Posts that Australian PM announced North Korea visit are fabricated

"BREAKING: Australian PM Anthony Albanese to meet with North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un," reads text in a screenshot posted to an Australian Facebook group on October 6, 2025, which received more than 110 shares.

"The meeting is scheduled to take place in December inside North Korea," it says, adding that Albanese had said he would be "the first Western leader to set foot in North Korea. Facilitating world peace".

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Screenshot of the false Facebook post taken on October 7, 2025, with the red X mark added by AFP

Similar posts were made in other Australian Facebook groups, which primarily post content critical of Albanese and his administration's policies.

Many users appeared to take the announcement as genuine, calling him "dangerous to Australia and its people".

Some also took issue with the claim he would be the first Western leader to meet Kim in North Korea.

"Trump did it first," said one, referring to the meeting held in 2019 at the Korean Demilitarized Zone, in which Trump in his previous term was the first sitting US president to step into North Korea (archived link). 

The US leader had also met Kim two other times -- in Hanoi and in Singapore (archived here and here).

But there is no trace of Albanese's supposed remarks on his official website -- nor reports from news outlets about the Australian leader planning to meet Kim (archived link).

The Prime Minister's Office confirmed to AFP on October 8 that "there are no plans for any meeting" with Kim.

A keyword search on the Prime Minister's Office website shows that the last time North Korea was mentioned was in a February media release marking the third anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Canberra had announced sanctions on individuals and entities "involved in deepening military cooperation" between Moscow and Pyongyang (archived link).

North Korea is one of Moscow's main allies, sending thousands of soldiers and container loads of weapons to help the Kremlin in its war with Ukraine (archived link). 

Combing through Albanese's official X account also showed that the PM had condemned Pyongyang for the launch of missiles in November 2022 (archived here and here). 

This is not the first time there has been disinformation linking Albanese with the North Korean leader -- the Australian Associated Press previously fact-checked false claims and AI images of the two meeting to discuss reregulating digital platforms (archived link).

AFP has previously fact-checked claims about Albanese and Kim.