SEOUL, South Korea — The release of “The Interview” last week was supposed to spark a geopolitical imbroglio just in time for the holidays. Instead — after a last-minute release of the hastily canceled film to select theaters and crowds on the web — this Christmas turned out like any other, and we were allowed to watch Kim Jong Un’s head explode in peace.
There was no political escalation — no additional leaks or cyberattacks — from the group of mysterious hackers thought to sympathize with North Korea. Even the rogue state’s customary bluster was absent. There were no trademark missile or nuclear tests, and no naval attack or skirmish in the Yellow Sea intended to blackmail the regime’s enemies.
All was quiet, it seemed, on the northern front.
State media instead pulled out its usual bag of insults. On Saturday, it compared US President Barack Obama to a “monkey in a tropical forest,” and said that he “took the lead in appeasing and blackmailing cinema houses and theaters in the US mainland to distribute the movie.”
But why all the talk with no big punches thrown? After all, the Obama administration declared North Korea responsible for the embarassing cyberattack on Sony Pictures, the studio behind the film. Sony quickly shelved the movie after anonymous threats of 9/11-style attacks on US theaters showing it. Then the studio reversed its decision after pressure from the president, allowing audiences access, albeit limited, to the provocative buddy comedy. So shouldn’t we have witnessed a fiercer, more threatening pushback from Pyongyang upon the release of “The Interview”?
Perhaps not. A growing body of skeptics think that North Korea actually wasn’t the culprit behind the Sony hack, or at least that it’s too early to make a call.
There was no political escalation — no additional leaks or cyberattacks — from the group of mysterious hackers thought to sympathize with North Korea. Even the rogue state’s customary bluster was absent. There were no trademark missile or nuclear tests, and no naval attack or skirmish in the Yellow Sea intended to blackmail the regime’s enemies.
All was quiet, it seemed, on the northern front.
State media instead pulled out its usual bag of insults. On Saturday, it compared US President Barack Obama to a “monkey in a tropical forest,” and said that he “took the lead in appeasing and blackmailing cinema houses and theaters in the US mainland to distribute the movie.”
But why all the talk with no big punches thrown? After all, the Obama administration declared North Korea responsible for the embarassing cyberattack on Sony Pictures, the studio behind the film. Sony quickly shelved the movie after anonymous threats of 9/11-style attacks on US theaters showing it. Then the studio reversed its decision after pressure from the president, allowing audiences access, albeit limited, to the provocative buddy comedy. So shouldn’t we have witnessed a fiercer, more threatening pushback from Pyongyang upon the release of “The Interview”?
Perhaps not. A growing body of skeptics think that North Korea actually wasn’t the culprit behind the Sony hack, or at least that it’s too early to make a call.
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