The comments on that story make me sad for humanity.
Even with Kim Jong Il out of the picture, I doubt that life in N. Korea will reach a real semblance of sanity any time soon. This type of retouching is probably just ingrained in the way they deal with the media. Doing things any other way just may not occur to them as a viable option.
Totalitarian governments were doing this kind of photo editing long before the days of PhotoShop. There's a wonderful story on the first page of Milan Kundera's "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting", which reads as follows:
In February 1948, Communist leader Klement Gottwald stepped out on the balcony of a Baroque palace in Prague to address the hundreds of thousands of citizens packed into Old Town Square. It was a crucial moment in Czech history - a fateful moment of the kind that occurs once or twice in a millennium.
Gottwald was flanked by his comrades, with Clementis standing next to him. There were snow flurries, it was cold, and Gottwald was bareheaded. The solicitous Clementis took off his fur hat and set it on Gottwald's head.
The Party propaganda section put out hundreds of thousands of copies of the photograph taken on that balcony with Gottwald, a fur cap on his head and comrades at his side, speaking to the nation. On that balcony the history of Communist Czechoslovakia was born. Every child knew the photograph from posters, schoolbooks, and museums.
Four years later, Clementis was charged with treason and hanged. The propaganda section immediately airbrushed him from history and, obviously, from all photographs. Ever since, Gottwald has stood on that balcony alone. Where Clementis once stood, there is only bare palace wall. All that remains of Clementis is the cap on Gottwald's head.'
Even with Kim Jong Il out of the picture, I doubt that life in N. Korea will reach a real semblance of sanity any time soon. This type of retouching is probably just ingrained in the way they deal with the media. Doing things any other way just may not occur to them as a viable option.