Photoshop?

Now that you show this close up, notice the missing shadow between his legs.

I love how North Korea is ran by a dead guy that is running it on behalf of his dead father.

And they say America has issues!

Does he normally cast a shadow?

Even if this freak dies, there are many others to take his place. Just like Castro.

Rule number one: hire someone with 1337 Photoshop skills. Reminds me of the cloned Iranian missile photo.

@Dave: lol

Hooper: Fortunately we can always make more bullets :-)

This past week Shorpy.com ran another "recent pic" of Kim meeting with other commie brass. Today's picture is GOOD photoshopping by comparison. In the one I refer to, the entire group looks to be hovering over the concrete on which they are "standing" -- it looked like they were pasted right on like Colorforms.

How dare you Americans question our Glorious Leader's health and well-being? He lives on and as does the glory of North Korea!

This could be something entirely innocuous, such as the white barrier behind him being dirty, so it was cleaned up in Photoshop. It would explain the odd shadow, the lack of a black horizontal line and the "mismatched" blue line (a section that was cut out and left empty).

I want to see the full-size version of the entire photo. It looks like the shadows behind every soldier's leg is doing something different... providing total shadow, half shadow, etc. The shadow two soldiers to the right has a much straighter shadow than the two tilted ones next to Kim Il Jong.

My guess: Photoshop work was done to present a more-perfect image, but it's not necessarily evidence his entire body was Photshopped into the image. The shadows on his own clothing caused by ripples in the garment appear similar to those of the men around him.

Seriously, they don't have hundreds of images of their leader standing in front of soldiers? I'd be surprised if they needed to doctor such an ordinary image.

Kim Jong Il can't be dead, he's the glorious leader of the triumphant and eternal Korean people who shall continue to receive his blessings until time eternal.

Your corrupt, capitalist analysis of this photo only shows your disloyalty to our honored leader and will surely result in your summary execution.

oh. You just sentenced a room full of North Korean digital artists to death by starving.
Oh no wait.. that's their benefits package!

Yeah scotty that's exactly what I was thinking. Someone's gonna get shot for this!

Well, my guess is that the photoshop team is gonna be getting the barrel end of a gun very soon. Yeesh!

Who photoshopped Davy Crocket coonskin hat on the general?

Communists are not what they used to be....

Wow. That's pretty crazy.

Something fishy is going on here. I was looking for a larger version of this photo on the Google, and found three photos of pretty much the same scene, but with different people.

Compare the photo above with the one from today's NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/world/asia/07kim.html?scp=3&sq=Kim%20Jong%20Il&st=cse). Clearly not the same group of soldiers around him. Also notice that the leg shadow is what you'd expect. That horizontal line? Missing from this photo too.

But...compare again with the photo found here http://www.lindsayfincher.com/news/kim_jong_il.jpg.
"Correct" shadows, horizontal line in place. Also different body shadows, indicating a different time of day. Finally, he appears to be wearing brown shoes as opposed to black shoes as above (but that could be a trick of the light).

What does it all mean? At the very least, it means that Kim Jog Il likes to get his photo taken in front of groups of soldiers. But I don't understand why the horizontal line is missing from some shots.
So... were the pictures taken on the same day? If so, why the different color shoes, and what about that pesky horizontal line?
Different day? More plausible but, again, what's with the horizontal line?

Any one have any ideas?

Every photo they've released smells of photoshop. I must commend them on their spectacular attention to lighting though. That's usually the thing that everyone forgets.

Just makes it all the more bizarre when they release a photo with other glaring errors.

I know for a fact that I have seen that same image of Kim in another photo shoot that ran in the times magazine two or so years ago, damned If I can find a link though. It looks like they superimposed his image from two years ago on the new roster of troops.

(Not the image i saw but in the same photo set for sure)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,232617,00.html

KIM IL SUNG LIVE TO RIPE OLD AGE OF 82.

KIM JONG IL IS IN TIPTOP HEALTH, HAVE 15-20 MORE YEARS OF HAPPYHAPPYJOYJOY.

KIM DIVE NUDE AT 500 AM IN AMNOK RIVER, TO PROV HIS VITILITY. TEMPATURE LOW AS 4 DEGREE CENTIGRADE. WHO OF YOU CAN DO THE SAME

So the next guy in line is Kim Dive Nude? Must be a distant cousin or something.

Why would htey need to shop it? Just use a stand-in.

Why do people continue calling North Korea communist? It's a dictatorship that wishes it was communist.

Some poor North Korean computer scientist is getting is balls electrocuted right now. I hope the newspaper is happy.

AC, any communist country has been a dictatorship so far.

There never has been a true communist/socialist country...

Photoshop team? They probably have a classroom of 5th graders chained to a drafting table.

Its not a bad job considering it was made with paste, a dull piece of broken glass, human tears, and a bic pen.

Can't be Photoshopped.......they don't have electricity.

(hmmm, do they have hand-cranked laptops in NK???)

The "Axis of Evil" can't even Photoshop a picture without signaling utter incompetence, and I'm supposed to be worried about their military capabilities?

What, are they going to make a nuke out of Windex and wrapping paper tubes?

I saw the pic on shorpy too, and they mentioned some pictures released a few weeks ago that show him in front of nice green foliage that doesn't fit the season. Hmmmm, don't think he's exactly up and about.

Any bet Kim got a horde of perfect look-alikes. Shopping this images does not make sense other than "improving" it.

he for sure had a stroke and had advanced brain surgurey. He's a vegetable in a bunker.

I think I've found the source picture at Darkroastedblend.
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_hVOW2U7K4-M/SQ1o_k5hGmI/AAAAAAAAjwk/yHh269HUnXg/s1600-h/y45y4yhfthjf.jpg

Woa......I"m not sure what this means for the world, but never thought about how technology could be used in such a manner. Yikes.

Just recently Kim has come out in a new video and has proved himself alive.

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=235&sid=6104739

Best link I could come up with in the short time I have atm. He looks old and sick. But this should answer plenty of your questions