President Obama met with South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye at the White House this past Tuesday, and as major world leaders are wont to do in each others’ presence, handshakes abounded. This three-handed, two-roomed, Photoshop monstrosity, however, was not one of them.
What makes this not just bad but inexplicable is that there were plenty of photos taken in which the pair of presidents actually shake hands (see below). Yet Yonhap, South Korea’s largest news provider, decided to take this opportunity to go for something, oh, a little more whimsical.
And while you may assume that there’s no way they could possibly expect anyone to believe that Geun-hye is shaking Obama’s third, disembodied floating hand, the caption underneath the photo begs to differ:
So what do we take away here? Are the clearly disparate backdrops symbolic of a cultural divide? Is that divisive third hand the manifestation of Kim Jong-Un? Did a toddler get loose in Yonhap’s office right before press time and wreak havoc? All questions to which we may never have answers. But—then again—true art is supposed to challenge you.
[Yonhap via The Atlantic]
