As South Korea’s Constitutional Court nears a verdict on President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment, social media posts have repeatedly shared a photo collage they falsely claim depicts Justice Moon Hyung-bae visiting North Korea. But the man in the pictures is South Korean academic and politician Kim Geun-shik at a summit in Pyongyang in 2007.<\/h3>\n
“Moon, the head of the Constitutional Court, is a pro-North centrepiece who visited the North and fell for its honey trap,” reads a Korean-language\u00a0Facebook post<\/a> published March 9, 2025.<\/p>\n It includes a collage showing a man meeting former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and posing for a photo with a woman wearing a dress typically worn on formal occasions in the North.<\/p>\n Text above the images claims they show Moon, whom the post accuses of being a “spy” who got “caught in North Korea’s honey trap”.<\/p>\n Screenshot of the false post on Facebook captured March 12, 2025<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Pro<\/span>-Yoon social media users widely shared<\/a> the same\u00a0collage<\/a> and claim\u00a0on Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n Moon is one of eight judges\u00a0adjudicating<\/a> whether to remove impeached President Yoon from office due to his failed imposition of martial law in December 2024.\u00a0A verdict is expected in mid-March (archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\n The Facebook posts say Moon — a frequent\u00a0disinformation<\/a> target — visited the North alongside South Korean actor\u00a0Moon Sung-geun<\/a>, a liberal activist close to opposition politicians (archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\n The image in the bottom-right of the collage shows a genuine profile photo<\/a> of the judge alongside comments he supposedly wrote on social media (archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\n However,\u00a0the rest of the pictures<\/span> feature a different person.<\/p>\n Reverse image searches<\/a> on Google <\/span>show the photos depict Kim Geun-shik, a\u00a0professor<\/a> of North Korean studies at the Kyungnam University Institute for Far Eastern Studies and a politician for the ruling People Power Party (archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\n He told AFP on March 11 that the photos in the collage “indeed do show myself visiting Pyongyang” and that the claims targeting Moon are “fake news.”<\/p>\n Kim <\/span>also refuted the claims in a March 12 Facebook post<\/a>, saying the photos feature him “during the 2007 inter-Korean summit” and that he became aware of the false posts after AFP’s inquiry (archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\n Kim visited North Korea’s capital as part of a South Korean government entourage for a\u00a0summit<\/a> between Kim\u00a0Jong Il and then-South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun from October 2-4, 2007 (archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\n A reverse image search on Google using the bottom-left photo found Kim Geun<\/span>-shik posted <\/span>it October 19, 2007 on an online forum<\/a> (archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\nMistaken identity<\/h3>\n