The film opens with Bond infiltrating the organization of Colonel Tan-Sun Moon, a North Korean army officer who is illegally selling military weaponry in exchange for African conflict diamonds. Bond is betrayed by an agency mole, resulting in his capture by North Korean authorities. Disavowed by his superiors upon his release, Bond sets out to find the mole on his own. His search eventually leads to billionaire businessman Gustav Graves, who is actually Colonel Moon surgically altered via genetic engineering. (The film's title, Die Another Day, refers to Colonel Moon surviving his first encounter with 007. Upon meeting him later in the film Bond comments, "So you lived to die another day.")

Graves' scheme, reminiscent of Diamonds Are Forever, Moonraker and GoldenEye, involves the construction of Icarus, an orbital mirror system made of diamonds that will supposedly focus solar energy on a small area to light the Arctic nights and, if the investment goes well with buyers, provide year-round sunshine for crop development. In truth the orbital mirror system is actually a superweapon designed to clear a path through the minefield in the demilitarized zone that separates North Korea from South Korea. North Korea would be able to invade South Korea, Japan, and other surrounding nations. Icarus would also be used to defend North Korea while it invades, by destroying any ballistic missile or nuclear warhead fired on North Korea or their troops, thus foiling any large scale retaliation from their enemies.

Bond, with the aid of NSA agent Jinx (played by Halle Berry), defeats Gustav Graves, whose other major techno-toy is an exoskeleton equipped with a high-voltage electric weapon, and prevents global catastrophe. Along the way he beds both Jinx and Graves' assistant, the blond "ice queen" and Olympic fencer Miranda Frost. Frost, who is purportedly working for MI6, is eventually revealed to be the mole within the agency.

Die Another Day is the twentieth James Bond film made by EON Productions and the fourth and final film to star Pierce Brosnan as Ian Fleming's James Bond. It was released in 2002 and produced by Bond veterans Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. It is the first film not to feature Desmond Llewelyn as Q since Live and Let Die (1973) given his death in December of 1999.