Several years ago, Russian media wrote about an incredible event: supposedly the DPRK reported that its astronaut had successfully landed on the Sun and then returned home. We verified whether North Korean officials actually made such statements.

The story became most widespread in November 2014. Usually it looked something like this:

“Live on a North Korean TV channel, a news presenter said that a 17-year-old astronaut from the DPRK named Hung Il Hong flew to the Sun on a specially designed rocket ship at 3 a.m., reached his destination in four hours and returned home in the evening. According to the presenter, the journey took place at night to save the pilot from the destructive temperature of the star, and the entire mission took about 18 hours. Upon arrival, the astronaut was met by Kim Jong-un himself, to whom the hero presented samples of sunspots.”

For example, similar texts can be found on such resources as "Komsomolskaya Pravda" And "Dni.ru". Even about the flight told Ivan Urgant in his evening show, and Vladimir Solovyov shared story on my Twitter. The story of the landing on the Sun can be found even a few years later - it is a long time ago became a meme.

There is no need to discuss the impossibility and absurdity of such a cosmic achievement due to the temperature of the Sun and the distance between the Earth and the main star of our Galaxy, because the DPRK did not declare anything like that - this is just satirical news. Moreover, the media made additional mistakes.

Thus, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported that the flight allegedly took place on November 7, and referred to the website Tweaktown, where it was actually written about the statement of the North Korean channel, only the news was published there on January 22.

And on Tweaktown, an Irish resource is indicated as the primary source Waterford Whispers News, in the description of which notedthat this is a satirical site with made-up stories.

Image: still from the film “Inferno” (2007)