8 Crazy "Facts" About North Korea You Thought Were True But Actually Aren't
The amount of misinformation on the Internet about North Korea is mind-boggling!
By Sadho Ram — 10 Mar 2017, 06:46 PM
1. Contrary to a popular claim by VICE that North Korea no longer makes films, Pyongyang, in fact, has five studios that produce about 30 movies a year. Some of them are romcoms, thrillers and even animations and documentaries.
2. Men are actually NOT forced to cut their hair like "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-un, and women can and do wear pants
3. As a tourist in North Korea, you are safe as long as you don't hand out bibles. Additionally, people there do like to dance in public and it's not just when told to by the state.
4. While CNN would have you believe that Kim Jong-un ordered his aunt Kim Kyong-hui to be poisoned, the truth is less sensational: the "poisoned aunt" is alive in Pyongyang!
5. Media in 2013 told us that the North Korean leader assassinated his pop-singer girlfriend Hyon Song-wol for making porn. However, the "dead" girlfriend was seen ALIVE on KCNA a year after reports of her grisly murder.
6. In April 2015, South Korea's spy agency claimed that North Korea's Defence Chief Hyon Yong-chol was publicly executed by an anti-aircraft gun for falling asleep in Kim Jong-un's presence. They later said he might still be alive.
North Korean defence minister Hyon Yong-chol riding an armoured personnel carrier.
Image via Yonhap/AFP/Getty Images7. Remember when Kim Jong-Un executed his uncle Jang Song-thaek by having him stripped naked and feeding him to 120 starving dogs? Yeah, NO, it DID NOT happen.
The North Korean leader, however, did order the death sentence for his uncle and former second-in-command, to be killed by a firing squad.
The so-called "fed to dogs" story actually originated with a satirical post on Weibo.
8. Oh, and, Kim DID NOT execute a traffic lady for sneezing
A caricature of a crying North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at the Unification Expo in Seoul.
Image via Lee Jin-man/APSuch "crazy facts" stories about North Korea are bizarre, sensational, and often false. And the stories that discredit these rumours rarely go viral.
The rumours debunked in this SAYS story were sourced from a book, The Director is The Commander, by Anna Broinowski.