# Hungry Kim Jong-un

On December 19, 2011, hours after North Korea announced the death of Kim Jong-Il, a Reddit user posted a photo of his son Kim Jong-Un pointing at an object with the caption 'Ok so...can I eat this?' That single post kicked off Hungry Kim Jong-Un, an image macro series that turned the untested young dictator into an advice animal obsessed with food.

## Origin
On December 19, 2011, the day North Korean state media announced the death of Kim Jong-Il, Redditor GunnieGraves submitted a post to r/funny titled 'Kim Jong Un looks….hungry' showing the new leader pointing at an object with the caption 'Ok so...can I eat this?'[1]. The post climbed to more than 7,200 upvotes over the next four months[4]. Very little was known about Kim Jong-Un in Western media before his father's death, and a same-day New York Times editorial speculated that the untested young leader might authorize additional nuclear tests or antagonize South Korea[5].

Also on December 19, the first Hungry Kim Jong-Un submission on Quickmeme appeared, pairing a shot of Kim addressing a top general with the line 'What do you mean / I can't eat America'[2]. That macro also hit the front page of r/funny within days[4].

- **Platform:** Reddit / Quickmeme (viral spread)
- **Creator:** GunnieGraves (Reddit)
- **Date:** 2011

## Overview
Hungry Kim Jong-Un is an image macro format where official-looking photographs of the North Korean supreme leader are paired with captions about food cravings, hunger, or mistaking non-food objects for something edible[3]. The tone is absurdist, wrapping dark political humor in the advice-animal template that dominated Reddit and Quickmeme in late 2011[2]. Captions play on Kim's youthful, round-faced appearance, pairing straight-faced state media shots with lines like 'What do you mean / I can't eat America'[2].

The joke lives in the gap between the propaganda dignity of the source photos and captions that reduce the new head of state to a single-minded appetite. A recurring subgenre has Kim mistaking objects like missiles, generals, or terrain features for cake, which grew into its own visual gag when Cheezburger's Comixed site collected a run of cake-confusion macros in February 2012[6].

## How It Spread
On December 23, 2011, a single-topic Tumblr called 'Kim Jong-Un is Hungry' launched with the tagline 'He's always thinking about food. For himself… not for his people,' collecting community submissions and pushing the format past Reddit[3]. Momentum kept building into the new year.

On January 5, 2012, Funny or Die published a roundup of the funniest Hungry Kim Jong-Un examples, crediting r/funny as the source[6]. On February 4, Cheezburger's Comixed posted its cake-mistake series[6], and on February 14 the pop-culture blog UpRoxx ran a slideshow of examples[7]. A Funny Junk compilation posted the following day pulled over 103,000 views within two months[8].

By April 13, 2012, the Quickmeme page dedicated to the format held more than 1,753 user submissions[2], marking Hungry Kim Jong-Un as one of the higher-volume advice-animal spinoffs of the winter 2011-2012 Reddit meme wave[4].

## How to Use
The format typically starts with a photograph of Kim Jong-Un touring a factory, inspecting military hardware, or standing with generals. Creators add a top-and-bottom impact-font caption in the advice-animal style, with the punchline framing him as hungry, distracted by food, or mistaking the object in front of him for cake or a snack. Common conventions include short setup phrases like 'What do you mean' or 'Ok so' that lean into a naive, appetite-driven inner monologue.

## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is Hungry Kim Jong-un?
Hungry Kim Jong-Un is an image macro series that captions photos of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un with lines about food cravings or mistaking objects for something edible[4].

### Where did Hungry Kim Jong-un come from?
It started on December 19, 2011, when Redditor GunnieGraves posted 'Kim Jong Un looks….hungry' to r/funny hours after Kim Jong-Il's death was announced[1].

### What does Hungry Kim Jong-un mean?
The joke frames the young dictator as an advice animal fixated on eating, often confusing military targets or state visits for cake and other food[6].

### How do you use Hungry Kim Jong-un?
Pair a straight-faced photo of Kim Jong-Un with an impact-font caption about hunger, cravings, or wanting to eat the object in the picture, in the classic Quickmeme advice-animal layout[2].

### Is Hungry Kim Jong-un still popular?
The format peaked in early 2012 during the advice-animal era on Reddit and Quickmeme, and is now looked back on as a classic winter 2011-2012 image macro[4].

## References
1. [https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/nnhu4/kim_jong_un_looks_hungry/](<https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/nnhu4/kim_jong_un_looks_hungry/>)
2. [http://www.quickmeme.com/Hungry-Kim-Jong-Un](<http://www.quickmeme.com/Hungry-Kim-Jong-Un>)
3. [https://kimjongunishungry.tumblr.com/](<https://kimjongunishungry.tumblr.com/>)
4. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hungry-kim-jong-un](<https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hungry-kim-jong-un>)
5. [https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/opinion/death-of-a-dictator.html](<https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/opinion/death-of-a-dictator.html>)
6. [https://www.funnyordie.com/](<https://www.funnyordie.com/>)
7. [https://uproxx.com/](<https://uproxx.com/>)
8. [https://funnyjunk.com/](<https://funnyjunk.com/>)

---
Source: https://meme.com/memes/hungry-kim-jong-un
Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library