Kim Jong Un Looking At Things

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About

Kim Jong Un Looking At Things is a single topic blog that curates a series of official photographs of the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un taken during his routine inspections of various state-run businesses, facilities and institutions. It can be seen as the illegitimate successor to the viral Tumblr blog Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things, which features similar propaganda of the late North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il taken during the reign before his death in December 2011.

Origin

The Tumblr blog Kim Jong Un Looking At Things^[1] was launched by an anonymous Tumblr blogger on December 18th, 2011, the same day North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) announced that its leader Kim Jong-Il had died from a massive heart attack, with a photograph of the stern looking Successor in a post titled "looking at YOU," which gained more than 800 notes.

Predecessor

Kim Jong Il Looking At Things^[2] was launched by Portuguese art director creator João Rocha on October 6th, 2010. All of the original photographs were taken and published by KCNA, North Korea's propaganda wing mainly used to promote Kim Jong Il's cult of personality and the state's official Juche^[2] ideology. Even after the death of Kim in December 2011, the blog continued to run photographs of the late dictator looking at things for another year.

Spread

As the international media quickly shifted its focus towards Kim's relatively unknown son and successor-to-be, the Internet ran awash with parodies, such as Hungry Kim Jong Un, a notable image macro series largely based on official KCNA photographs of Kim inspecting various household items on similar "on-the-spot guidance" trips during the grooming period leading up to his father's death.

On the following day, at least two other blogs with the identical concept were launched, one at the now-defunct photo-sharing platform Posterous^[21] and another at Wordpress under the domain KimJongUnLookingAtThings.com^[22], the latter of which continued to run its own series and a Facebook page^[6] until October 2014. The blog has been also mentioned on dozens of other online discussion forums and internet humor sites, including NeoGAF^[7], Metafilter,^[10] Reddit^[14]^[15], 9GAG^[18] and Ranker,^[19] as well as on Twitter^[20] and Facebook.

News Media Coverage

By December 20th, 2011, the arrival of the Tumblr successor to Kim Jong-Il Looking At Things had been reported on by The Daily Dot,^[3] Mashable ^[5] and TIME magazine,^[4] followed by additional coverage from NBC News,^[8] Kotaku,^[9] The Atlantic^[12] and BuzzFeed ^[11] between January and February 2012.