Joke about Kim runs as serious news item

BEIJING – The online version of China’s Communist Party newspaper has hailed a report by the Onion naming North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as the “Sexiest Man Alive” – not realizing it is satire.

The People’s Daily on Tuesday ran a 55-page photo spread on its website in a tribute to the round-faced leader, under the headline “North Korea’s top leader named The Onion’s Sexiest Man Alive for 2012.”

Quoting the Onion’s spoof report, the Chinese newspaper wrote, ‘’With his devastatingly handsome, round face, his boyish charm, and his strong, sturdy frame, this Pyongyang-bred heartthrob is every woman’s dream come true.”

It is not the first time a state-run Chinese newspaper has fallen for a fictional report by the just-for-laughs Onion.

In 2002, the Beijing Evening News, one of the capital city’s biggest tabloids at the time, published as news the fictional account that the U.S. Congress wanted a new building and that it might leave Washington. The Onion article was a spoof of the way sports teams threaten to leave cities in order to get new stadiums.