In an effort to make Kim Jong-il’s funeral look just perfect, overzealous North Korean photo editors erased several errant cameramen and may have even created a giant soldier. See the pictures.
A few stray bystanders in a photo wouldn’t typically warrant a Photoshop makeover, but North Korea isn’t your typical country. The communist nation is famous for its worshipful reverence for its leaders, affinity for orderly lines, and fully state-controlled media. All of these features were at their height in the days after the death of dictator Kim Jong-il. As the country turned out en masse to mourn him on Wednesday, two photographers shot the same image of the snowy funeral procession. The version released by the Korean Central News Agency was mysteriously missing a group of men standing near a camera on the sidelines in what seems to be a clone-stamp-happy photo editor’s attempt to bring order to the picture. The bystanders appear in a photograph taken a few seconds later by a Japanese journalist. The Associated Press noticed the discrepancy after comparing the two photos, leading three international media agencies to issue a “kill notice,” pulling the doctored photo from their content.
Kyodo / Landov; AFP, KCNA via KNS / Newscom
One funeral-procession watcher had the best view in Pyongyang on Wednesday. After the Associated Press published a photo of Kim Jong-il’s funeral parade, an astute Reddit user spotted an anomaly among the thousands of mourners. One man towers above the rest, with the heads of his comrades barely skimming his elbows. The mystery man’s height is estimated to be about 7 feet 7 inches if the photo isn’t doctored, and some have speculated that it could be North Korean basketball star Ri Myung Hun, who is around 7 feet 8 inches tall and was once considered the tallest man in the world.
AP Photo
The North Korean government has its iron grip on every aspect of the country, but raising floodwaters seems a little too biblical even for the totalitarian regime. In July, the North Korean state news agency published a photo of residents wading through murky floodwaters in the capital, Pyongyang. Two hold their shoes up as the water reaches over their knees, and one keeps his pants rolled up over his thighs to avoid getting wet. The mystery? No one in the picture seems to have a drop of water on them. The point where the water reaches their pants is conspicuously dry in what appears to be a badly Photoshopped image. While flooding did leave thousands dead and possibly millions homeless, critics suggest that the floodwaters were much lower than the picture depicted and it had been altered to provoke sympathy and increase international aid. Perplexingly, aid offers by the United Nations and the South Korean Red Cross were turned down.
When rumors about Kim Jong-il’s failing health began circulating in 2008, North Korean media scrambled to assure citizens that their leader was as healthy as ever. After about three months with suspiciously few photos of him in the news, the state news agency released a shot of Kim standing among a group of North Korean soldiers. After investigating the picture, the Times of London pointed out that the dictator’s shadow falls in a different direction from those around him, and a black line along the stand disappears on either side of him; the BBC noticed that the pixels on his legs appear to be mismatched. Since these suspicions were unlikely to have leaked into the closed-off country, the photo undoubtedly served its purpose in comforting the North Korean citizens that their leader was healthy, making his death even more surprising.
AFP / Getty Images
