North Korea nukes SF in birthday party video

For the grand finale to its founder's 105th birthday party this weekend, North Korea celebrated with rousing military music punctuated by a not-so-subtle warning for the United States and San Francisco in particular.

The martial music concert was part of the "Day of the Sun" festivities honoring late founding father Kim Il Sung. As the uniformed brass band and choir played performed enthusiastically to an audience of clapping soldiers, a propaganda video showing missiles being launched was shown on a large overhead screen.

Eventually the nukes found their target, San Francisco, and exploded in massive fiery eruptions, engulfing the city in flames. The audience appeared to applaud San Francisco's destruction, primitive CGI production values notwithstanding.

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1950: A United Nations soldier in uniform helps a wounded Canadian rifleman to an aid station behind the front lines during the Korean War. Click through this slideshow to see a look back at North Korea.

1950: A United Nations soldier in uniform helps a wounded Canadian rifleman to an aid station behind the front lines during the Korean War. Photo: Hulton Archive, Getty Images Photo: Hulton Archive, Getty Images Image 1 of / 55 Caption Close North Korea nukes SF in birthday party video 1 / 55 Back to Gallery

The image of flickering flames overlaid shots of an American flag and a military cemetery.

While the concert took over an hour to finish, San Francisco was wiped out in about 15 seconds.

On Saturday, North Korea tried to test a real missile, but it blew up almost immediately.

Four days earlier, President Donald Trump told Fox News, "We're sending an armada" into the Sea of Japan as a formidable deterrent signal to the North's increasingly belligerent behavior.

But the New York Times reported Tuesday that the carrier and three other warships he was referring to were at that time sailing in the opposite direction, to take part in joint exercises with the Australian Navy in the Indian Ocean.

While laying waste to cities in video simulations is nothing new for North Korea, its armament is plenty real. Most observers believe that Pyongyang does not yet possess the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead intercontinentally. But Vox reported that Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, estimated that North Korea will be able to reach U.S. territory at Guam or Hawaii within five years.

Regionally North Korea's nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles do present a clear and present danger to U.S. allies, with Tokyo and Seoul topping the list of targets.

Seoul is especially vulnerable. Thousands of pieces of artillery — part of the world's largest artillery force — are pointing at the South's capital from across the border. The North is also believed to have stockpiled chemical weapons.