Kim Jong Un Keeps Photoshopping His Ears
North Korea has long used Photoshop to prop up their repressive regime with altered images. But experts have recently pointed out that the authoritarian government has also used the image-editing software program to repeatedly alter the look of leader Kim Jong Un's ears, according to a report Wednesday from Vice's Motherboard.
"Sometimes we see editing in pictures of Kim Jong Un - particularly around his ear - wonder if this has anything to do with it?" asked Dave Schmerler, an analyst at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, who tweeted a photo of Kim's left ear with what appears to be a growth or lesion.
Sometimes we see editing in pictures of Kim Jong Un - particularly around his ear - wonder if this has anything to do with it? pic.twitter.com/ggmy1yUOIn
— Dave Schmerler (@DaveSchmerler) May 30, 2017
In a tweet responding to Schmerler, Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey said that the photoshopping of Kim's ear is a recurring event.
I once told the @Middlebury board by saying the North Koreans always "fuss" with Kim's ears. Except I didn't say "fuss". _ https://t.co/jxqdltkT4J
— Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) May 30, 2017
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Lewis said in the email for the Motherboard article that Kim "doesn't like his ears, it seems," and went on to explain how analysts have noticed the alterations to the leaders' ears.
"Over the past few years, we noticed that Kim Jong-un's ears often appear to have been altered along with other aspects of his appearance. We think these are just cosmetic alterations—changes to help Kim look a bit more handsome than he is in real life, much like a wedding photographer might make. He doesn't like his ears, or so it seems," Lewis wrote to Motherboard in an email.
Lewis explained how "mathematical artifacts in the image file," called "Tungstène," allowed for researchers to detect the differences made to images. According to the Motherboard article:
"Tungstène employs a series of filters to reveal anomalies that might be lurking in seemingly virgin images. One of these filters lets analysts map chrominance noise, or color fluctuations, and is especially helpful when looking for retouching. Other filters show cloned pixels, compression, or sharpness. In some instances, experts can even tell that photos have been opened and saved in Photoshop."
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The filter shows that the chrominance noise around Kim Jong Un's face has "lots of red colors" and doesn't match the rest of his body. Other people in the photographs appeared unaltered.
North Korea has long used Photoshop to alter images as a means of propaganda. In 2013, Buzzfeed reported a plethora of different images that the North Korean government used to alter images of their party officials, sheep, food and troops.
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