by STEVE HAN | @steve_han
editor@charactermedia.com
The Interview is going to North Korea.
Human rights activists in South Korea plan to fly DVDs of the Seth Rogen comedy into North Korea via hydrogen balloons, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Free North Korea, a South Korean activist group led by defector Park Sang-hak, will use balloons to distribute the film to the entertainment-deprived North Korean masses.
The Interview, which stars Rogen and James Franco, is a comedy centering on the CIA recruiting American journalists to plot an assassination of North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-un (played by Randall Park).
Park’s organization has used balloons to drop transistor radios, DVDs and other items into North Korea for years. The Human Rights Foundation, a New York-based organization, has been funding the balloon drops for the past two years. The Interview won’t likely be available on DVD for the next scheduled balloon drop in January, but the organization’s plan is to smuggle the film into North Korea as soon as possible.
“North Koreans risk their lives to watch Hollywood films,” said Thor Halvorssen, who founded the Human Rights Foundation. “The Interview is tremendously threatening to the Kims. They cannot abide by anything that portrays them as anything other than a God. This movie destroys the narrative.”
With funding from Halvorssen’s group, Free North Korea has also sent leaflets, books and other educational materials to the totalitarian state via balloons, which are launched from secret locations in South Korea. To drop the materials in targeted locations, the balloons are designed to break open with acid-based timers.
When asked by Deadline.com about whether he thinks sending The Interview to North Korea would be a good idea, Rogen said: “It would be really interesting. I wonder what a North Korean citizen would think of the movie. And, they are not bad. They are the victims of horrible situations. Part of me thinks they themselves would really enjoy the movie.”
Photo courtesy of Lee Young-Ho/Sipa USA and AP.
