The photo of North Korea's Kim Jong-un, where he was seen watching the launch of his military's submarine missiles, has been photoshopped, according to experts.
A German aerospace specialist confirms the manipulation, supporting a statement by a top U.S. official, who said that the whole thing is just one big piece of propaganda.
"They have not gotten as far as their clever video editors and spinmeisters would have us believe," said U.S. Admiral James Winnefeld during a conference in Washington on Tuesday, according to NBC News.
On May 9, North Korea revealed that it was able to successfully facilitate underwater tests of its submarine missile launch with a photo to show that it happened. This was shown on North Korea's state television, with the photo depicting that the missile was flying away from the submarine after the launch, leaving a trail of white smoke in its path.
But Winnefeld said, Pyongyang still has "many years" to complete its development of its "submarine-launched ballistic missiles," according to Reuters.
German experts backed Winnefeld's claims, saying that North Korea has a "track record for deception," noting incidents when the country released fake photos of their military power back in 2012 and 2013.
"It seems sensible to assume that any North Korean SLBM [submarine-launched ballistic missile] capability is still a very long time in the future, if it will ever surface," said Schmucker Technologies experts, Markus Schiller and Robert Schmucker, in the Reuters report.
They have obtained a photo, however, which showed that the trail of smoke was not present, thus suggesting that there were two different photos of the incident. They believe that the missiles were launched using a submerged barged, instead of a submarine, as also studied by sites like 38north.org and armscontrolwonk.com, as reported by MSN.
But a military official from Korea said, "We haven't changed our stance that the rocket was fired from a submarine and flew about 150 meters out of the water," in the same MSN report.
