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.