A South Korean politician just told his country's president to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. Not as a gift. As homework. Han Dong-hoon urged President Lee Jae-myung to see how catastrophic a North Korean invasion would be if the country isn't ready — using a $70 video game as the visual aid.
The game's opening is the reason this landed: Seoul goes dark under an EMP, missiles rain in, and the city burns. His quote, per IGN reporting on Korea's Herald Business: "I hope the image of a Seoul reduced to ashes in the game remains in the realm of fiction." That's a politician using a game's destructible capital as a policy argument — prepare first, hope later.
Meanwhile the game's North Korea invasion edition is topping sales charts in South Korea, per Japan Today. Gamers are playing it, politicians are citing it, and the timing — real-world threats traded across the border the same week the game launched — made the parallels impossible to ignore.
And because you're wondering: IGN scored it 7/10 — a great campaign carrying a familiar multiplayer. The politicians are apparently the ones buying it for the story mode.
Watch the full breakdown:
[Video embedded — Modern Warfare 4 is foreign policy now]
Sources: IGN{target=_blank rel=noopener} · Japan Today{target=_blank rel=noopener}