Footage of North Korean artillery outside Starbucks in South Korea goes viral
Photos and videos showing North Korean soldiers and artillery positioned outside a Starbucks in South Korea have recently gone viral online.
However, the dramatic scenes are suspected to have been manipulated using artificial intelligence (AI).
The initial image posted reportedly used a real image of North Korean military activity, but the soldiers and weapons were made to appear much closer to the South than they actually are.
Viral image shows artillery outside Starbucks
According to ChosunBiz, the first image was posted on Monday (26 Oct) in an online community.
The post was titled “Current status of Gimpo Aegibong Starbucks”.
The photo showed customers sitting inside the cafe while soldiers stood beside a large self-propelled artillery piece across the river outside.
Source: Weekly Kyunghyang
In the post, the original poster (OP) claimed that North Korea’s deployment of 122mm self-propelled artillery had given the branch a new “North Korean artillery view”.
Other altered images and videos also began circulating online.
According to Korea Herald, some of these showed North Korean soldiers looking towards South Korea through binoculars and pointing across the border.
North Korean artillery is real, but Starbucks image is not
North Korean artillery had indeed been photographed in the area.
A fact-check by Weekly Kyunghyang found that the military scene in the viral Starbucks image matched a Yonhap News Agency photograph taken on 25 Oct from Aegibong Observatory.
Source: Yonhap News Agency
The original photo showed a 122mm self-propelled artillery near the coast of Kaepung County, North Korea, with soldiers and red flags nearby.
However, the viral image combined the genuine photograph of North Korean military equipment and personnel with a view from inside the Aegibong Starbucks outlet.
This created the illusion that the artillery was positioned not too far from the cafe.
The soldiers’ positions, artillery, flags, vegetation, fences, and other details also matched the original Yonhap photograph.
Actual distance is around 1.4km
The Starbucks outlet in question opened on the second floor of Aegibong Peace Ecological Park’s observatory in Gimpo in November 2024.
Source: Google Maps
The site sits about 1.4km from North Korea’s Kaepung County, making it one of South Korea’s closest public vantage points of the North.
From the cafe, visitors can see North Korean villages, fields, and mountains across the river.
Source: Google Maps
However, the Starbucks outlet’s actual distance to North Korean soil means soldiers and military equipment would not appear as close to the cafe windows as depicted in the viral image.
Reports noted that high-powered binoculars, telescopes, or telephoto camera equipment are generally needed to see such details clearly.
Evidence of GenAI allegedly found in viral photo
Furthermore, Weekly Kyunghyang reported that there is evidence suggesting the viral image was produced using generative AI.
OpenAI image source verification results posted online allegedly revealed that the image was “generated by an OpenAI tool”.
Source: YTN
This means that it found a “SynthID”, a digital watermark in AI-generated content, in the image.
If this invisible watermark is indeed in the original file, it means it’s very likely that OpenAI’s tools were used in composing the image.
Altered footage sparks concerns amid border tensions
The manipulated content surfaced during heightened inter-Korean border tensions following last month’s explosion of two North Korean landmines in the Demilitarised Zone.
Yang Uk, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, warned that such misleading imagery could affect financial markets and distort perceptions of the security situation on the Korean Peninsula.
Also read: Starbucks opens branch in South Korea with view of North Korean village
Starbucks opens branch in South Korea with view of North Korean village
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Featured image adapted from Weekly Kyunghyang and Yonhap News Agency.
