A little over a week ago, North Korea claimed to have successfully launched a ballistic missile from an undersea submarine. Such a launch would have been a major step forward for the hermit country, if it had actually happened. But according to German aerospace experts, the photos supposedly proving North Korea’s technological prowess only proved that, once again, North Korea is shit at Photoshop.

As Markus Schiller and Robert Schmucker, of Schmucker Technologie, told Reuters, “Considering the track record of North Korean deceptions, it seems sensible to assume that any North Korean SLBM [submarine-launched ballistic missile] capability is still a very long time in the future, if it will ever surface.”

That didn’t stop everyone’s favorite little warmongering-dictatorship-that-could from reaching for the stars in quite a few ways. For example: The images of the launch shown on state TV depicted a huge column of smoke:

But that same smoke column was notably absent from the photo distributed by North Korea’s state news network:

What the column-less photo lacked in smoke, it made up for with weird, poorly placed ocean smudges. That reddish patch of water you see to the left of the missile? That’s supposed to be the rocket’s reflection.

So while the addition of submarine-launched ballistics missile would certainly give North Korea some troubling leverage, perhaps they should focus on honing their ‘shop skills for the time being.

[Images via AP/ht The Telegraph]