The death of Kim Jong-il does not in itself bring the reunification of Korea closer. It is a still a dim and distant prospect as the Kim 'royal' family and North Korea's military bosses shore up the system using the young Kim Jong-un as a symbol of continuity and inheritor of the magical powers attributed to the dynasty.
Nor can one expect any easing of tyranny. After all, it is the system that is the source of tyranny, so change can come only when it is challenged, whether from within or without. An eventual challenge from within looks the more likely, given the difficulty of popular uprisings against regimes as ruthless as this.
And change can happen, if only because enough of the beneficiaries of the system, particularly the younger ones, recognise that, for their own survival, they need to be prepared to surrender some power, preferably in return for sustainable wealth.
That is a process which seems to be happening in Myanmar as military leaders morph into civilians, and crony capitalism and rigged elections offer a modest improvement on the previous situation.
Any change for North Korea's elite is far more difficult than for the Myanmese military. Its paranoia is such that it has come to half-believe its own propaganda about threats from the United States or Japan, which becomes justification for a nuclear programme that in turn becomes a symbol of the regime's almost mystical claim to be the defender of the Korean race. The Pyongyang propaganda machine almost invariably blames Korean problems on foreign interference, seldom even on the South Koreans.
Then there is the fear of either being swallowed up economically by a rich and confident South Korea or becoming an economic satellite of China - a quite reasonable fear, given the extent of the regime's failures and one that explains why it has been deaf to Chinese advice to follow the Chinese model and open up.
But a reformist group within the existing power structure might just be able to use the regime's extreme nationalism in a different and more positive way.