The Kimunji set uses imagery based on the North Korean ruler.
LONDON:
Kim Kardashian West faces a new challenger from the east in the battle for online emotive supremacy: "#Kimunji - The Real Kimoji," a set of emojis that represent the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
An app of emojis based on Kardashian West, released in December and called Kimoji, allows users to send hearts, kisses and doughnuts, but also Kardashian West with blond hair, crying, in a bra, and even her famous derrière.
The app proved to be highly popular and is in second place in the U.S. paid app chart on iTunes.
"The content is pretty crass - I don't even want to mention some of the images that are on there," said the American designer of the Kimunji set, Ben Gillin, 32, referring to Kimoji. "Lots of kids look up to the Kardashians. As far as I gather, most of the people using these are under the age of 20."
The Kimunji set uses imagery based on the North Korean ruler, who most recently antagonized the United States and its allies with a rocket launch on Sunday, a development that was followed by reports that another senior official had been executed.
The set, released Monday, allows people to send one another pictures of Kim smiling, crying and walking, as well as rockets, North Korean flags, and a nuclear mushroom cloud.
There is also an emoji of Dennis Rodman, the eccentric former NBA star who visited North Korea in 2013 and 2014. Rodman described himself as Kim's "friend" and he sang "Happy Birthday" to the authoritarian leader before an exhibition basketball game in Pyongyang. But he later said, "If you don't want me to go back there ever again, I won't go back."
Gillin's creation received in three days nearly as many votes as the Kimoji app on the website Product Hunt, an online community that allows designers to post their products and get feedback from other developers.
"The reaction has been great, overall," Gillin said. "There are people who are angry, who think it's honoring Kim Jong Un, which is in no way the intent."
While the Kimunji icons mock Kardashian West's emojis, Gillin conceived them with the more serious goal of drawing attention to the influence that comes with the Kardashians' omnipresence in pop culture.
"She has 60 million followers on Instagram" said Gillin, who noted that the figure dwarfs the population of North Korea. "The point of my product was to show how silly the Kim Kardashian emojis are, like holding up a mirror at the other Kimojis."
This is not the first time that Kim Jong Un has inspired pop culture: There is a Tumblr page dedicated to photographs of him "looking at things." He has become an Internet meme, and he was the basis for the movie "The Interview," a comedy about a fictional CIA plot to assassinate him.
The North Korean leader apparently didn't approve and declared "war" on the film (maybe next time he can send rocket emojis).
With the small icons increasingly being used to communicate, the emoji menu is ever expanding.
The Unicode Consortium, the agency that regulates emojis, announced on Thursday that it was thinking of developing a new set of icons, for dumplings, chopsticks and fortune cookies. An online campaign has raised $12,478 to push the dumpling emoji.
In April, the consortium released racially diverse emojis, giving users the option to choose from five different skin tones, and updated its international flags database to 257 flags.
Emojis started appearing on cellphones in Japan in the mid-1990s and were integrated into Apple's operating system in 2011.
The Oxford Dictionary named the crying-out-laughing emoji its word of the year in 2015. In October, the Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, came under question in her country's Senate for her liberal use of emojis.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An app of emojis based on Kardashian West, released in December and called Kimoji, allows users to send hearts, kisses and doughnuts, but also Kardashian West with blond hair, crying, in a bra, and even her famous derrière.
The app proved to be highly popular and is in second place in the U.S. paid app chart on iTunes.
"The content is pretty crass - I don't even want to mention some of the images that are on there," said the American designer of the Kimunji set, Ben Gillin, 32, referring to Kimoji. "Lots of kids look up to the Kardashians. As far as I gather, most of the people using these are under the age of 20."
The Kimunji set uses imagery based on the North Korean ruler, who most recently antagonized the United States and its allies with a rocket launch on Sunday, a development that was followed by reports that another senior official had been executed.
The set, released Monday, allows people to send one another pictures of Kim smiling, crying and walking, as well as rockets, North Korean flags, and a nuclear mushroom cloud.
There is also an emoji of Dennis Rodman, the eccentric former NBA star who visited North Korea in 2013 and 2014. Rodman described himself as Kim's "friend" and he sang "Happy Birthday" to the authoritarian leader before an exhibition basketball game in Pyongyang. But he later said, "If you don't want me to go back there ever again, I won't go back."
Gillin's creation received in three days nearly as many votes as the Kimoji app on the website Product Hunt, an online community that allows designers to post their products and get feedback from other developers.
"The reaction has been great, overall," Gillin said. "There are people who are angry, who think it's honoring Kim Jong Un, which is in no way the intent."
While the Kimunji icons mock Kardashian West's emojis, Gillin conceived them with the more serious goal of drawing attention to the influence that comes with the Kardashians' omnipresence in pop culture.
"She has 60 million followers on Instagram" said Gillin, who noted that the figure dwarfs the population of North Korea. "The point of my product was to show how silly the Kim Kardashian emojis are, like holding up a mirror at the other Kimojis."
This is not the first time that Kim Jong Un has inspired pop culture: There is a Tumblr page dedicated to photographs of him "looking at things." He has become an Internet meme, and he was the basis for the movie "The Interview," a comedy about a fictional CIA plot to assassinate him.
The North Korean leader apparently didn't approve and declared "war" on the film (maybe next time he can send rocket emojis).
With the small icons increasingly being used to communicate, the emoji menu is ever expanding.
The Unicode Consortium, the agency that regulates emojis, announced on Thursday that it was thinking of developing a new set of icons, for dumplings, chopsticks and fortune cookies. An online campaign has raised $12,478 to push the dumpling emoji.
In April, the consortium released racially diverse emojis, giving users the option to choose from five different skin tones, and updated its international flags database to 257 flags.
Emojis started appearing on cellphones in Japan in the mid-1990s and were integrated into Apple's operating system in 2011.
The Oxford Dictionary named the crying-out-laughing emoji its word of the year in 2015. In October, the Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, came under question in her country's Senate for her liberal use of emojis.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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