North Korea and James Bond

I know this post isn't exactly academic, but seeing part of the recent James Bond flick, Die Another Day on TV yesterday made me think. The movie casts North Koreans as the main antagonists. Bond spends months enduring torture in a North Korean prison, and battles North Korean renegades who plan to use a superweapon to blow up the mines in the DMZ and attack South Korea. While this is obviously an inflated work of Hollywood, being in this class made me think about how popular films project perceptions, in this case, the notion that North Korea is an imminent threat with unspeakable doomsday plots.

While academics can take a step back, examine the facts, and scoff at fiction, do films like this promote misplaced fear among the general public? Or do most people not think or care about it?