Death by dogs disputed

The purging of Kim Jong Un's uncle, Jang Song Thaek, was shown on state television in North Korea. Photo / Getty Images

Rumours are flying around the internet that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered his uncle Jang Song Thaek and five aides executed by being stripped naked and placed in a cage with 120 starving attack dogs.

It sounds like something out of a Quentin Tarantino movie, reports the BBC.

The Singapore Straits Times quotes a story in the Chinese Government-controlled paper Wen Wei Po.

"The horrifying report vividly depicted the brutality of the young North Korean leader," Ching Cheong wrote in the Times. "The fact that it appeared in a Beijing-controlled newspaper showed that China no longer cares about its relations with the Kim regime."

Kim's uncle was the architect of closer economic ties between China and North Korea and there is thought to be a lot of anger about his death.

The Washington Post's Max Fisher writes a five-point takedown of the story that almost settles the question.

"The fact that the Western media have so widely accepted a story they would reject if it came out of any other country tells us a lot about how North Korea is covered," he writes.

Fisher also says that the Western media have an incentive to cover these kind of bizarre stories, as they generate attention.

"Crazy-sounding stories happen with some frequency in North Korea, where the Government has a well-earned reputation for taking political punishments to medieval extremes.

"But there are five big reasons that this story does not seem plausible."

He wrote that a study found that, out of Hong Kong's 21 newspapers, Wen Wei Po ranked 19th for credibility.

It would make things easier, writes [US] Slate magazine's Joshua Keating, if the North Korean Government commented publicly on such stories.

"So given the internet's insatiable appetite for weird North Korea stories, it becomes a bit of a free-for-all," he writes.

"The North Korean Government does so many bizarre things we can confirm that a few of these dubious rumours must surely be true, right?"