The US has a long history of employing atrocity propaganda. One of the earliest and most well-known instances was the claim that Spanish saboteurs attacked and sunk the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898. Although there was no evidence to substantiate the claim, the story was widely circulated and used to rally support for the war with Spain. These types of fabricated and sensationalized stories were commonly published in newspapers owned by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. This form of journalism became known as "Yellow Journalism." The US would continue to develop their systems and methods to produce and disseminate propaganda throughout WWI. Following the 1917 revolution in Russia, the Bolsheviks became a primary target of imperialist atrocity propaganda campaigns. Most of the alleged atrocities have been debunked through the declassification of Soviet archives, but the damage was already done. Once propaganda is disseminated, it can persist despite the facts. ...
We’ve all seen the headlines: “Kim Jong Un executes this official,” “Kim Jong Un purges that minister,” and whatever else the Western media can squeeze out. According to outlets like Radio Free Asia, simply existing inside the Workers’ Party of Korea or the government is a death sentence waiting to happen. Kim Jong Un is supposedly wiping people out left and right for the smallest imaginable reasons. The sources for these claims are always unverifiable and dubious. South Korean intelligence will make an assertion and cite some “unknown source in Pyongyang,” then the story gets picked up by Western media and spreads like wildfire. However, there is a noticeable trend behind these sensationalist headlines: many people who were claimed to have been executed by Kim Jong Un have apparently risen from the dead. Hyon Song-wol Take pop star Hyon Song-wol for example. In 2013, South Korean media reported that a group of pop stars had been mass executed by a machine gun wielding firing squad, wi...