Pyongyang appeals to Downing Street to scrap the forthcoming TV thriller about the North’s nuclear programme

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

North Korea has slammed a new British TV drama series featuring its nuclear weapons programme, urging the British government to scrap the “slanderous farce” if it wants to maintain diplomatic ties.

Opposite Number – a series commissioned by Channel 4 and announced last month – features a British nuclear scientist character who is captured in the North during a covert mission and forced to help weaponise its nuclear technology.

The 10-part series is written by British screenwriter Matt Charman, and will take viewers inside the “closed worlds of North Korea” with “opposing CIA and MI6 agents secretly deployed on the ground in Pyongyang, as the clock ticks on a global-scale nuclear crisis”, Channel 4 said on its website.

The TV show is “nothing but a slanderous farce” to insult and distort the North’s nuclear capability, said the country’s top military body, the National Defence Commission (NDC).

The North is already armed with “unimaginably powerful nuclear weaponry” and has no need of foreign technology, the NDC spokesman said in a statement carried by the state news agency.

In the English version of the statement, the official said the programme was being “orchestrated at the tacit connivance, patronage and instigation by ‘Downing Street’”.



They called on the UK authorities to “throw these reactionary movies... into a cesspit and punish those behind the projects if it wants to... help maintain the bilateral relations,” he said.

Open contributions: The North Korea film poster challenge

The North has staged three atomic tests, most recently in 2013, and has often threatened nuclear strikes against major foes Seoul and Washington.

The impoverished state, which is subject to heavy sanctions, is believed to be attempting to develop a miniaturised nuclear warhead for use on long range missiles, but experts believe it is far from perfecting the technology.

The isolated Stalinist state also bristles at foreign movies mocking its leadership, especially the Kim family that has ruled the country for some six decades with an iron fist and pervasive personality cult.

In June the North denounced a new Hollywood film about a bid to assassinate its leader Kim Jong-un as a “wanton act of terror” and warned of a “merciless response” unless the US government banned the film.

“The Interview” stars Seth Rogen and James Franco as two tabloid TV reporters who land an interview with Kim in Pyongyang and are then tasked with killing him.

The North’s United Nations envoy also lodged a formal protest at the UN against the movie, calling it “the most undisguised sponsoring of terrorism”.