North Korean Video: A ‘New York City’ in Ruins After Missile Attack
By Alexandra Ward, Newsmax
North Korea released a bizarre YouTube video over the weekend depicting a missile attack on a city that closely resembles New York City — all part of what’s assumed to be a public relations stunt to gear up for yet another nuclear test.
The video, which uses an instrumental version of Michael Jackson’s “We Are The World” in the background, was posted Saturday on the YouTube channel Uriminzokkiri, which distributes news from the country’s state-run media.
The three-minute clip features a dream sequence depicting a city — it could be NYC — shrouded in an American flag and burning down in flames.
“Somewhere in the United States, black clouds of smoke are billowing,” reads a caption superimposed over the footage, translated by The Guardian. “It seems that the nest of wickedness is ablaze.”
The video was posted just a day after North Korea threatened to retaliate against the U.S. for backing a resolution to censure and sanction the country for a rocket launch in December that breached the United Nations’ rules.
“We are not disguising the fact that the various satellites and long-range rockets that we will fire and the high-level nuclear test we will carry out are targeted at the United States,” North Korea’s National Defense Commission said Saturday in a statement through state news agency KCNA.
North Korea performed nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, and a third test appears imminent, sources say. The two previous nuclear tests both occurred after North Korea was condemned by the U.N. for rocket launches.
John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., called the YouTube video “disturbing.”
“The film is yet another disturbing reminder that a nuclear-capable North Korea is a threat in its region and worldwide,” Bolton told Fox News.
But Doug Bandow, a senior fellow for the Cato Institute, which specializes in foreign policy, said the video is little more than “bluster.”
“For years, they have used vivid imagery in their rhetoric — they once threatened to turn Seoul into a lake of fire — so they’ve figured out a way to put pictures to the rhetoric,” he told Fox News of the video. “But it doesn’t look to me to be more than an amplification of what they’ve said for years. The good news here is that while they’re evil, they’re not stupid. They know they would lose.”
Meanwhile, Twitter users found the video amusing.
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