Call Of Duty sparks Seoul's North Korea debate — SkimNews
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- Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 was released worldwide on Oct. 23 by U.S. studio Infinity Ward, depicting a surprise North Korean invasion, urban combat in Seoul and leadership turmoil inside North Korea from the viewpoint of a South Korean soldier.
- Choi Hwi-young, South Korea’s culture minister, told the National Assembly’s Oct. 23 audit that games, like films, are constitutionally protected expression and cannot face prior censorship merely for political content.
- Han Dong-hoon urged President Lee Jae Myung on Oct. 23 to play the game, calling the 1950 invasion a historical reality and challenging Lee’s characterization of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, wartime operational-control transfer and reduced U.S.-South Korea exercises.
- Choi Je-il linked the fictional scenario to the Sept. 21 DMZ mine explosions that injured three South Korean soldiers, two seriously; a joint investigation concluded that North Korean anti-personnel mines planted south of the Military Demarcation Line caused the blasts.
- Park Soo-young accused progressives who defended the September historical thriller Assassin(s) of hypocrisy, arguing that treating a film as fiction requires extending the same freedom to the game.
- Kim Han-kyu of the ruling Democratic Party posted an Oct. 22 video defending the game’s sale, saying video games should not be regulated unless they violate the law and that depicting war with North Korea is not strange while the peninsula remains under an armistice.
Why it matters: At the Oct. 23 audit, Culture Minister Choi Hwi-young said political content alone cannot trigger prior censorship, giving the government a clear defense of the game. Han Dong-hoon used its invasion scenario to press Lee Jae Myung on nuclear weapons, wartime operational control and joint military exercises, while Ahn Cheol-soo urged him to watch gameplay footage.
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