5. 2012 Banned In North Korea Because It Fell On Kim Il Sung's 100th Birthday
You would expect all countries to ban the Roland Emmerich disaster movie for being a total turd, but unfortunately it was given the green light by most censors and it swept across the globe, bringing misery to any unfortunates who thought it might be a good choice to go see at the cinema. Except in North Korea. North Korea is not known as the most liberal of places and their reasoning to ban 2012 makes as much sense as any other news that comes out from the secretive state. 2012 is considered a very special year in North Korea because that is the year that coincides with their former (deceased) leader Kim Il Sungs 100th Birthday. It also happens to be year that was earmarked as;
"the year for opening the grand gates to becoming a rising superpower.
Therefore, any film that dared to show 2012 in a bad light was considered to be offensive. That meant the film 2012 was banned for that reason. Anyone caught with a pirated copy were not arrested for having bad taste in films but rather;
"grave provocation against the development of the state.