UPDATE: The Pirate Bay announced this morning that the move to North Korea was a joke. More on that here.

Last week, The Pirate Bay announced that it would be moving to Norway and Spain after some legal trouble in Sweden. Only half of that plan worked, however, as the site was quickly booted out of Norway by a local anti-piracy group. Now the infamous torrent tracker has set up shop in the most unlikely of countries.

The Pirate Bay announced over the weekend that the site is now being routed through North Korea. The site’s admins say that they were invited to do so by “the leader of the republic of Korea.” The Pirate Bay didn’t elaborate on which “leader” invited them, but an insider told TorrentFreak that the communist nation had been in talks with The Pirate Bay for the past few weeks.

Here’s the full statement from The Pirate Bay:

The Pirate Bay has been hunted in many countries around the world. Not for illegal activities but being persecuted for beliefs of freedom of information. Today, a new chapter is written in the history of the movement, as well as the history of the internets.

A week ago we could reveal that The Pirate Bay was accessed via Norway and Catalonya. The move was to ensure that these countries and regions will get attention to the issues at hand. Today we can reveal that we have been invited by the leader of the republic of Korea, to fight our battles from their network.

This is truly an ironic situation. We have been fighting for a free world, and our opponents are mostly huge corporations from the United States of America, a place where freedom and freedom of speech is said to be held high. At the same time, companies from that country is chasing a competitor from other countries, bribing police and lawmakers, threatening political parties and physically hunting people from our crew. And to our help comes a government famous in our part of the world for locking people up for their thoughts and forbidding access to information.

We believe that being offered our virtual asylum in Korea is a first step of this country’s changing view of access to information. It’s a country opening up and one thing is sure, they do not care about threats like others do. In that way, TPB and Korea might have a special bond. We will do our best to influence the Korean leaders to also let their own population use our service, and to make sure that we can help improve the situation in any way we can. When someone is reaching out to make things better, it’s also ones duty to grab their hand.

TorrentFreak was able to confirm that The Pirate Bay is indeed being routed through North Korea so at least part of the story is true. It still remains to be seen what kind of arrangement was struck between the two parties though.

Regardless, it’s going to be interesting to see the response from the copyright owners. They have used various derogatory buzzwords to demonize the site before, but they can now say the site loves communism. That will gain it no friends in the U.S. political spectrum, but at least it’s safe from those who wish to shut it down.