An article saying that North Korean state-run media is claiming teenager Hung Il Dong has become the first person to land on the sun is a hoax.
It’s obviously impossible to “land on the sun” due to how far the star is from Earth and the fact that it would burn up anything that got close to it, but an article saying that state-run North Korean Central News saying otherwise are false.
The article was published on Weird Asia News, a site that publishes some fake and real news “from all over Asia.”
“Well, believe it or not, they really said they did. They even called it the greatest human achievement of our time,’” it reads. “Hung Il Dong, 17, is reported to have been the first man to land on the sun, according to North Korean Central news.”
However, the article was first published on a satire site called Waterford Whispers News, which is similar to The Onion, about a month ago.
PolicyMic notes that KCNA never made the claim. North Korean state-run media, however, has made up outlandish propaganda about the regime.
“Despite outlandish North Korean propaganda like Kim Jong-il’s vaunted all-time golf scoring record and the supposed discovery of a unicorn lair in Pyongyang, this one would already be sending up red flags even if it wasn’t easy to track down the original source,” says the website.
