North Korea video depicts invasion of South, US hostages

North Korea posted a new propaganda video Friday, showing paratroopers descending on Seoul in an invasion scenario that envisages taking around 150,000 US residents in South Korea hostage. The four-minute video, titled "A Short, Three-Day War", begins with images of a massive artillery and rocket barrage, followed by a large-scale land and air assault with North Korean troops streaming over the border. A male narrator then describes how "crack storm troops will occupy Seoul and other cities and take 150,000 US citizens as hostages." The video was posted on the North's official website, Uriminzokkiri, which distributes news and propaganda from the state media. It comes at a time of escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula, with multiple threats from North Korea of an armed response to joint South Korea-US military drills and to UN sanctions imposed after its nuclear test last month. On Thursday, the North Korean military threatened strikes on US military bases in Japan and Guam. The narrator describes different stages of the invasion, including the destruction of forces under the US Pacific Command with "powerful weapons of mass destruction". The video showed footage of paratroopers jumping from the sky superimposed over an aerial shot of the South Korean capital, with North Korean military helicopters hovering overhead. The airborne troops would engage South Korean soldiers in the streets of Seoul, as 4,000 tanks and 3,000 armoured vehicles sweep across the border and race to the capital, the narrator said. According to official immigration figures, South Korea has a US expatriate population of more than 130,000, as well as 28,000 US troops based in the country. On the third day of the proposed invasion, the narrator said Seoul and other cities would be in a state of total chaos, with no food or water supplies, and no communications network. At this point, the Korean People's Army would step in to "stabilise" the situation. "Like this, we have a Unification War scenario that will be wrapped up in just three days," the narrator said. The video was the latest in a line of similarly-themed productions posted to the Uriminzokkiri channel. An offering early last month showed New York in flames after an apparent missile attack, and another two weeks later depicted US soldiers and President Barack Obama burning in the flames of a nuclear blast. And earlier this week, another video showed the dome of the US Capitol building in Washington exploding in a fireball. Since the UN Security Council tightened sanctions on North Korea over its February nuclear test, Pyongyang has issued a range of apocalyptic threats including "pre-emptive" nuclear strikes on South Korea and the United States. It also announced it was scrapping the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War, but its rhetoric has yet to be matched by any overt military action.