To say that Kim Jong Un is the leader of his country is a gross understatement. In North Korea, he is regarded as the epitome of his country.

The same was true of his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, and his father, Kim Jong Il. Each in his turn has been the focus of intense and unmitigated adoration and fealty.

This explains North Korea's angry response to the movie "The Interview," a comedy which depicts a fictional plot to assassinate Kim Jong Il. The government has denied U.S. assertions that it was involved in the hack on Sony Pictures that led to the movie being scuttled, but did issue a statement describing the hack as a "righteous deed."

Reverence of the Kim dynasty is enforced by a government that punishes any hint of criticism of the Kims with long stints in prison. It's a serious offense to merely crumple up a newspaper bearing any of the leaders' images. The cult of personality manifests itself in all sorts of ways captured by Associated Press photographers: in the massive portraits that hang over public squares, the pins affixed to women's dresses, the tears of a girl singing a refrain for and about the man she knows as the Glorious Leader.