The year is 2027, and the army of the Greater Korean Republic has occupied a crumbling, bankrupt United States after annexing Japan and much of Southeast Asia, led by current North Korean heir apparent Kim Jong-un.
This is the bleak but "terrifyingly plausible" scenario painted by US game publisher THQ Inc in its new title Homefront, released in the United States on Tuesday for Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's Playstation 3, and PC.
The "shoot-em-up" casts the player as a member of a ragtag band of insurgents taking on the 20-million strong, nuclear-armed military of an aggressive Korea, reunited by Kim Jong-un after the death of his father, current North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
The game's content and an associated marketing blitz have touched nerves at a time of heightened tension on the Korean peninsula after a series of attacks on South Korea last year.
"The whole scenario is unutterably ridiculous," said Aidan Foster-Carter, an honorary senior research fellow at Britain's Leeds University and a Korea specialist who accused THQ of "playing on and fomenting a sense of anxiety."
Japan's Computer Entertainment Rating Organization has ordered the removal of all images of Kim Jong-il and references to North Korea from the game before it can be shipped there, according to THQ spokesman Tyrone Miller.
THQ will not even attempt to sell the game in South Korea, which bans titles that describe "anti-national" actions or "distort historical truths," said Cho Dong-myeon, head of the game review team at the country's Game Rating Board.
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