In July 2014, news agencies around the world circulated footage of a North Korean TV presenter reporting on the successes of the DPRK team at the World Cup in Brazil. We checked whether this really happened.

To be precise, there were two videos. On first The presenter of the state TV channel talked about the victories of the North Koreans in their group over the national teams of Japan, the USA and China, which ensured the team's access to the playoffs. The report also included footage of Brazilian fans greeting the great leader Kim Jong-un, who was allegedly shown on the big screen on Copacabana beach. On the second video, which spread a little later, the same girl enthusiastically reported that the DPRK team had won the final of the tournament over the hosts, the Brazilians, having previously knocked out the teams of Portugal (a mirror revenge for the 0:7 four years ago), Germany and, most importantly, South Korea.

The DPRK national football team cannot boast of a rich history. Until 2014, she reached the finals of the World Cup only twice, and did not qualify for Brazil at all. However, given the image that the world has of North Korean propaganda, it was not difficult to believe in such a domestic fake. And they did this as authoritative foreign media (CBS, Bleacher Report, Mirror), and Russian ("Kommersant", NTV, "RIA Novosti", Russia Today, And "Echo of Moscow"). Journalists around the world used this news as further evidence of the transformation of an Asian nuclear power into a kind of Oceania from the novel “1984.”

Reddit readers were among the first to notice the catch. Some user from South Korea paid attention to the fact that the presenter’s lip movements do not correspond to the spoken words, and the voiceover does not very successfully imitate the North Korean accent. Soon we managed to find others records with this TV presenter - the girl has a completely different voice in them.

In addition, it turned out that the DPRK did not particularly hide the real news from Brazil. You didn't have to subscribe to cable or even own a TV to watch the championship matches - games showed right on the streets. Including a match with the participation of the team of the ideological enemy - South Korea. The North Koreans, of course, knew about the absence of their players at the World Cup.

2014 Residents of Pyongyang watch the match between South Korea and Russia

As for the two sensational videos, they appeared on the YouTube channel Korea News Backup July 12 and 16, 2014, respectively. The authors of successful parodies, apparently, were from South Korea. This is noticeable, for example, in the word hwaiting! - wish of good luck, used purely southern neighbors and derived from the English fighting.

It should be noted that both previous participations of the DPRK national team in the final stage of the World Championships became the reason for sensational headlines. In 1966, in England, the team knocked out the two-time world champions Italians, and in the quarterfinals against the Portuguese they led 3:0, but managed to lose. A little later, world newspapers wrote that the entire team went to a concentration camp “for violating the regime” (even executions were mentioned), and national hero Park Doo-ik, who scored the winning goal against Italy, was a little more fortunate: he was sent to work as a lumberjack. This version is partially confirmed in the book by Kang Chol Kwan and Pierre Rigoulot "Aquariums of Pyongyang", published in 2000 and telling about the life of prisoners of the North Korean Gulag. However, the book is based on memories, and there are not very many other facts in favor of the legend. Shortly after the book's publication, British film director Daniel Gordon visited the DPRK and met with key figures from the 1966 team: the head coach, goalkeeper, captain (allegedly met by the book's author in a concentration camp) and the aforementioned Park Doo-ik. The visit resulted in Gordon's documentary "Game of a Lifetime", in which the football players deny rumors of punishment and they say that they were greeted as heroes in their homeland. However, taking into account all the circumstances of organizing the stay of foreigners in the DPRK, we are not completely confident that this harsh legend is groundless.

Almost half a century passed, and in 2010 the DPRK team finally made it to the World Cup again. And in the first match she gave battle to the Brazilians, losing only 1:2. A few days later appeared on YouTube "North Korean TV report" about the victory over the South Americans with a score of 1:0 and the proclamation of the DPRK team as world football champions. In fact, although the state channel showed the match only in recording (a common practice for the country), it was shown in full, and such a defeat was received with enthusiasm in the country. Moreover, after an impressive start, the functionaries became bolder and decided to broadcast the next match live for the first time - against the Portuguese. The risky step turned into a disaster - the DPRK team was destroyed with a score of 0:7 in front of the entire nation. After that they appeared messages that the team's head coach Kim Jong Hoon was sent to a concentration camp, and all the players were reprimanded. FIFA was forced to conduct its own investigation into the incident, which rolled up after assurances from the North Korean side that no measures were taken against participants in the 2010 World Cup.

Thus, the fakes of “North Korean television” about the results of the local team at the World Championships in South Africa and Brazil are really nothing more than fakes, but they were created by foreigners in order to parody this very television or discredit it.