North Korea threatens 'strong and merciless countermeasure' against Franco-Rogen film The Interview

North Korea is fiercely denouncing the upcoming Seth Rogen and James Franco movie, The Interview, in which the two actors play a pair of talk-show hosts who get sent on a secret mission to assassinate the country's dictator, Kim Jong-un. On Wednesday, the totalitarian regime's Foreign Ministry issued a sharply worded attack on the film — albeit one that was written in a somewhat broken English — making the accusation that the movie is a plot by the U.S. government.

"The U.S. 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," said the statement, issued through the official state-run Korean Central News Agency. "This act of not fearing any punishment from Heaven is touching off the towering hatred and wrath of the service personnel and people of the DPRK."

The statement went on to call the movie itself an act of war: "Absolutely intolerable is the distribution of such film in the U.S. 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."

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It concluded with a grim ultimatum: