The announcement of the death of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-il today has many uncanny parallels with the end of Albania’s dictator Enver Hoxha.
North Korea remains the mostly isolated and secret country of the 21st century with China as its only ally while Albania was closed to the rest of the world for 47 years in the 20th century having fallen out in turn with its three friends, Yugoslavia, Russia and China.
The North Korean people were only told about the demise of their 69-year-old leader, pictured below, 48 hours after he had suffered a fatal attack on Saturday.
The Albanian military learnt about Enver Hoxha dying on Thursday, April 11, 1985, in a secret coded message from their government.
But the people were not told for another couple of hours and they never realised he had been ill for the previous couple of years with diabetes.
North Koreans wept openly on the streets of the capital, Pyongyang, as they mourned their leader.
In Albania everyone cried at the news of Hoxha. Berti Dosti recalled in the book, God’s Secret Listener, published by Lion/Hudson/Monarch: “It was a case of the more a person cried the more it honoured our leader.”
He said the country was put on the highest military alert as the national government was worried that the army might lose its discipline and that external enemies might seize the opportunity to attack Albania, or that the internal enemy might lead an uprising and overthrow the government.
As Alma Syla, a teacher in Berti’s school who was only 13 when Albania lost its long-time leader said: “We were frightened; we didn’t know what was going to happen next. We believed Enver Hoxha had made our country secure, a strong castle, that no one would attack. But what would we be like now without a leader?”
Today as the official North Korean news agency KCNA described one of his sons, Kim Jong-un, as the "great successor" whom North Koreans should unite behind, Pyongyang's neighbours went on military alert fearing instability in the poor and isolated nuclear-armed nation.
North and South Korea are still technically at war, and the US has nearly 30,000 troops stationed in South Korea.
Ruling party members in one North Korean county were shown on state TV banging tables and crying.
"I can't believe it," a party member named as Kang Tae-Ho was quoted as saying. "How can he go like this? What are we supposed to do?"
Another, Hong Sun-Ok, said: "He tried so hard to make our lives much better and he just left like this."
The state news agency said a funeral would be held in Pyongyang on December 28 and a period of national mourning has been declared from December 17 to 29.
Likewise in Albania a week of national mourning was declared for Hoxha and every school opened a book for pupils to submit their poems and songs about their leader.
Kim Jong-il will be succeeded by his third son, Kim Jong-un, of whom little is known.
He was unveiled as his father's likely successor just over a year ago and was educated in Switzerland.
He is in his late 20s and is thought to be Kim Jong-il's third son - born to Mr Kim's reportedly favourite wife, the late Ko Yong-hui.
However, he is not thought to be very experienced politically and this could lead to very unstable times in the country.
Following Enver Hoxha’s death, his appointed successor in Albania was the not so well known Ramiz Alia, the leader of the Party of Labour (the Communist Party) who tried to introduce a programme of cautious liberalization.
But the people were impatient for change as they watched the Berlin Wall come down and the old governments of Eastern Europe overthrown.
Students led the street protests and on February 21, 1991, crowds pulled down the statue of Enver Hoxha in the central square of the capital Tirana.
That was the end of communism and the new democratic Albania opened its borders later that year to the rest of the world.
Hoxha had declared Albania the world’s first atheistic state, had closed down all churches, imprisoned many church leaders and abolished religion.
Missionaries poured in and the Albanian church was resurrected after, in the words of one believer, “God had been stolen from us for 47 years.”
North Korea has closed down all its churches, imprisoned up to 70,000 Christians in labour camps and has the dubious record of being number one in Open Doors’ list of the country that is the biggest persecutor of believers.
The hope and prayer of many Christians worldwide is that what happened is Albania more than 20 years ago will be repeated in North Korea and that the church there will be resurrected in the near future.
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