Koreas Agree!: Pan 007 Flick

James Bond's latest enemy struck back Saturday.

In a challenge to Hollywood, North Korea called on the United States to stop screening "Die Another Day," saying the 20th James Bond feature slanders the isolated communist state.

The MGM hit proves that the United States is an "empire of evil" and "the headquarters that spreads abnormality, degeneration, violence and ... corrupt sex culture," said North Korea's Secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland.

The committee is a communist party organ that deals mainly with relations with South Korea. Its statement was carried by the North's official news agency, KCNA.

In "Die Another Day," Bond races a hovercraft through the demilitarized zone dividing North and South Korea. He is captured, imprisoned and tortured in North Korea, and released through a prisoner exchange.

"Die Another Day" has irked some South Koreans as well, although it will not open in Seoul theaters until Christmas. Some Koreans have urged a boycott, saying the film reveals an ignorance of their culture.

The movie shows a U.S. intelligence official ordering the mobilization of the South Korean army and an outdated scene of Koreans using a cow to till fields. Bond also has sex in a Buddhist temple.

"The United States should stop at once the showing of (the movie) describing the DPRK as part of an 'axis of evil,' inciting inter-Korean confrontation, groundlessly despising and insulting the Korean nation and malignantly describing even religion," North Korea said. The DPRK, short for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is the official name of North Korea.