North Korea's Children's Palace has a deeply depressing aura that is reminiscent of nothing so much as a hospital for terminally ill children. It is an institution where adults have tried – and failed -- to mask life's cruel realities with some brightly colored paint and some rainbows and unicorns. The youngsters here seem to be in the process of metamorphosing into robotic grown-ups, learning how to dim, if not fully extinguish, their individual sparks and subsume their spirits to the all-encompassing cult of personality and party that three generations of the Kim dynasty have created.