PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) – Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s mercurial and enigmatic longtime leader, has died of heart failure. He was 69.

In a “special broadcast” Monday from the North Korean capital, state media said Kim died of a heart ailment on a train due to a “great mental and physical strain” on Dec. 17 during a “high intensity field inspection.” It said an autopsy was done on Dec. 18 and “fully confirmed” the diagnosis.

Kim is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008, but he had appeared relatively vigorous in photos and video from recent trips to China and Russia and in numerous trips around the country carefully documented by state media. The communist country’s “Dear Leader” – reputed to have had a taste for cigars, cognac and gourmet cuisine – was believed to have had diabetes and heart disease.

You can read more on the story here.

This is the difference between North and South Korea on a given night.  The South, a shining example of prosperity.  The North, a comparative wasteland.  Maybe “wasteland” is a harsh choice of wording, but which one would you rather live in?  The country with companies that (successfully) compete with America, or the country that shoots you for trying to leave?

So many “Occupy” protestors and members of the Left talk about doing away with Capitalism, that I wonder if they’ve seen pictures like this.  I wonder if they’ve seen more of what goes on in Cuba than what Michael Moore tells them.  And I also wonder why they don’t just move to their non-captialism “paradises”, if they don’t like the United States.  Last time I checked, people risk their lives to move to the U.S. and South Korea, not Cuba and North Korea.

What do you think?  Is Capitalism overrated?  Should we replace it with some sort of pseudo-socialist utopia?  Or should we put pictures like this on billboards across North America until people get the point?  Let us know in the comments below.