SEOUL - A PICTURE may be worth a thousand words but does it always tell the truth?

Apparently not, says the British media which has questioned the authenticity of the latest photograph of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il made public by the communist state.

Pyongyang on Wednesday released a still photo of Mr Kim at the front of a military line-up, in its latest effort to quell rumours that the 66-year-old had suffered a stroke in mid-August.

But London-based The Times newspaper and national broadcaster BBC have cast doubts over the photo, citing differently angled shadows and mismatching pixels.

In the photo, the shadow of Mr Kim runs differently from those of soldiers on either side of him, The Times said, adding that a dark line running along the stand mysteriously vanishes on either side of the North Korea leader - suggesting his picture may have been superimposed onto the image.

The BBC also said it found an apparent mismatch of pixels in the photo.

But South Korea took a different view.

Seoul's main spy agency, the National Intelligence Service (NIS), said yesterday that it believed the latest North Korean photo was real.

'The possibility of Mr Kim's photo being forged seems very low,' said an NIS spokesman, refusing to elaborate.

The South's unification ministry spokesman Kim Ho Nyoun also said he had no evidence to suggest that the photo had been forged.

North Korea has not said when the recently released photographs of Mr Kim were taken.

Mr Kim's health is the subject of intense speculation because he has not publicly nominated a successor - as his father had done more than 20 years before his death in 1994 - to run the impoverished, nuclear-armed state. -- AFP