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No, North Korean Media Is Not Telling Its People They're In The World Cup Final

Sorry everyone.

This video, posted two days ago, appears to be a North Korean news report claiming the country has made the World Cup final.

View this video on YouTube

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A whole load of news sites have reported that the video is an official North Korean state broadcast.

However...

View this video on YouTube

For a start, as this report shows, North Koreans are not only aware that their team didn't make the World Cup; they can even watch it on TV. In 2010 a deal was announced by the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union which allowed the country to broadcast World Cup matches.

The television channel earlier covered the opening ceremony of the Brazil World Cup, also about a day later, before broadcasting the opening match between Brazil and Croatia as well as games between Chile and Australia, Mexico and Cameroon as well as between Spain and the Netherlands.The North Korean TV footage showed that Pyongyang produced the films by taping what a South Korean broadcaster had aired, with the name of the South Korean company blurred on the screen.

There have also been questions raised about the newscaster's dialect and the fact that the voiceover doesn't match her lips.

And as one poster on this thread points out: "The North Korean national team is fairly competitive in the AFC, particularly competitive against the South Korean and Japanese teams. As a result, the state media reports on their team a lot and the popularity of football is high among the population. They even recently built the Pyongyang International Football School...where they hope to attract internationals."

It's not the first time the media has been duped by a spoof news report about the country.

A story earlier this year that Kim Jong-un had fed his uncle to 120 wild dogs turned out to be false.