In 2013, Kim Jong-Un, Supreme Leader of North Korea had his uncle Jang Song-thaek arrested and executed.
A rumour spread that his body was fed to dogs.
Was this rumour true?
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At the very least you need to provide a reference to some work which makes this claim.– Daniel R HicksDec 21, 2020 at 2:17
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2@RS: Welcome to Skeptics! If you read that link and familiarise yourself with the community standards, you'll find the reason isn't "unbelievable" nor "mysterious", but that this contains no notable claim, very little context and is unclearly written.– Oddthinking ♦Dec 21, 2020 at 2:17
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What rumour? Never heard of that barbarism, and I thought the links might talk about that.– Mari-Lou ADec 21, 2020 at 5:28
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1@Mari-Lou: The original had no notable source. When I tried to search to find one, the Google page was filled with debunkings. It felt easier/more honest to answer than to keep looking for original sources to cherry pick.– Oddthinking ♦Dec 22, 2020 at 1:08
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Already finely ground, as I remember he was shot death by using tanks.– AlchimistaJan 18, 2021 at 13:54
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1 Answer
No, this rumour was false. It was debunked back in early 2014.
The Washington Post's Max Fisher writes a five-point takedown of the story that almost - almost - settles the question.
"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," he writes.
NPR also referenced the Washington Post article [which is paywalled]. NPR listed several other reasons to be skeptical - in short, the reporting was too rapid, included unusual details and was too far-fetched to be believed.
The Guardian reported on a blogger (link no longer working) who found the original source of the rumour:
Yet as the US blogger Trevor Powell pointed out on Monday, the original report lifted the story nearly word-for-word from an 11 December social media post by Pyongyang Choi Seongho, a China-based satirist with millions of followers. The background of the personality's page on Tencent Weibo, China's second most popular microblog, shows a cartoon Kim Jong-un standing on a balcony flanked by military aides, his arms raised and his middle fingers extended. Choi's post includes all of the grisly details that made their way into the American press: Jang and five of his aides were stripped naked, thrown into a giant cage, and "entirely devoured" by 120 Manchurian hunting dogs that had been starved for three days. Kim conducted the hour-long spectacle himself before an audience of 300 North Korean officials, it added.
answered Dec 21, 2020 at 2:34
