Did North-Korean leader Kim Jong Un offer to mediate between the U.S. and Canada after the recent spat at the G-7 Summit where President Trump accused Canada of unfair trade practices? No, that's not true: the story was made up by a satirical website, it is not real.
The story originated from an article published by The Borowitz Report on June 11, 2018 titled "Kim Jong Un Offers to Host Peace Talks Between United States and Canada" (archived here) which opened:
SINGAPORE (The Borowitz Report)--One day before his summit with Donald J. Trump, the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un, has offered to host peace talks between the United States and Canada.
Speaking to reporters at his hotel in Singapore, Kim said that the rising tensions between the North American neighbors were posing an "intolerable threat to world peace."
In addition to offering to host U.S.-Canada talks in Pyongyang, Kim urged the immediate creation of a demilitarized zone along the border separating the two hostile nations.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:
Kim Jong Un Offers to Host Peace Talks Between United States and Canada
In addition to offering to host U.S.-Canada talks in Pyongyang, Kim urged the immediate creation of a demilitarized zone along the border separating the two hostile nations.
The story actually appeared in the satire column of The New Yorker ("The Borowitz Report" by Andy Borowitz) which was acquired in 2012 by the magazine. Although the section with the columns and all the articles in it are clearly marked as satire the stories frequently get confused for real news by people who only see the title and summary on social media and who assume it must be real because the link goes to the actual website of The New Yorker. To them it would look somewhat like this, with an easy to miss "Not the news" being the only indication it is not real:
In part to combat this the main page of The Borowitz Report comes with a clear heading that simply states:
Satire from the Borowitz Report
To be safe, whenever you see a link that goes to any article on the "newyorker.com" website, always check if the rest of the link says "/humor/borowitz-report/" somewhere. If it does, don't believe a thing you read...
We wrote about newyorker.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:
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