The photograph was considered a journalistic coup, a recent image of the elusive 26-year-old son of North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, reportedly named the next leader of the state.

The snapshot released by a Tokyo television station purportedly showed an adult Kim Jong Un — whose last known photo was taken at age 12 — as a spitting image of his notorious father, right down to the moon face, coiffed hair and oversized sunglasses.

Trouble was, it wasn’t the younger Kim at all, but a pudgy 40-year-old South Korean construction worker who also operates a website for fortune-tellers.

“I’m speechless,” Bae Seok-bum told South Korea’s Yonhap news service. “I only uploaded the picture to share with the members of my community how similar my face was to that of Kim Jong Il.”

The photo has quickly become an Internet sensation in Japan, South Korea and even China.

Kim Jong Un is the youngest and favourite of three sons of Kim Jong Il. Little is known about the young man. But a report by Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Inter-Korean Relations Studies Program at the Sejong Institute near Seoul, says he suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes and speaks English.

Now Bae has been mistakenly linked to the infamous ruling family. He’s being hounded by reporters.

The snapshot of him earned him a nickname among friends: “General Secretary Kim Jong Il.”

During a broadcast on Wednesday, Japan’s TV Asahi said the station had received information from a source who had met the younger Kim. It said the source told it that the authenticity of the photo was “90 per cent.”

... contd.