# Who wrote Weird Al Yankovic's song on North Korea? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 27, 2025, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-wrote-weird-al-yankovics-song-on-north-korea/1021405 "2025-07-27T23:08:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Timz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Timz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Timz)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2025, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-wrote-weird-al-yankovics-song-on-north-korea/1021405/1 "2025-07-27T23:08:37Z")
It’s at the end of a John Oliver show from about 2018 – if you search for John Oliver Charlottesville North Korea, that will find it. It seems North Koreans are accordion fans (!), so John Oliver recruited accordion-player Weird Al and his band to send a message to them. The performance was hilarious, and wonderful in every other possible way. Who gets the credit for it? ---
**Author:** ![Ponderoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponderoid/32/19221_2.png) [@Ponderoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponderoid)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2025, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-wrote-weird-al-yankovics-song-on-north-korea/1021405/2 "2025-07-27T23:20:40Z")
According to [Weird Al’s site](https://www.weirdal.com/archives/biography-2/), he did. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2025, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-wrote-weird-al-yankovics-song-on-north-korea/1021405/3 "2025-07-28T13:33:43Z")
Relevant quote, for the TL;DR treatment: > In August 2017, Al wrote and performed “The North Korea Polka (Please Don’t Nuke Us)” for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO).