a colossal explosion at the Ryongchon station in 2004 an assassination attempt on Kim Jong Il and, if so, who was behind it? We do not know answers to these questions and are unlikely to get any while the DPRK exists.

But perhaps the strangest event in North Korean history was a message transmitted in November 1986 declaring Kim Il Sung to have died, over eight years before his actual death in July 1994.