APhotoshopped family photo featuring a North Korean soldier who was deployed to Russia and died in the Ukraine war along with the popular South Korean 'dog dying' meme has been discovered.
NK News, a U.S.-based North Korean media outlet, reported on the 23rd (local time) that a family photo appears in images of North Korean military items provided by a Ukrainian special unit, stating, "The photo digitally combines a dog resembling the meme 'dog dying,' which was popular in South Korean internet communities in the 2000s, with a flower garden landscape."
A photo, believed to have been taken on Aug. 15 of last year, shows five individuals standing, including a young man in military uniform, with the caption “It will be a beautiful memory!” written at the bottom. To the right of this caption, a dog can be seen, eyes closed and mouth covered with its paw, smiling.
This dog included in the photo through Photoshop resembles the 'dog dying' meme, which first appeared on the internet community DC Inside in 2002 and remained popular for a long time.
Rose, who worked as a wedding photo editor before defecting in 2019, noted that such photos typically include decorative images or Hangul captions, stating, "This soldier's photo seems to be genuine."
However, it is presumed that the photo editor was not aware that the dog was a meme popular in South Korea. He explained that similar images are commonly used in studios in North Korea, often brought from China.
Park Cheol-hoon, a defector in his 30s, estimated that the owner of the photo, which uses Photoshop, likely comes from a middle-class background or higher, as photo editing in North Korea is perceived as an expensive undertaking. This suggests that the deployment to Russia was not limited to the lower class in North Korea.
NK News pointed out that using the 'dog dying' meme by photo editors could violate North Korean laws prohibiting the spread of South Korean culture. The recently enacted Pyongyang Cultural Protection Law states that those who produce materials such as drawings or photos using South Korean styles, language, or fonts could face a minimum of six years of re-education labor.