On 14th November 2012, The Onion, a top US-based satire website published a spoof report that it has named the Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-Un the "Sexiest Man Alive for 2012".
North Korea is China's staunch ally.
China totally missed the joke, and took the "news" in utmost seriousness, plastering the report on its front page, despite the fact that the original article lumps Kim in with such luminaries as Bashar al-Assad, Bernie Madoff, and the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski.
Of course it's been deleted from the website, but not before we take a screenshot
The People's Daily promptly pulled together a FIFTY-FIVE page long slideshow of Kim, one of which is the following.
I rescued this from Google cache before it's gone forever
The photo spread was re-posted and commented on more than 25,000 times on the Sina Weibo microblogging site.
The People's Daily website didn't mention in photo captions or text if it understood the satirical nature of The Onion, and an editor reached by telephone declined to comment. "This was just a normal report. We covered The Onion's report objectively and factually," he said.
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