TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – Several posts on Instagram [archive] and Facebook claim that an Israeli missile accidentally hit the North Korean embassy in Tehran, Iran. The posts include a photo of a burned-out building.
The narrative sparked fears that North Korea, as a nuclear-armed state, would be drawn into a war between Iran, Israel, and the United States. “The North Korean embassy in Tehran was hit by a U.S.-Israeli missile attack, and we await President Kim Jong Un’s reaction,” read the narrative excerpt.
However, is it true that Israel accidentally bombed the North Korean ambassador’s office in Iran?
FACT CHECK
Tempo verified the content using reverse image searches, artificial intelligence detection tools, and information comparisons from credible sources. The results revealed that the circulating content was fabricated using AI technology.
In fact, the South Korean Embassy, which is located close to the point of the Israeli missile explosion, was hit, not the North Korean Embassy.
Visual Verification
Was It AI identified an image of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looking at the burning North Korean embassy building as a high-confidence AI product.
Tests using Hive Moderation showed a 99.9 percent probability that the image was AI-generated, generated by the Gemini model. Gemini confirmed that the photo was machine-generated using its “SynthID” watermark.
Other content depicting explosions behind waving Iranian and North Korean flags was also identified as AI-generated. The Hive Moderation tool recorded a 89.9 percent probability, and Was It AI detected it with high confidence. Technical analysis revealed a 27.8 percent probability of using the Flux model and a 13.9 percent probability of using the Flux2 model.
Several fact-checkers have declared the claim that an Israeli missile accidentally hit the North Korean embassy in Tehran to be a hoax. Snopes, for example, released a location map proving that the North Korean embassy was not near the Israeli and U.S. bombing ranges in Tehran.
Not the North Korean Embassy, But the South Korean Embassy
On March 10, 2026, instead of targeting the North Korean representative office, an explosion occurred near the South Korean embassy building in Tehran. The incident occurred amid the escalating conflict between Israel and the U.S. against Iran, which began on February 28.
According to reports from FN News and several other Korean media outlets, the photo of the explosion was officially released by the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On March 17, 2026, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun asserted that his country was not an enemy of Iran. According to Cho, the South Korean embassy was one of the few remaining foreign diplomatic offices in Tehran.
However, Cho declined to comment further on the details of the explosion near his office. Seoul has not yet discussed the restrictions on shipping access in the Strait of Hormuz with Tehran—an Iranian policy that also impacts South Korea.
According to data from the South Korean Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (MOF), 26 Korean ships are currently stranded in the Strait of Hormuz. There are 183 crew members on board, including those on nine tankers carrying oil.
CONCLUSION
Tempo’s investigation concluded that the claim that Israel accidentally attacked the North Korean embassy in Tehran is false.
TEMPO FACT-CHECK TEAM
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