The New York Times reported Tuesday that a statement from a parody North Korea Twitter account was an actual statement from the North Korean government.
The Times story on a joint military exercise between the United States and South Korea noted that "the North Korean government belittled the joint exercise as 'demonstrating near total ignorance of ballistic science.'"
But that statement came from the parody @DPRK_News account, in what was evidently a satirical tweet.
Imbecilic Americans drunkenly fire missiles into East Sea of Korea, demonstrating near total ignorance of ballistic science. pic.twitter.com/Yye1Kksvh7
— DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) July 4, 2017
The piece has since been updated with a correction. "Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article attributed incorrectly a Twitter statement to the North Korean government," it read.
"The North Korean government did not belittle a joint American-South Korean military exercise as 'demonstrating near total ignorance of ballistic science,' that statement was from the DPRK News Service, a parody Twitter account," the Times admitted.
In response to the snafu, the DPRK News account had fun at the Times' expense.
Ministry of Culture bans New York Times.
— DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) July 5, 2017
The Times is in good company. USA Today fell for the account in March, erroneously reporting that the North Korean government called Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) an "infantile lunatic angrily soiling himself."