Kim Jong-un: North Korean dictator and Time readers' person of the year

How did the baby-faced leader of the pariah state win? Blame it on online messageboard 4Chan

Supremely popular? Kim Jong-un. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Age: 29. Probably.

Appearance: Kim Jong Deux.

As in the leader of North Korea? No, as in the Supreme Leader of North Korea.

Is there a difference? Of course. A Supreme Leader is better than a normal leader.

Do we have any evidence for that? We do now. Kim Jong-un was just voted Time magazine readers' person of the year.

Seems legit. Was it close? Not even slightly. He beat the second most popular candidate, US satirist Jon Stewart, by more than three million votes.

Seems less legit. What happened? Users of online messageboard 4Chan hijacked the poll and sent Kim Jong-un, as he would put it, "onwards toward the final victory".

How come they were able to vote for him at all? He was one of 40 possible candidates put forward by Time's editors.

Why exactly? Maybe because he had already been voted the sexiest man alive.

Really? Well, only according to China's People Daily newspaper, which mistook a joke in The Onion for a news report.

Any plausible reasons? Because he had a big year; he tightened his grip on power in North Korea, improved his bargaining position with China and the US, and last Wednesday launched the country's first successful satellite rocket.

And I'm as delighted about that as anyone, but – big year or not – isn't he also the brutal and repressive dictator of an abhorrent authoritarian regime? Oh, well, yes. But the Time biography did acknowledge that.

And they still felt he was a suitable candidate for a poll to find the person of the year? Sure, why not? It's just the readers' poll, after all. The editors are free to ignore it when they make the magazine's official choice. Although they have chosen stranger candidates in the past.

Such as? Among others, Ayatollah Khomeni (1979), Joseph Stalin (1939 and 1942) and Adolf Hitler (1938).

Seriously? Seriously.

Is Time magazine basically just a front for global evil? Nah. It's just that every so often the bad guys have a big year too.

Don't say: "Geddit? It's ironic because he's a vicious dictator."

Do say: "Geddit? It's ironic because it was a vote."

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