Korean Die Another Day Screening Report

By MI6 Staff

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On Friday 17th January 2003, Fox Korea organised a free screening of "Die Another Day" in the Cine City Theatre in the South Korea's capitol Seoul. The extraordinary free event was dreamt up for Fox International in an attempt to stem the misunderstanding and rumours that have caused a multitude of protests against the film on both sides of the Korean border.

The "first come first served" event was fully booked within hours on the day as curious South Koreans flooded in for (as For Korea said) "a chance to watch Die Another Day themselves first and judge whether the film is a bad controversial movie or not".

Right: South Korean activists have rallied at scores of theatres to block "Die Another Day" in a protest that has prompted 10 out of 50 cinemas in Seoul to pull the film early (click here for protest coverage).

Thanks to our sources, MI6 has secured a video report made by South Korean newspaper Dong A Ilbo inside the theatre.

After the free tickets were all snapped up, the reporter first asked a young couple whether they would buy tickets or not. The girl said she won't pay for a Die Another Day ticket and the guy said they would rather watch another movie instead of DAD if they needed to pay for tickets.

The reporter then asked an older cinema go-er what he thinks about the younger generation who are protesting against the film.

He said he doesn't mind too much about young generation's anti-DAD protest and he will watch the film no matter what. He said he has loved the Bond series since Dr. No forty years ago.

Another man (pictured in the box-out on the video)) said he wanted to watch DAD because
the media has been talking about the film so much. He learned about free event from a local newspaper and his wife reserved 2 free tickets in afternoon. His wife said "the movie is nothing but a movie" and production teams have freedom with how they make movies. She added that DAD is
fictional story, so she wasn't uncomfortable about her country was portrayed.

The final interviewee said he thoroughly enjoyed Die Another Day. He thought that DAD is one of the must-see blockbusters and commented on the amount of money which the production team had spent.

He said DAD has good action scenes and was a good entertaining movie, but he regretted that it looked like production team lacked quality information about Korea. "The production should have studied more about both North and South Korea before shooting the film, and that would have helped to avoid obvious mistakes (click here for the Korean blooper list).

"It looks like production team guessed about the Korea situation. It's just like common Hollywood style. Korea has been wrongfully portrayed in most foreign movies and this is the area we should fix"

"There are two opinions. Some people are saying it's just a movie. Some are saying even though it is a movie, it is not acceptable to let movie makers portray a country however they like", the reporter added.

"Let's hope we won't see any more controversial movies in 2003".

As of January 17th, only 7 theatres are showing DAD in Seoul. Only 190,000 people watched the film in the South Korean capital, with another 590,000 nationally. Fox Korea said they are satisfied with the result, and the film did well in the country even though there were strong anti-DAD protests. They concluded by saying that the protests failed to significantly damage the Korean box-office for Die Another Day.