I am pretty sure they were mentioning that in the sense that North Korea has a full blown cult of personality around their leader (who is an unelected life-long dictator).

You'll note that there isn't a giant statue of Obama on the White House lawn and in every town square. In N. Korea this is the case.

Adult Americans are not legally required to wear lapel pins featuring prominent past presidents, nor are they required to have images of those presidents in their homes with nothing else permitted on the wall that hosts those images, while in N. Korea they must.

Americans can freely speak a poor opinion of Obama or the Congress or the SCOTUS and not fear that they and their family will be imprisoned and tortured, unlike N. Korea.

The press can say what they like about Obama/other branches of the government without fear of censorship and imprisonment, unlike N. Korea where there is only state-run media that fawn over their leader.

I think that was what they were trying to get at even if they didn't fully expand it.

> On official articles, the leader is mentioned everywhere.

Washington Post? ;).