North Korea has been caught releasing doctored photographs of military personel heading into battle, by doubling the number of hovercrafts in a military exercise. North Korean military propaganda has been ratcheted up as tensions with South Korea reach breaking point.

The picture above shows multiple vessels, but all have a distinctive shine on the front, with each hovercraft throwing up spray that has clumsily been altered for each hovercraft. Despite the crudity of these fakes, Eric Baradat, an Agence France Presse photo editor said that North Koreans are becoming more skilled with their photo manipulation techniques.

AP picked up the photograph from North Korea’s Central news Agency (KCNA), but stopped the distribution of the photograph due to “excessive digital alteration.”

Baradat said “various anomolies” were visible despite North Korea’s ever growing excellence at fakery. Baradat said:

Usually a very simple examination with our software dismisses KCNA pictures but they tend to be better with Photoshop recently.

Last week the United States and South Korea signed a joint pact agreeing to provide joint military response to any level of provocation by North Korea.

Cho Han-Bum, analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification said:

They are upping the rhetorical ante in every possible way, but the international community is not reacting as it had hoped.

[Source: The Age]