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North Korea turns ‘Call of Duty’ and ‘We Are the World’ into bizarre propaganda video

As North Korea prepares to conduct a nuclear test, a bizarre video has appeared on YouTube showing a dream sequence of a US city in ruins.

What’s weirder than anti-U.S. military state propaganda? That’s easy! Anti-U.S. military state propaganda that uses a popular American song to glorify the mass destruction of the United States.

As New York Magazine notes, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (in addition to wielding the most ironic use of “democratic” in modern history) has ripped off an elevator-music version of “We Are the World” to glorify the decimation of their “evil imperialist foes” at the hands of the country’s new, expensive space program.

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In the video, released by North Korea’s official propaganda agency, a placid young man falls asleep and dreams of the wonders this space technology can provide for a country of people who would probably rather have access to basic life necessities with all those government funds.

But food and adequate shelter can wait. To the sweeping instrumental strains of the Lionel Richie/Michael Jackson classic, (a charity single that was released in 1985 to combat famine in Africa. Irony: 2, NK: 0) the man dreams of a rocket that will unite both Koreas (under North Korean dictate, naturally) before it heads west to destroy Manhattan in a scene ripped directly from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Irony: 3, NK: 0).

LiveLeak.com translated some of the video captions, and they’re about as hilarious and terrifying as you’d expect.

"Somewhere in the United States, black clouds of smoke are billowing," one caption reads. "It seems that the nest of wickedness is ablaze with the fire started by itself."

"Despite all kinds of attempts by imperialists to isolate and crush us... Never will anyone be able to stop the people marching toward a final victory."

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While the mechanism behind this video belies a population in distress (which is never, ever funny) and potential nuclear threat (also considerably less funny), it’s hard not to laugh at the ridiculousness of the entire grandiose, low-grade, cut-off-from-reality production.

Particularly when one clever commenter put it this way: Oh man, those North Koreans are gonna be SO embarrassed when they realize that using ‘We are the World’ without permission is a violation of U.S. copyright law.”