Japanese TV station misidentifies man as son of Kim Jong Il
A report in the Los Angeles Times:
The photograph was considered a journalistic coup, a recent image of the elusive 26-year-old son of North Korean strongman Kim Jong Il, who has reportedly been named the next leader of the secretive state.
The Internet snapshot released by a Tokyo television station purportedly showed an adult Kim Jong Un — whose last known photo was taken at age 12 — as a spitting image of his notorious father, right down to the moon face, coiffed hair and oversize sunglasses.
Trouble was, it wasn’t the younger Kim at all, but a pudgy 40-year-old South Korean construction worker who also operates a website for fortunetellers. He says he is baffled as to how the Japanese got hold of his Internet image.
"I’m speechless," Bae Seok-bum told South Korea’s Yonhap news service. "I only uploaded the picture to share with the members of my community how similar my face was to that of Kim Jong Il. I didn’t think it would go this far."
The photo has quickly become an Internet sensation in Japan, South Korea and even China, dispersed via e-mail by amateur North Korea watchers…
And from the New York Times:
An article on Tuesday about the difficulties faced by the Obama administration in seeking the release of two American journalists sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in North Korea, which is undergoing a succession struggle, misspelled the given name of the eldest son of Kim Jong-il, the North’s leader. The son, who analysts believe has been passed over to succeed his father, is Kim Jong-nam, not Kim Young-nam. Link
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