“It’s certain death if they were caught with this film,” said Kim Heung-kwang, another North Korean defector living in the South.

Still, he said, a small number of his contacts did watch the comedy.

Based on feedback from three of them, he said that most of the jokes appeared to be lost in translation, like a scene in which fruit in a supermarket in Pyongyang, the capital, were fakes made of plaster that were put on display to fool visitors.

“That doesn’t happen in Pyongyang, and people who were not used to American-style comedy would find it insulting,” he said. “But it’s largely fear of punishment, rather than such faults, that keeps people from watching the movie. So I think it may spread once the crackdown subsides in a month or two.”

Mr. Chung said the North Koreans also heaped criticism on the film for the actors’ bad North Korean accents and for using clunky imitations of Workers’ Party slogans ubiquitous in the totalitarian state.

Kim Sung-min, a North Korean defector who runs Free North Korea Radio, a Seoul-based website, wrote there that he spoke to two North Korean viewers and one of them said that he was thrilled by the scene in which an American talk-show host visiting Pyongyang asked the Kim Jong-un character why he was starving his people. (Hunger attributed to failed economic policies is widespread in North Korea.)

Nonetheless, Mr. Kim quoted the viewer as saying that “the movie will only increase animosity among us because it not only failed to understand our feelings, but didn’t even try to.” He said the North Korean added: “It humiliates Kim Jong-un, treating him like a child. To us, who have been educated on his greatness, this is a public insult.”

It is not the first time Hollywood has managed to rile people in other countries with humor they feel is demeaning. Remember “Borat”? But even that film, which caused the government of Kazakhstan to threaten to sue over the parody of the country, did not result in the same damage “The Interview” has.