Those North Koreans might not be faking their grief

But experts say that the scenes we’re seeing on TV aren’t necesarily out of the ordinary or over the top for North Koreans in grief. And they may even be the honest expressions of a nation not knowing how to go on once their cult-like leader dies.

“This is a society that is organized around a mass cult-like devotion to the leader,” said Mike Chinoy, a senior fellow at the U.S. China Institute at the University of Southern California and author of “Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis.” “When you have the death of a figure that you spent your whole life worshipping you’re going to feel fear and uncertainty and anxiety about what will happen next.”