Reports that Kim Jong Un’s formerly powerful uncle was executed by being fed to a pack of starving dogs originated from a satirical article on a Chinese microblogging website, according to Reuters. Reports surfaced last week claiming that Jang Song Thaek, Kim’s uncle, was stripped naked and fed to 120 dogs along with five of his aides as North Korean officials watched.
When Kim purged his uncle in December, North Korea did not release details about how Jang was killed. Then, on December 11, the Chinese website Tencent Weibo published a satirical post saying that Jang and his aides were killed by dogs.
This post was then cited by Hong Kong’s Wen Wei Po newspaper, which, twelve days later, was picked up by the Straits Times of Singapore and from there spread to U.S. and European media.