North Korea threatened to go to war with the United States on Wednesday over a comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco.
A spokesman for the country's Foreign Ministry said the U.S. will face a "merciless countermeasure" if the Evan Goldberg-directed comedy "The Interview" is released.
"A preview of a film on insulting and assassinating the supreme leadership of the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] is floating in broad daylight in the US," the statement read.
"The US has gone reckless in such provocative hysteria as bribing a rogue movie maker to dare hurt the dignity of the supreme leadership of the DPRK."
The film is about a talk show producer (Rogen) and host (Franco) who book an interview with supreme leader King Jong-un. They travel to North Korea to meet him and the CIA recruits them to assassinate the dictator.
The North Korean Foreign Ministry called the film despicable.
"Absolutely intolerable is the distribution of such film in the US as it is the most undisguised terrorism and a war action to deprive the service personnel and people of the DPRK of their mental mainstay and bring down its social system," they wrote.
"If the US administration connives at and patronises the screening of the film, it will invite a strong and merciless countermeasure."
Rogen made light of the threat, tweeting, "People don't usually wanna kill me for one of my movies until after they've paid 12 bucks for it. Hiyooooo!!!"
Goldberg also joked about the situation, retweeting posts stating that he might "inspire a revolution", and calling himself a "Western capitalist pig."
Trailers for "The Interview" were released two weeks ago, and the film is slated for an October release.
http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm
