Reports of the deaths and executions of many of Kim Jong Un's political foes appear to have been... greatly exaggerated... by none other than the mainstream media, which appears to have such amazing insights into the country despite its lack of any journalists there.
Regular claims by the mainstream media of increasingly outlandish means of execution have cropped up over the years, from rabid dogs to antiaircraft guns, to flamethrowers. All fail to mention Kim's most spectacular punishment of all, the power over life and death itself, resurrecting his foes so they can relive his wrath till the end of time itself.
Seeing as many of the so-called dead have turned up live and well, this might be an explanation that the MSM could believe.
North Korean pop star Hyon Song-Wol was spotted alive on TV in 2014, despite reportedly being executed by firing squad.
As though to mock the mainstream media, which had been taken in hook line and sinker, she was recently sent amongst a delegation from the North to discuss their entry to the South Korean Winter Olympics to mark a thaw in relations between the two nations. Sadly this isn't the only resurrection story...
https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/730409676861382657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
- RT_com
Although Jang Song Thaek, Kim's uncle, might have been executed, it was certainly not by starving dogs as the allegation was first seen on a satirical Chinese micro-blogging website.
Kim's aunt Kim Kyong-hui, Thaek's wife, was allegedly poisoned by Un. This was proved false when a South Korean news agency reported that she was alive and was being treated for illnesses.
Former army chief of staff Ri Yong-gil was reportedly executed. However, it turned out to be a blatant fabrication by the South Korean Unification Ministry which had requested anonymity when planting the story in the South Korean mainstream media.
Policy Mic admits there is a fake news problem when it comes to mainstream news coverage of North Korea - though of course, the problem lies not with the mainstream media itself and its lack of interest or incentive at verifying these events that cast the enemies of the US government in a negative light, but the South Korean and Japanese tabloids that already have an axe to grind with the North.
"Several established news organizations, for example, reported in October that 200 people “may have died” in collapsed tunnels at a North Korean nuclear site. The original source of that report was Japanese television network TV Asahi, but three weeks later, evidence proving the incident has yet to surface.
"Though many American news outlets hold editorial standards(?!) that forbid paying for interviews, Ward said he’s heard of Eastern news outlets paying North Korean defectors as sources, which can be an issue if the individual feels like they need to compete for compensation."
Indeed, when North Korean defectors are being compensated for their screen time... they're extremely incentivized to make up outlandish stories that get them substantial rewards. Sad, but true, is the fact that North Korean defectors face widespread discrimination from their Southern brethren leading 83% of them to leave the one country they share a common language with. Legitimate work is hard to come by.
And while we're at it, let's blame the North as well for closing itself off from the mainstream media - that gives us every right to make up whatever we want or believe every rumor about it right?
Meanwhile, other stories — such as the death of Kim’s supposed former girlfriend, singer Hyon Song-wol — were later debunked. It’s further proof of how hard it is to cover the DPRK, a propaganda machine that only allows foreign journalists’ entry under controlled, highly monitored circumstances.
We've seen this sort of bias before in the coverage leading up to the invasion of Iraq, the bombing of Libya and the justification of support for Overly Extreme "Moderate" Syrian rebels. Good thing the North has nukes that can reach the US, or we'd not be talking about peace and the South Korean Winter Olympics...
As with almost every unverified allegation taken from an unknown South Korean tabloid or a Syrian Observatory of Human Rights and widely reported as fact because it suits the mainstream media's agenda, this should be taken as a lesson to view any article you read, including my own, with a heaping shovel of salt. I have my biases, think hard about who you choose to believe.