On November 14, humor newspaper The Onion ("America's Finest News Source") officially named North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un their "Sexiest Man Alive" for 2012. The clearly satirical article made international headlines when The People's Daily, the Chinese Communist government's official newspaper, reported the story as 100% true. The article in their online edition was even accompanied by a 55-page photo spread of the 29-year-old super-stud in all his majestic glory.*
But when it comes to breaking hilarious "news" stories, The Onion's got nothing on the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). Here's just one small example of their journalistic superiority. On November 29, the state-owned media outlet reported that the country's scientists have confirmed the discovery of an actual unicorn lair in Pyongyang, one of Ancient Korea's capital cities. According to the Academy of Social Sciences, the phrase "Unicorn Lair" is engraved on a rectangular rock just outside the temple where they made their unbelievable discovery. However, this august scientific body has so far kept any physical evidence substantiating their fantastic find pretty close to the vest...in that they haven't publicly released any.
KCNA continually competes with the Weekly World News (WWN) to break stories that are simply too hot for the lamestream media to touch. Over the decades, WWN has gotten the inside scoop on many shocking exclusives exposing the secret lives of famous mythological creatures and famously ridiculous celebrities. For instance, they most recently reported on Bigfoot's three wives and the tragic explosion of Kim Kardashian's left butt cheek.
But KCNA has unparalleled access to incredible, often surreal developments within North Korea's heavily guarded borders: especially when it comes to the country's leaders. For instance, KCNA has previously reported that Kim Jong-Il, the former supreme leader (and Kim Jong-un's father) accomplished many superhuman feats. Just for starters: he walked at three weeks of age, invented the hamburger, controlled the weather, and got eleven holes-in-one playing his first game of golf. Most impressively, he never, ever urinated or defecated. Seriously – no shit!
Just a few days from now, North Korea will launch a rocket that they say is intended to put their first space satellite into orbit around Earth. However, international observers insist that North Korea is actually conducting a long-range ballistic missile test to determine whether they can nuke the USA. That would violate several United Nations Security Council resolutions – and probably trigger a major geopolitical crisis. North Korea made a similar attempt back in April, but the rocket crashed and burned. Here's hoping that this time, their scientists prove themselves just as adept at rocket science as they are at archaeology.
* The People's Daily has since removed the "Sexiest Man Alive" story from their website. However, somewhat inexplicably, Kim Jong-un leads TIME magazine's online poll for Person of the Year 2012 by an extremely wide margin. As of this writing, he has 2,124,767 "yes" votes: which is 1,763,677 more than the number two contender.
