North Korea 'digitally altered' marine landings photograph?

LONDON: Amid rising tension in the Korean peninsula, North Korea doctored a photograph of a recent military exercise as part of its increasingly aggressive propaganda, according to media reports.

Experts are fairly certain that an image released by North Korea's state-run KCNA news agency showing a military exercise taking place on North Korea's east coast on March 25 was actually doctored.

"Excessive digital alteration" had taken place to show double the number of hovercrafts carrying out landing and anti-landing drills on a snow covered beach than that were actually present, The Telegraph reported.

The alleged doctoring was first spotted by Alan Taylor of the US website 'The Atlantic', the report said.

News agencies, which had picked up the image from North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), eventually killed the distribution of the photograph.

Recently, The Kim Jong-un led regime severed a military hotline with South Korea - the third link to be cut in as many weeks. The hotline is used to communicate as hundreds of workers travel back and forth at an industrial complex jointly established as a showcase of cooperation between the North and the South.

The latest propaganda campaign by North Korea started as a response to UN sanctions punishing it for a nuclear test in mid-February and was further fuelled by a joint military drill by the US and South Korea in the weeks that followed.