North Korean media outlets have since mid-February sought to show all people in public places in the country wearing masks, in line with official directives to block the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

But NK News has found that this has resulted in multiple cases of what appear to be photoshopped images of mask wearers, where masks have been digitally added onto people and other alterations have been made to match the state’s propaganda messaging.

The doctored images published in the party daily Rodong Sinmun, the cabinet newspaper Minju Choson, and the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) appear obvious in a few cases, while expert analysis was provided on others.

North Korea has been caught altering images on many occasions in the past, in both more serious cases — such as attempting to show off state military capabilities or hide leader Kim Jong Un’s presence at a weapons test — as well as more innocuous instances.

But the latest example comes as the government has said “all citizens must thoroughly wear a mask when going about,” appearing to require state media to also present an image of compliance.

Different outlets began to take the strictest measures to present this image of compliance at different times and in different ways starting in mid-February, NK News has found, by which time it was apparent the mask-wearing policy was official.

This behavior among the print outlets to continue to photoshop images, however, likely stems more from heavy historical usage of stock photos for many stories, making it an unreliable indicator of mask availability in the country.

It nevertheless provides a window into the North Korean propaganda machine and how messages are made to be consistent across state media. 

THE MASK SLIPS

The image shown at the top of this article is perhaps the most obvious example to the naked eye in the current campaign of a poor photoshop job to digitally add masks onto people. 

The photo was published on the website of the Minju Choson on February 29 in an article about an actress named Kim Jong Hwa, mentioning her current role teaching students and thus perhaps leading editors to try and present the image as if it were recently taken. 

Sam Meyer, Research Associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, described the image as an “‘are they even trying?’ photoshop job.”

Meyer told NK News after analyzing the image that, using a ‘color temperature’ filter, “you can see that the masks are not just a different color, but probably come from a differently lit photograph than the background.”

In the filtered image above on the right, Meyer used a tool to highlight textures indicative of “frequency changes,” saying that “it looks to me like you can see the outline of the gentleman’s suit jacket lapel through the woman’s mask. This could be an example of a particularly botched photoshop job.”

However, “other examples are not so obvious,” Meyer cautioned, saying that the computer software “is not enough to prove that an image is manipulated or faked—rather, it uses a variety of filters to make features that are buried in the digital encoding of the image visible.”

In the above two examples, Meyer said that, nevertheless, “unusual frequency ratios near the masks/faces of factory workers … could be evidence of manipulation.”

Artifacts and evidence of manipulation are also apparent in the examples below, while many others either lacking in image quality or obvious digital indicators appear ‘off’ to the naked eye. 

In the above image of a transportation fair in Pyongyang published on February 12, there is one man whose mask shows skin discoloration in the area between the straps, as well as what appears to be an extra nose under the mask, indicating the entire mask section was cut and added from another photo.

In the photo below, which was included in the print edition of the Minju Choson on February 14, there even appears to be an extra mask on top of the image located in front of the street sweeper car, perhaps left in on accident.

The facial features of one woman in the foreground also appear to show through the mask in an unrealistic way, as editors perhaps attempted to give it some natural contours. 

ORDERS FROM ABOVE

An article in the country’s premier print outlet Rodong Sinmun on February 18 said that health workers were working hard to “explain the methods of how to do things when asked why we must do something … and why it is required for citizens to wear masks when going about.”

The policy may have been delivered through different means to citizens before that date as well, and previous Rodong articles also alluded to “demands rising” for “all people to unconditionally wear a mask when going out.” 

February 18 also happens to be the first day there were no examples in the Rodong of people in public not wearing masks — a pattern seen emerging around the same time in other outlets as well.

North Korea initially sounded the alarm over internal measures to block COVID-19 when it began to roll out a tourism ban around January 20, before saying it was an “important political issue related to national survival” at the end of the month. 

State media then announced on February 5 that several factories had “established emergency measures for mask production and fully mobilized the internal reserves.”

The Rodong has from February 18 through today, March 6, continued to show all people wearing masks, except for those appearing in their own homes. 

Leader Kim Jong Un and dozens of officials at a recent Politburo meeting also were not wearing masks in state media coverage this week, though military men surrounding another mask-less Kim in other appearances were. 

Another top newspaper, the Minju Choson, appears to have begun the same strict policy on February 13, publishing many examples of apparently doctored images of people wearing masks.

Shots were also seemingly carefully selected to show only people’s backs in some cases — revealing a non-mask-wearer on a march to Mt. Paektu just two days into the new policy. 

In both print newspapers, many of the seemingly stock photos appeared to have likely been manipulated to show people wearing masks, while there were also plenty of legitimate examples of health workers and others at contemporary events wearing masks.

KCNA has also followed the policy since around the same time, but, while some photos appear to have been doctored, the outlet appears to have mostly stuck to uploading current events where people were legitimately wearing masks.

Korean Central Television (KCTV) is more likely to recycle old programs openly and so there does not appear to be an across-the-board policy to show all people wearing masks, though some patterns have emerged in the daily news broadcasts. 

NK News has also not found any examples of digital manipulation in terms of mask-wearing on KCTV during this period, with selective editing or omissions of shots of people’s faces likely employed instead.

While many people, including factory workers, citizens on the street, and even on the Paektu march, were shown wearing masks in KCTV news segments throughout February, some were still shown without masks through February 22.

The strict policy of showing all people in up-to-date footage wearing masks in public places appears to have begun on February 23, when interviewees on-screen by themselves were shown wearing masks for the first time. 

This policy on KCTV news also remained in effect as of March 6.

North Korean media outlets can be expected to maintain the policy, with the Rodong and Minju Choson likely continuing to photoshop masks onto stock images given their historical editing patterns, and KCNA and KCTV exercising omission and strict shooting rules to make sure the official policy line on masks is consistently delivered to the public.

Edited by Oliver Hotham