Video shows 2019 meeting with North Korean leader, not South Korean president

A Facebook video that’s been viewed 2 million times falsely claims that Putin met with the president of South Korea, when the footage — which is more than two years old — shows the leader of North Korea.

"Russian president Vladimir Putin meets with South Korean President," says the caption on the video, posted March 6 on Facebook. The caption also says, "Check comment to watch the full video," and links to a YouTube video dated March 6. The title on the YouTube video also says Putin met with the South Korean president.

The Facebook post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

The captions on both videos are wrong; the video shows an April 2019 meeting in Vladivostok, Russia, between Putin and Kim, the leader of North Korea.

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Footage from the 2019 event is identical to the video posted on Facebook.

The event was the first time Putin and Kim had met and was billed as a historic event, occurring "amid efforts by the United States to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear weapons," ABC News reported.

Some people commenting on the Facebook post understood that the video showed the North Korean leader and not the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, as the caption claimed. But other commenters did not seem to be clued in, and interpreted the recent posting as an indication that the meeting happened amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.

We rate the claim that video footage shows a recent Putin meeting with the South Korean president False.