James Bond's latest "enemy" struck back yesterday.
In a rare challenge to Hollywood, communist North Korea called on the US to stop screening Die Another Day, saying the 20th James Bond movie slanders the isolated state and defames the Korean people.
The MGM hit proves that the US is an "empire of evil" and "the headquarters that spread abnormality, degeneration, violence and ... corrupt sex culture," North Korea's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland said.
The committee, which deals mainly with relations with South Korea, made the comments in a statement carried by the North's official news agency, KCNA.
In the movie, Bond, allied with South Korean operatives, is sent to intercept an illegal arms deal about to take place between a South African diamond smuggler and evil North Korean officer, Colonel Moon, feared to be planning an invasion of South Korea and then Japan.
Die Another Day has irked some South Koreans as well, although it has not yet opened in Seoul theaters. Some young people are urging a boycott of the movie, calling it culturally ignorant and a slight to their nation's pride.
They object to a US intelligence agent ordering the mobilization of the South Korean army in the movie and an outdated scene showing Koreans walking a cow on a farm.
Bond also makes love to a woman in a Buddhist temple, seen as an insult to the country's ancient religion.
The North Korean committee said the US should halt the movie for portraying North Korea as "part of an `axis of evil,' inciting inter-Korean confrontation, groundlessly despising and insulting the Korean nation and malignantly describing even religion."
Relations between the US and impoverished North chilled sharply after US President George W. Bush called North Korea part of an "axis of evil," along with Iran and Iraq.
North Korea renewed fears over its suspected nuclear weapons program this week when it said it was reactivating its nuclear facilities.
Officials at 20th Century Fox in Korea, which distributes for MGM, said the enemy in the movie is not all North Koreans, but extremists in the Stalinist regime.
The call for a boycott in South Korea comes as anti-US sentiment has swelled over the acquittals of two US soldiers whose armored vehicle killed two Korean girls in June.
Anti-American feelings are widespread among young people, who believe that Bush's policy toward North Korea threatens inter-Korean reconciliation efforts.
The boycott call is being spread via online chat rooms and e-mail.
Die Another Day stars Korean-American actor Rick Yune. South Korean actor Cha In-pyo refused to play Yune's role, saying the movie would distort the image of both Koreas.
The Koreas were divided in 1945. The US keeps 37,000 troops in South Korea in a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War.
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