North Korea Threatens US over movie.
North Korea Warns U.S. Over Film Mocking Its Leader
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/26/wo...lm-parody.html
By CHOE SANG-HUN
Trailer of "The Interview." SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Wednesday warned against the release of a Hollywood comedy about a plot to assassinate its leader, Kim Jong-un, calling the movie an “act of war.”
“If the United States administration tacitly approves or supports the release of this film, we will take a decisive and merciless countermeasure,” a spokesman for its Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
The spokesman did not elaborate on what North Korea’s retaliation might be. But he accused Washington of “provocative insanity” in mobilizing a “gangster filmmaker” to defile the country’s supreme leader, and reported “a gust of hatred and rage” among its citizens and soldiers.
In “The Interview,” a Columbia Pictures movie scheduled to be released in October, James Franco plays a talk-show host and Seth Rogen his producer.
The two pals head out to North Korea for the assignment of a lifetime: an exclusive interview with Kim Jong-un, who in real life is the young dictator of a country that often threatens to fire nuclear missiles at Washington and its “pimp” President Obama.
According to the plotline, the Central Intelligence Agency then drafts them to kill Mr. Kim.
In the film’s trailer, a C.I.A. analyst briefs the duo on North Korea and Mr. Kim: “You are entering into the most dangerous country on Earth. Kim Jong-un’s people believe anything he tells them, including that he can speak to dolphins or he doesn’t urinate or defecate.”
In real life, the totalitarian regime does try to ensure that Mr. Kim — like his father and his grandfather, who ruled before him — is revered as a godlike figure among his impoverished people.
The government lashes out at any hint of criticism or ridicule from the outside, reserving its harshest language for those who belittle Mr. Kim. With no independent press of its own, North Korea often claims that foreign news media and human rights activists who criticize Pyongyang do so at the behest of their governments. It regularly warns that it will bomb Seoul, the South Korean capital, including newspaper offices and television stations there, unless they stop publishing articles mocking its leadership.
The Hollywood comedy has flown directly into that personality cult.
It “is the most blatant act of terrorism and an act of war that we will never tolerate,” the North Korean statement said on Wednesday.
As if the producers of the film had anticipated such a reaction, their publicity poster shows North Korean tanks and missiles with a sign that says: “War will begin!”
The poster also says in Korean: “Don’t believe these ignorant Yankees!”
Kim Jong-il, Mr. Kim’s father, was said to have been a great fan and collector of Hollywood movies, especially the James Bond series. The elder Kim, whose love of films once led his spy agents to kidnap a South Korean movie director and his actress wife and bring them to Pyongyang, used films as a tool of propaganda.
He even wrote a book called “On the Art of Cinema.”
There are signs that Mr. Kim inherited his father’s taste for Hollywood movies. In 2012, North Korean state television showed him giving the thumbs-up to a girl band singing the theme song from “Rocky” during a concert that also featured Mickey Mouse.
In recent years, however, North Korea and its leaders have increasingly been the butt of jokes in American pop culture. Mr. Kim’s father was parodied in “Team America,” a hit comedy made by the creators of “South Park.” A 2002 James Bond movie, “Die Another Day,” also cast North Korea as a country of villains.
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