NORTH KOREA - BRONX DOCUMENTARY CENTER

Guiding your business through the project

NORTH KOREA
PHOTO RELEASED ON NOVEMBER 5, 2008 PHOTO DISTRIBUTED BY KOREAN CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY

REPRESENTATION:
The Korean Central News Agency, the state news agency of North Korea, released this photo of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il on November 5, 2008, with the folllowing caption: “Kim Jong Il(C), top leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), poses for group photos with army officers and soldiers of the 534th unit of the People’s Army during an inspection.”

REALITY:
n this photo of Kim Jong-il visiting with a North Korean army unit, experts point to a line at knee-height that runs behind the soldiers in the front row. The line stops to the left and right of Kim, suggesting he was digitally inserted into the photo.

In 2008, rumors that Kim Jong-il had fallen ill or died began to ciruclate. In an attempt to quell these rumors, KCNA, the sole news outlet in the North Korea, released a series of images showing their leader healthy and active. The legitimacy of those photos was called into question by Western publications.

Bloggers have found similar signs of digital manipulation in other photos released by the KCNA during this time.

Learn more:

See how the photo was originally published
Read The Telegraph’s piece on how the image was manipulated
Look through TIME’s gallery of other possibly altered photos