Pyongyang slams UK TV series

Seoul, Aug. 31: North Korea on Sunday slammed a new British TV drama series revolving around 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 — features a British nuclear scientist captured in the North during a covert mission and forced to help weaponise its nuclear technology. The 10- part series 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 to steal foreign technology to further develop it, the NDC spokesman said in a statement carried by the state news agency.

“Those who are talking about ‘ illegal acquisition of nuclear technology’ are no more than blind fools and idiots bereft of even elementary ability to discern the truth,” said the official.