2020 has been one of the hardest years that the world has faced. The number 31 story of the year is Kim Jong Un Death Rumours from North Korea. Kim Jong Un is (apparently) alive and (presumably) well. The North Korean dictator appeared in a state-issued photo over a weekend April, in which he is shown cutting the ribbon on a new fertilizer factory outside Pyongyang. He looked not the least bit dead.
This development was a bit awkward for CNN and many other news outlets around the world, as well as a few intelligence agencies, which had spent the past few weeks in a frenzy over Kim’s health, or lack thereof.
According to stories in otherwise reliable mainstream publications, Kim died. According to journalists, he was “in grave danger,†possibly as a result of a botched operation. Others split the difference, saying he was in a coma or brain dead.
Or, as it turns out, not.
Although it’s hard to know anything for sure about North Korea, the fertilizer-plant photo suggests the reporting about Kim over the past few weeks was a farrago of misinformation, non-information, half speculation and outright guessing.