Yesterday I offered two points to anyone who could identify the original of the pig-snouted image of Kim Jong Un, hacked onto a North Korean site by Anonymous. The prize goes to Georgia Mickey on Facebook, and none of you here on this blog, tsk tsk, though David Corbett, also on Facebook, gets the assist. It's Zhu Bajie, also known as Piggsy, one of the three bodyguards of the monk Xuanzang in the Chinese classic JOURNEY TO THE WEST. Along with the Monkey King and the Sand Priest, who, like Piggsy, had been cast out of Heaven for various transgressions, he was recruited to protect the monk whose job it was to go to the west (i.e., India) and return to China with the scrolls of Buddhist knowledge. What got Piggsy thrown out of Heaven and given his hideous aspect were the crimes of licentiousness, drunkenness, and greed.

What's interesting about this image, to me, is that it's instantly recognizable in east Asia, not so much here. It implies that the Anonymous member who did this hack is either Asian, or extremely well-read.