In one of the most brilliant and funny pieces of satire I’ve read in some time, Irish writer and owner of the website Waterford Whispers News, Colm Williamson really had my sides splitting when I read the piece, “North Korea Lands First Ever Man On The Sun, Confirms Central News Agency” last week.

The story is about a teen astronaut named Hung Il Gong who took off for a 18 hour round trip from the Hermit Kingdom to that giant, incredibly hot star that lights up our days in a specially designed rocket ship.

The ship, apparently a super fast rocket arrived on the Sun after a four hour trip. Impressive!.

Even more impressive, Hung was scheduled to arrive back from his rendezvous to the Sun later the same evening, as Williamson writes:

“We are very delighted to announce a successful mission to put a man on the sun.” a North Korean central news anchor man said on a live broadcast earlier. “North Korea has beaten every other country in the world to the sun. Hung Il Gong is a hero and deserves a hero’s welcome when he returns home later this evening.” The specially trained astronaut is expected to return back to earth at 9pm tonight, where he will meet his uncle and supreme leader Kim Jong-un. It is understood that the 17-year-old ‘space explorer’ traveled at night to avoid being engulfed by the suns rays, and that this genius approach has brought the soviet state to the top of the global space rankings. While on the sun, Mr. Hung collected sun spot samples to bring back to his supreme leader as a present. The 18 hour mission is already being called the ‘greatest human achievement of our time’ by the North Korean central news agency.

“traveled at night to avoid being engulfed by the suns rays”?! It doesn’t get any better than that. As one person commented on the original article, “Wow going at night…NASA would never have thought of that…..”

Apparently, but it’s not clear, Williamson may have got the idea from a story published in Investor’s Business Daily last Spring, which reported “North Korea’s latest little Kim has proudly announced that his hermit kingdom will soon launch a manned mission to the Sun.”

And here’s the kicker….several news outlets pick up the hilarious satire as news, well sorta.

The Irish website, The Journal writes, “Amongst the outlets taken in by the tale were conservative news site the Canada Free Press, technology site Tweaktown and Arizona radio station K-TAR.

“It should be noted that the sites aren’t necessarily falling for what’s described in the article as the ‘official state news agency’ line in the ‘report’ — rather, they’re reporting on the fact that the report was reported by the official North Korean state news agency.”

The comments on Williamson’s piece are nearly as funny as the satire itself:

“I hope he brought sun tan lotion with him! :-)”

“Damn… It takes 3 days for today’s spaceship to travel to the moon…, It takes 8 minutes for light to travel from the Sun to reach Earth…, Light speed = 300,000 km/second, It takes 1 day for regular spaceship to reach the sun that departed at NIGHT, which means while North Korea isn’t facing the Sun…

“North Korea, sir… you are a legend. I bet you can reach Andromeda Galaxy within a week.”

and finally, the question we all have in mind– “So… Did they discovered any life there?”

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