LUCY STEIGERWALD: Pyongyang Students Probably Weren’t Learning Anything Anyway. Students are being sent into the fields for manual labor. Why? This masterstroke:

Last week someone put a piece of graffito on the wall of a Pyongyang College which called the Dear Leader “a dictator who starved people to death.”

For North Korea, this is more or less the equivalent of setting the White House on fire with a Molotov. Pyongyang was locked down (more than usual) for three days in a vain search for the culprit. Hopefully he or she is well-hidden, or followed the seven folks who triggered a border security crackdown when when they defected to the South a few weeks ago, joining the 21,000 other former North Koreans who have had that same great idea since 1953.

He is, of course, just that: a dictator who starves people to death. The truth hurts — especially in a one-party state with a cult of the leader as messiah.