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North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, seen here in August, was parodied as the "sexiest man alive" by spoof paper, The Onion.
BEIJING – Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice?
That’s the hard lesson being learned Tuesday by China’s ruling Communist Party newspaper, The People’s Daily, after it ran a version of a story by American satirical news site, The Onion, that named North Korean supreme dictator, Kim Jong Un, as the “Sexiest Man Alive for the year of 2012.”
The government newspaper didn’t just proclaim Kim the winner of the dubious honor. It positively reveled in it.
"With his devastatingly handsome, round face, his boyish charm, and his strong, sturdy frame, this Pyongyang-bred heartthrob is every woman's dream come true,” quoted the newspaper from The Onion. "Blessed with an air of power that masks an unmistakable cute, cuddly side, Kim made this newspaper's editorial board swoon with his impeccable fashion sense, chic short hairstyle, and, of course, that famous smile."
Pregnant? North Korea leader's wife reportedly returns to public eye after long silence
The Chinese paper’s three paragraph piece on its official website was followed by a 55-page photo gallery depicting Kim at his best – riding a horse, shown on the cover of Time Magazine, inspecting fruit and of course, being met with rapturous applause by his people.
North Korea’s official state media, KCNA, has not commented on its website about either article.
Elizabeth Dalziel / AP
From work to play, see pictures from inside the secretive country.
This wouldn't be the first time that Chinese state press has fallen for The Onion's satire, and it remains unclear whether editors at the People’s Daily knowingly posted the piece.
In 2002, the Beijing Evening News published another story from the prank website that claimed the United States Congress was threatening to leave Washington, D.C., and relocate to Charlotte, N.C., or Memphis, Tenn., if “its demands for a new, state-of-the-art facility are not met.”
In February of this year, U.S Congressman, Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), was left red-faced after he reposted an old Onion story that claimed Planned Parenthood was opening an "$8 billion abortionplex" in Topeka, Kansas.
Meanwhile, this past September in the lead-up to the U.S. elections, Iranian state media fell for another Onion gag that said most rural white Americans "would rather vote for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than U.S. President Barack Obama.”
David Guttenfelder / AP
In this March 9, 2011 photo, a girl plays the piano inside the Changgwang Elementary School in Pyongyang, North Korea. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
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Leave a Comment:
That's one of the problems with propaganda,...after a while, you can't tell the difference between producing it, or being just another victim of it.
NBC are you listening?
Me laff so hard....
People here will fall for stories like it in a few more decades.
When you turn your nation into one simply of productivity without including creativity, you stop being able to tell fact from fiction.
You can say the same things about Mr. Chow from The Hangover....
Keep up the good work Onion. What the world needs is more of a reason the laugh at itself and all the crazy S*&t that goes on in it.
I get postings all the time from some friends and families of Onion articles that they think is real. They never respond when I tell them they have been had. Just because it is on the internet does not make it true. NOOO, really.
This would not happen in cities where The Onion's newspaper has been available on stands for free for several years now.
Ahhhhh hahhaahah.....you Americans so funne. You make me raff rong time....ha ha ha.
What in the gall darn blasted dangit is an America newspaper doin goin round complementing the Chinese government for? Just another sing of the times from the people who brought you HUSSEIN as President again for the next four years! Whats next the libral media will start praisin Russia and Iran too oh wait I forgot HUSSEIN already apoligized to them anyways!
great gogglie moogaly!!! they actually thought that was real??? funny stuff..bout fell off my chair reading it. loved to have been a fly on the wall when they showed the..fat boy that!! OOOh Americans think i sexy!!!hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. oh and my fashion sense!!! oooo!!! hahahahahahahahaha.
Ancient Chinese proverb say: It take many nails to build crib, but only one screw to fill it.
The Onion who such sweet humor. I love when they suck those suckers into believing what they print. In this oh so serious world humor is badly needed!!!!
I hope these spoofs don't come back to haunt us. Evidently his wife thinks he's a good looking guy because she's a nice looking lady and I don't see anything wrong with him. He's a lot better looking than a lot of men so the onion needs to peel it's smelly skin and wipe the tears from it's eyes and go with non communist countries, even if it's in jest. Communists don't think our way of thinking is funny and I don't want nuclear weapons being dropped on us by China and Russia who support North Korea.
This story may be the reason why Obama wanted to have the recent Asian summit.
I sure hope N. Korea and China have a sense of humor. Fat chance.
Isn't 'Fat Chance' Un's son to be name?
I heard that.......ya know!
The people all look sad. If you can find any. Allot of big places with hardly any people. Mostly young men. Very few women or kids. It's sad that people still have to live under this kind of oppression today. They have no color, no personality's, no smiles in their eyes. I lived all over the world. Before the "wall"came down, the people were the same, blank looks on their faces, living in poverty. I had the opportunity to ask, even Russians, if they had the chance to defect why didn't they. It always came back to the same answer (regardless of country), "they would kill their families". I guess that would be enough to do it. I know that China is (majority) of it's people living in poverty. Real starving poverty. So when they ask for Americas help, I'm afraid that I can't understand people who are against it. To me it spells youth and stupidity. I say go live in their country for awhile, then come back and tell me that. If you still feel the same way then it's stupidity and you can't change that. Sad.
I lived in China for a year. For all of their failings, the government has pretty much eliminated what you call "Real starving poverty."
Some people are against it because charity would probably be diverted to their gangster government officials.
All were gags ,except the Obama vs Iran president. ( whats the difference?)
These are the people that this country is in the process of selling itself to - they own so much of the US - I guess the joke is really on us!! Yes, think of all the cheap Chinese goods that we spend billions on each year. Who's laughing now?
The "people", don't get one cent of anything! The GOVERNMENT does, the "people", are still starving! Do you even have any idea what they did for the Olympics? They brought in all the food from every farm, every village you can imagine, the people who grow, or catch it, did not get their "rationed quota", leaving the country in total disarray. It caused massive soil erosion when the monsoons came, oh hell, go read a National Geo if it won't hurt your brain.
Yes. I see that. All of the jokes may be on us Americans. China probably owns The Onion!
ahhhh, you make fun me?????
brings tears to my eye from my belly aching laughter !!!
them orientals take onions very seriously. isn't it their national fruit or something?
Maybe if a lot of American women started saying that Kim Jong-un was really good looking(wink,wink). We could be on better terms with North Korea. Then the U.S. could send a bunch of Playboy bunnies over there and they could get Kim to drop their nuclear missle program. "Oh! Kimmie, the only missel I want to see is yours!" Nothing strokes a mans ego like a pretty woman.
It's my opinion that the Koreans are the uglist people on earth, ugly.
These types of generalizations are never correct. As with any group, I have personally known some very nasty koreans. And I have personally known some very sweet koreans.
Who doesnt love a big head and bad haircut?
I thought it was the Pillsbury Dough Boy.
The spoof on the Chinese newspaper is the kind of thing that happens when you are not living in the real world. If a similar headline ran after Romney lost the last Presidential election, a significant number of Republicans would have bought it just as easily.
shove it where the sun don't ever shine.
Someone should ask him to sing Jingle Bells since it is almost Christmas and all....
"Deck da halls wiff balls of royree, Fah Rah Rah Rah Rah, Rah Rah Rah Rah...."
The newspaper's readers don't know that "The Onion" is a satirical publication. They will take the quotes at face value.