What Is North Korean Striker Jong Tae Sae Actually Crying About?

(Aside from Manute Bol.) Anyway, a headscratcher I've been puzzling over for a few days now: what's with sobbing guy on the North Korean national team? Guy has never even had to live in North Korea!

Jong was born in Japan, lives in Japan, plays for a Japanese club. He's a bigger deal in South Korea than the North, where a semi-permanent power outage has taken a big drag on celebrity worship, and despite a supposed distaste for "capitalism" (possibly nurtured being schooled in a North Korean sympathizing school run by Japan's fading community of communist hardliner immigrants) he has a typical roster of product endorsements — and apparently, a silver Hummer?

Still, Jong apparently loses it every single time he hears the North Korean national anthem. Which, you know, obviously is probably mind control. Or maybe it's just knowing that while he gets to return to birthplace of heated toilets and hentai when this is all over, his teammates repair to the land of the grass-fed and brainwashed?

For what it's worth, a somewhat melodramatic and gratuitously long Toronto Star story today by a reporter who somehow injured his head tripping on razor wire near the team's practice field in South Africa depicts the team doctor as a really nice guy.