You can’t just say that the Great Leader died of a heart attack. Instead, here is how North Korea’s official news agency originally explained it: “In the whole period of his protracted revolutionary guidance, he valued and loved the people very much and always shared weal and woe with them. He continued to make difficult forced march for field guidance, making unremitting efforts and working heart and soul to build a thriving country and improve the standard of people’s living. He died from repeated mental and physical fatigue on a train in that course.” You can read the entire bizarre statement here.

Later, the news agency revealed it was a “severe myocardial infarction along with a heart attack” that ended Kim’s life. But that line about fatigue is a good one—a catchall, if you will. It reminded me of my tour of Graceland in the late 1990s. The narrator for a segment of the audiotour said that Elvis Presley got up on the morning of August 16, 1977, and played some racquetball before returning to the main house, where he went upstairs “to rest” and passed away. No, I did not expect any mention of the “death throne” or that he was reading a book about the Shroud of Turin while doing his business. And there was certainly no mention of all the drugs in his system. (The audiotour has since been redone with a new voiceover by daughter Lisa Marie.) Over at the official Elvis website, we learn,