I’m sceptical.
Aside from this report, the only others I’ve found that match it are those which have repeated it: conservative sites, blogs, and so forth.
Other reports I’ve seen tie-in the “triplet collecting” (also quads) with the on-going famine in North Korea.
World Vision visited Kangwan Provincial Children’s Center, and made a report. So did the Hong Kong Christian Council:
I’d like to see an authoritative site with definite information before I believe the linked source in the OP.
Well, several things make this likely IMO:
-
The Daily Telegraph is a pretty solid newspaper
-
Kim Jong Il really is freaking, freaking mad
-
Many East Asian people are extremely superstitious, especially Chinese people about the number “four” (the word for four sounds similar to the word for death, apparently)
All that said, there is a trend to “demonise” certain mad leaders because it makes damn good copy and a publisher can get away with it. You can’t allege George Bush eats Cuban babies without a hell of a stink, but you’re probably pretty safe alleging Saddam eats Finnish ones. Quite apart from the lack of legal ramifications, whose going to be able to check?
This sounds like an urban legend.
Without fertility treatment, the chances of having triplets is about one in 7,000. If it’s being done to “high-ranking officials”, at a minimum there are 14,000 high ranking officials in N. Korea.
aahala read the quote again. it says “triplets born to high-ranking officials are ALSO seized.” (emphasis mine)
I swear im beginning to believe in the gullability of skeptics.
If only one high ranking official had his triplets seized, then the singular, rather than the plural would have been used.
Also, how are we going to find the person who was quoted in the article, to test the quote as being accurate. A veteran Western diplomat is like an unnamed source, it’s impossible to prove or disprove the statement and that’s what urban legends are about.
istara, the Daily Telegraph may be a “pretty solid newspaper”, but I’d like to see an on-line article from them on this – something which so far, despite searching their site, I haven’t been able to find.
Seeing you refer to the superstition over the number four (was that because the two pages I linked to mentioned quads?), it wouldn’t surprise me to see further repeating of this story on the Internet to include references to “dire warnings” around both triplets and quads.
aahala, I agree with what you say. The “unnamed western diplomat” bit was what made me think this was a load of old horse-poop.
Making no judgment on the truth or falsity of the story…
That’s not how probability works. The chances of rolling a 6 on a fair die are 1 in 6…but it doesn’t follow that you must roll 12 times before you get 2 sixes. Sometimes you get 2 sixes in 4 rolls; sometimes you get 2 sixes in 2 rolls. The odds that a president will die on the fourth of July are about 1 in 365…but three had done so after just the first five presidents; it didn’t take 1,045 presidents to get there.
To be strictly accurate, according to the statement, at a minimum there are 2 high ranking officials in N. Korea.
snac, in your scenario three fifths of the first five presidents are born on July 4th, but there are some holes in your arguement that probability doesn’t work that way. First of all, you’re dealing with something odd that already happened. Second, July 4th wasn’t picked before hand, it was picked, again, because it already happened. Third, you’re dealing with small numbers. If you flip a coin 5 times you might get 5 heads in a row, but if you flip it 14,000 times… you get the idea. I doubt three fifths of 14,000 high ranking officials would have triplets if the odds are 1 in 7,000.
Hasn’t Kim Jong-Il ever read a fairy tale? Doesn’t he know that if it’s prophesized that a babe born in whatever manner will depose you, and you try to wipe them out, then the chosen one will always slip through your net and do it anyway?
Don’t mess with prophecies, or your hubris shall be your undoing.
Snopes’ website posts the story on the message boards there without comment.
I might give the HUN a call tomorrow. It is, by the by, Melbourne’s Murdoch tabloid. I’m suspicious. A google news search for “triplets Korea” yields nothing relevant but the HUN piece and a NewsMax piece that quotes it (features some spittle, a reference to the Tele, the AP and the UNHCR) A search of the Telegraph site for “triplets” does not reveal any such article: Tele. I’ll dig a tad.
I misstated the probability but I also did not make it clear what the one in 7000 referred to. It’s about the number of births, not the number of individuals.
In judging the plausibility of the original claim of at least two high ranking officials having triplets, not only the number of officials must be considered but the propensity of this group to have children. Age matters, and unless Korea is much more youth oriented than the US Senate, “remote” is an understatement describing the multiple triplet claim.
There’s also the matter of the date this subject appeared in the London newspaper originally. When did it appear so we can check it? It never seems to be stated, so it never can be disproven, another typical aspect in ULs.
The person representing a claim is responsible for providing evidence of its belief. Finding a webpage with claims in it is evidence the author knew how to make a webpage, it’s not evidence of the claims themselves.
Oh, I doubt it very much, too. But that’s not what I’m saying. The statement suggests that there are at least 2 officials with triplets. And you don’t need 14,000 births for that to happen.
BTW, you’re quite right that I did pick that example about the Presidents by using hindsight. So, pick another date, and wait till we have had 365 presidents. Some dates will have 2 presidents who died that day, others 3, some may well have 4 or even 5. Others will have none. It isn’t distributed evenly. Same for triplets–some groups will have more triplets, just by the luck of the draw, and some will have less. Is it likely that out of highranking govt officials, 2 will have triplets? No. Is it possible? Sure, and more possible the more loosely you define “highranking.”
If you can find out some more info on this, hawthorne, it would be most appreciated. You’ve just referred to all the points that make me seriously doubt the veracity of this report.
I’ve actually been seizing the triplets. I’m trying to build an army of triplets so I can conquer the world three times.
istara
The Telegraph might be a good newspaper but the Herald-Sun definitely is not, particularly not the Sunday edition which tends to print all the stuff that was too crappy even for them to print during the week.
This has all the hallmarks of a Hun weekend report:
*it’s a shocking, heart-rending story
*it’s about children
*it’s happening to somebody else, somewhere else
*there are no names given for most of the sources
*it’s totally unverifiable
I would take it with a warehouse of salt.
I’ve spent about 2 1/2 years in (South) Korea, and only encountered a few families who had twins. I don’t know if this is true, but I’d gotten the impression that multiple births aren’t as common there, for whatever reason.
Minor update. I am following this up, but as yet I haven’t had any response from the Sunday Herald Sun. I intend to go elsewhere if I don’t get any joy in the next couple of days. There are still no other news reports on the matter. There are scores of weblogs that cite the HUN article, though.
A few of my own personal nit-picky observations…
aahala et al.: The phrase “triplets born to high-ranking officials are also seized” in my view makes no case as to the quantity of officials to whom this has happened. Firstly, it gives no information as to the time span over which triplets might have been siezed from parents who were officials. You also ignore the chance that the same family had two sets of triplets seized (remote, to be sure, but logically not impossible). Secondly, I read the language of the quoted phrase (particuarly the use of the present tense “are seized”) to mean this as a description of a rule, not a reporting of events. For example one could say “People with yellow sweatshirts are given a piece of pie” without any implication that it has ever occurred, or not occurred. Compare that to “People with yellow sweatshirts were given a piece of pie.”
But more importantly, there’s something later in the quoted article that makes me think the whole thing is a load of bunk:
I can’t believe that the cadre of those most loyal to Kim would uniformly accept having their children taken from them. Kowtowing to a dictator is supposed to have some privileges, after all. In any case, the above quote implies that officials have all their kids taken away from them, not just the triplets.