South Korean activist Lee Min-bok has flown thousands of copies of controversial Sony film The Interview over the North Korean border.
Lee Min-bok said he had carried out the launches at night four times since January, most recently on April 4.
The Seth Rogen comedy, about a fictional CIA plot to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, enraged Pyongyang.
Sony initially pulled The Interview after a hacking attack and threats to attack cinemas which were screening it.
But it changed its mind and gave the film a limited cinema release after being accused of responding to an attack on free speech.
The FBI says North Korea was behind the hack and threats, though it denies this.
Lee Min-bok, a defector from North Korea, said he had tied the DVDs to balloons along with bundles of US dollars and leaflets criticizing Kim Jong-un’s regime.
He told AFP news agency: “I launched thousands of copies and about a million leaflets on Saturday, near the western part of the border.”
He said the launches were all done in remote areas and without publicity but that the police “would have no right to stop me”.
Lee Min-bok told CNN, which joined him on Saturday’s launch, that he had not laughed at The Interview and found it vulgar.
But he said North Korea “hates this film because it shows Kim Jong-un as a man, not a God” and that he wanted to “tell the truth” to North Koreans.
Any North Korean who had access to a DVD player and was found to have watched the film would likely face a lengthy sentence in a prison camp.
South Korean activists have repeatedly carried out balloon drops across the border of material which they say shows the reality of life outside the restrictive country, in the hope of encouraging North Koreans to reject propaganda and stand up to their leadership.
North Korea has demanded South Korea stop such launches, saying they are provocative. Its border guards have in the past tried to shoot down the balloons.
[youtube jkBIN7jMGN0 650]
Seth Rogen objected to re-editing The Interview movie, about an assassination attempt on Kim Jong-un, just “to make North Koreans happy”.
Sony Pictures Entertainment co-chairman Amy Pascal wrote to Seth Rogen to ask him to tone down a scene in which the North Korean leader is blown up.
Amy Pascal said the request came from Kazuo Hirai, chairman of Sony Corporation.
The exchange was revealed in leaked emails in the wake of a massive cyber attack on Sony Pictures.
Seth Rogen – who wrote and directed The Interview – refused to meet all of the demands made by Kazuo Hirai.
“This is now a story of Americans changing their movie to make North Koreans happy,” he wrote, in an email dated August 15.
“That is a very damning story.”
The Interview – due to be released on Christmas Day in the US – sees Seth Rogen and James Franco play two reporters who are granted an audience with Kim Jong-un. The CIA then enlists the pair to assassinate him.
In June this year, North Korea described the film as an act of war and an “undisguised sponsoring of terrorism”, and called on the US and the UN to block it.
Amy Pascal wrote to Seth Rogen relaying concerns raised by Kazuo Hirai about a key shot in the film which depicts Kim Jong-un struck by a tank shell, causing his head to explode.
“As embarrassing as this has been from my point of view,” wrote Amy Pascal to the film-maker, “you have to appreciate the fact that we haven’t just dictated to you what it had to be.”
“This isn’t some flunky. It’s the chairman of the entire Sony Corporation who I am dealing (with),” she said, referring to Kazuo Hirai’s position as the head of the studio’s parent company.
She stressed she was keen to ensure that the Japanese company would not be placed “in a bad situation”, in terms of its political relations with North Korea.
In a later response, Seth Rogen agrees to remove some of the ghoulish detail, including reducing the “flaming hair”, but added: “The head explosion can’t be more obscured than it is because we honestly feel that if it’s any more obscured, you won’t be able to tell it’s exploding and the joke won’t work.”
In an email to Kazuo Hirai, Amy Pascal notes that she has encountered considerable “resistance from the filmmakers”.
A final email in October, from Seth Rogen, confirms that his latest edit had “removed the fire from the hair and the entire secondary wave of head chunks”.
“Please tell us this is over now,” he adds.
Details of the emails were reported by Bloomberg News. Representatives for Seth Rogen declined to comment.
Sony Pictures announced this week that the stars will be giving no interviews at the Hollywood premiere of The Interview.
The California-based studio’s computer system went down last week and hackers then published a number of as-yet unreleased films on online download sites. The Interview was not among them.
A slew of emails, including embarrassing exchanges about some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, have also been leaked.
North Korea has denied it was directly involved in the hacking but praised the attack itself as a “righteous deed”.
[youtube u-CBp8kBJi4 650]
North Korea has threatened “merciless” retaliation if a forthcoming Hollywood movie about killing Kim Jong-un is released, say agencies.
A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said in state media that the movie’s release would be an “act of war”.
He did not mention the title, but a Hollywood movie called The Interview with a similar plot is due in October.
Actors James Franco and Seth Rogen star in the action-comedy film.
James Franco and Seth Rogen play a talk show host and his producer who are invited to interview Kim Jong-un, and are subsequently recruited by the CIA to assassinate the leader.
In The Interview, James Franco and Seth Rogen play a talk show host and his producer who are invited to interview Kim Jong-un
The movie’s teaser trailer, posted on Youtube, shows a lookalike actor playing Kim Jong-un, as well as fight scenes involving what appear to be North Korean tanks and helicopters, and a nuclear missile launch.
The North Korea spokesman was quoted by agencies as saying: “Making and releasing a movie on a plot to hurt our top-level leadership is the most blatant act of terrorism and war and will absolutely not be tolerated.”
He added that the “reckless US provocative insanity” of mobilizing a “gangster filmmaker” to challenge North Korea’s leadership was triggering “a gust of hatred and rage” among North Korean people and soldiers.
“If the US administration allows and defends the showing of the film, a merciless counter-measure will be taken,” the spokesman was quoted as saying.
Evidence emerged last week of North Korea further developing its missile technology. Experts identified a new anti-ship cruise missile shown in a North Korean propaganda film.
North Korea is holding three Americans in custody. The latest to be detained is said to be a tourist named Jeffrey Edward Fowle who reportedly left a Bible at a hotel.
Seth Rogen, one of the directors of The Interview, recently said he was inspired by journalists’ trips to North Korea.
He told Yahoo: “People have the hypothetical discussion about how journalists have access to the world’s most dangerous people, and they hypothetically would be in a good situation to assassinate them.”
Seth Rogen added that the movie was originally about meeting Kim Jong-il, but they had to revise the script when he died in 2011 and his son Kim Jong-un took power.
[youtube Mj3uHftd5FQ 650]
