North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun made an unusual editorial mistake by placing the same photograph on both pages 2 and 3 in its Feb. 3 edition, according to Hankook Ilbo.
The error occurred during coverage of Kim Jong Un’s attendance at the Samgwang Livestock Farm completion ceremony. An aerial shot of the farm complex appeared on consecutive pages—a rare slip for a publication known for its rigorous proofreading standards, South Korean government sources told the newspaper.
The mistake is notable given Rodong Sinmun’s reputation for editorial precision. The newspaper employs multiple rounds of proofreading, including a dedicated team stationed at the printing facility, and has been known to halt presses or recall entire print runs when errors are discovered.
Fatigue from Kim’s busy schedule
Experts interviewed by Hankook Ilbo attribute the error to journalist fatigue as they work to cover Kim Jong Un’s intensive schedule of site inspections ahead of the Ninth Party Congress.
“Kim Jong Un’s field guidance has been very active recently ahead of the Ninth Party Congress, and Rodong Sinmun has been repeatedly compressing a day’s events into tight reporting cycles,” Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies, told Hankook Ilbo. “With editors rushing to publish the next day, it seems editorial errors have crept in.”
Lim also noted a shift in the newspaper’s editorial focus under Kim Jong Un, from ideology and discourse to showcasing “dynamic development achievements,” which may be contributing to growing pains.
Cho Han-beom, a senior research fellow at Korea Institute for National Unification, told Hankook Ilbo that recent lapses—including a July 2024 photo showing then-Premier Kim Tok Hun with his hands in his pockets before Kim Jong Un—suggest “editorial standards have generally loosened compared to the Kim Jong Il era.”
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