Hollywood comedy “The Interview” has won a few fans in between sparking apocalyptic warnings from North Korea ― but for defectors who escaped the communist state, there’s nothing funny about it.

That’s not to say they’re not watching it. Defectors based in the South have flocked to see the film at the center of an escalating international row thanks to its lurid depiction of the assassination of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

The United States claims that the film’s presentation of Kim ― whose family has ruled the reclusive, impoverished state for more than six decades ― prompted Pyongyang to launch a massive cyberattack on Sony Pictures, the studio that made it.

“Every defector I know has seen the movie,” said Kim Sung-min, who fled the North in 1996 and now runs the anti-Pyongyang Free North Korea Radio station.

“We’ve talked a lot about this flick over the past week, and we simply did not understand why it gives foreigners laughs,” he added.

Internet links to the film quickly circulated amongst the South’s 20,000-strong defector community after Sony reversed its decision to axe it late last month following threats to cinema-goers from the shadowy Sony hackers.

But defectors have reacted to the movie with a mixture of shock and bafflement.

It’s not just that its crass humor is largely lost on a North Korean audience ― it’s that growing up immersed in a personality cult, which gives god-like status to the ruling Kim dynasty, is not an experience that can easily be forgotten.

Even for defectors who have been in the South for years, it is jarring to see Kim ridiculed as a Katy Perry fan who has a complex about his dad.

“For me, it wasn’t a comedy ― more of a bombshell, because of the way it made fun of Kim Jong-un,” Park Sang-hak, who defected to the South in 1999, told AFP.

But that is precisely the reason that Park, who leads a group of activists that regularly attempt to airdrop anti-Kim leaflets into North Korea, is planning to launch gas-filled balloons over the border carrying some 100,000 copies of the film on DVDs and USB memory sticks. (AFP)