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North Korea

Demise of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's uncle grossly exaggerated following Chinese media whispers, report claims

By Angela Haggerty, Reporter

January 6, 2014 | 3 min read

The news of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s uncle’s demise may have greatly exaggerated in some media Chinese whispers, fresh reports have claimed.

Leader: North Korea's Kim Jong Un, who ordered the execution

According to Reuters, the story that Kim Jong Un’s uncle was thrown in a cage with hungry dogs and eaten alive appears to have originated as a satirical report on a Chinese microblogging site, Tencent Weibo, before being picked up by Hong Kong-based Wen Wei Po newspaper.

The story was later reported by Singapore title Straits Times, before spreading rapidly across the internet.

Reuters sourced their story from a Chicago-based software engineer, Trevor Powell, who provided a timeline of reports on his blog.

The story that 67-year-old Jang Song Thaek met a particularly brutal death took western media by storm over the festive period.

However, doubts were cast over the authenticity of the reports by a range of publications including the Washington Post, the Daily Telegraph and the BBC.

"The fact that the Western media have so widely accepted a story they would reject if it came out of any other country tells us a lot about how North Korea is covered - and how it's misunderstood," wrote the Washington Post's Max Fisher.

Early reports of the Jang Song Thaek's execution said he'd been shot via firing squad.

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