But the weirdest North Korea 'shops have to be the continued manipulation of Kim Jong-un's ears. This is something I never noticed until Dave Schmerler, an analyst at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, tweeted a photo of Kim's left ear. There's an obvious growth or lesion on his earlobe, but we'll get to that later.

Photoshop is a critical part of North Korea's propaganda machine. The brutal dictatorship, led by Kim Jong-un, would like us to believe a lot of things that just aren't true. That it has ballistic missile submarines , hovercraft , and even happy, well-fed citizens —all the product of shitty photo editing, which is partly why we know they're fake.

Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, responded to Schmerler, noting that North Korea has made a habit out of doctoring Kim's ears. I was intrigued.

Both Schmerler and Lewis were kind enough to humor my burgeoning obsession with Kim's ears. Could I see some examples? How do you know they've been altered? What is North Korea trying to hide?

"Over the past few years, we noticed that Kim Jong-un's ears often appear to have been altered along with other aspects of his appearance. We think these are just cosmetic alterations—changes to help Kim look a bit more handsome than he is in real life, much like a wedding photographer might make. He doesn't like his ears, or so it seems," Lewis told me in an email.

Using a forensic software called "Tungstène," researchers can spot digital alterations ("mathematical artifacts in the image file," Lewis said) in North Korea-produced photos. Tungstène employs a series of filters to reveal anomalies that might be lurking in seemingly virgin images. One of these filters lets analysts map chrominance noise, or color fluctuations, and is especially helpful when looking for retouching. Other filters show cloned pixels, compression, or sharpness. In some instances experts can even tell that photos have been opened and saved in Photoshop.