When Ceaușescu (Romanian dictator) visited North Korea he was so impressed that he came back home and then the cult of personality became the norm.
This is from Wikipedia and explains what I mean more clearly than I can.
On June 15, 1971, the president of the newly-renamed Socialist Republic of Romania, Nicolae Ceaușescu, visited North Korea. He took great interest in the idea of total national transformation as embodied in the programs of the Workers' Party of Korea. He was also inspired by the personality cult of Kim Il-sung. According to the British journalist Edward Behr, Ceaușescu admired Kim as a leader because he dominated his nation and broke free from Soviet control, combining totalitarian methods with ultra-nationalist and communist ideologies. Behr wrote that the possibility for "vast Potemkin villages for the hoodwinking of gullible foreign guests" that Ceaușescu had seen in North Korea was something that never seemed to have crossed his mind before.
Upon his return to Romania, Ceaușescu began to emulate North Korea's system, influenced by Kim's Juche philosophy. He issued the July Theses, a set of proposals that tightened government control over Romanian media, promoted nationalism, and intensified his personality cult. North Korean books on Juche were translated into Romanian and widely distributed inside the country.
Thanks North Korea
? 
