For years now, we’ve seen bad North Korean Photoshops. Now, according to Reuters, experts say the hermit kingdom is faking video clips.
Late last week, North Korean television released footage of the alleged rocket launch from December, which was supposed to show off the country’s ability to fire ballistic missiles from subs. The footage is bunk, it seems.
According to senior researcher Melissa Hanham at the California-based Middlebury Institute’s James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies, “The rocket ejected, began to light, and then failed catastrophically.” The think tank’s analysis shows two frames where the rocket is engulfed by flames and begins to break apart. Hanham points out that North Korea used “heavy video editing to cover this fact.”
North Korea is reportedly using simplistic editing techniques to crop and reverse old footage of an earlier submarine-launched ballistic missile as well as a Scud missile launch.
“They used different camera angles and editing to make it appear that the launch was several continuous launches, but played side by side you can see that it is the same event,” Hanham said.
The South Korean government also deemed the footage fake, with the country’s Defence Ministry telling Yonhap News, “We consider the video published by North Korea of a SLBM launch fabricated.”
Over the years, North Korean propaganda has used Photoshop to varying degrees of success. Recently, the country’s ‘shop abilities have gotten better, and if this analysis is correct, then North Korea’s next goal should be to improve its video manipulation. That, and ease up on the lens flare.
Top image: KCNA
Comments
12 responses to “North Korea Is Now Faking Video Footage, Apparently”
No what a shock…
It’s a shame that North Korea *Gun Clicks* I-I mean… True Korea… Is somewhat closed-off to the rest of the world.
I was watching a video on YouTube showing their schools, and holy crap are those kids brainwashed *Gun Clicks* I-I mean… Disciplined and superior in every sense of the word.
Anyway, I would love to see their kids face off against the rest of the world in a math/science/art/music contest or something, cause holy crap they learn advanced stuff at such a young age.
I wonder how much their lack of nutrition affects their early brain formation and learning. There is never enough food there.
I had a friends who visted the DMZ and he said every NK soldier was shorter than the average South Korean.
I’ve been to the DMZ. It has more landmines than pretty much the rest of the world combined, the forests all around it have been stripped bare by peasants trying to keep warm through the winter, and there’s a fake city right next to the border.
It’s designed to make the place look like a glorious, prosperous country, but it’s pretty obvious how fake it is. There are fake skyscrapers built out of wood that sway in the wind and the streets are dead empty.
He told me about the crazy fake city they have. It all sounds nuts.
Oppa gangnam style
What do you mean now? They’ve been doing that for a while. A couple of years ago they used Top Gun footage.
Yeah this is anything but new for NK. they got caught out a while ago photo-shopping some images to make their military look more impressive. If I remember correctly one image was some of their landing craft that was shopped to make it look like there was twice as many as there actually were. They got called out on it pretty quickly when people noticed the waves created by the crafts were identical.
I think Iran also did this for some missile launches. A couple of them had exactly the same plumes of smoke.
I don’t know what they were saying, but that newsreader obviously thought it was the most amazing thing ever in the history of the world.
oh no, really? darn what a travesty
All this fake footage is just a clever smokescreen by the Glorious DPRK to hide the all the legitimately awesome and powerful stuff they do have.
I mean if spies found evidence of a secret superweapon inside NK borders, who would believe them? It’s genius!