An image of the U.S. Capitol being hit by an explosion has been posted on a North Korean propaganda website.

The video, published by the semi-official Uriminzokkiri agency and posted on its YouTube account, at first shows still images of North Korean artillery, missiles and soldiers.

It then moves on to film of numerous missiles being fired, before showing what appears to be a gun sight zeroing in on the White House and then the U.S. Capitol.

"The White House is caught in the panoramic sight of a (North Korean) long-range missile. This hotbed of war is in the scope of a nuclear bomb blow," a caption on the video says, according to a translation by the South Korean news agency Yonhap.

An explosion hits the dome of the Capitol building, leaving a gaping hole. The four-minute film then continues with yet more images of rockets being fired.

A video showing an American city that looked like New York engulfed in flames after a missile attack was posted on the same website last month.

Yonhap via EPA

An image taken from a North Korean propaganda website Monday appears to show the U.S. Capitol -- wrongly identified as the White House -- being hit by a missile.

It was part of a dream sequence in which a photographer circles the earth in a fictional North Korea space shuttle. It was accompanied by an instrumental version of the song “We are the World.”

"Black smoke is seen somewhere in America," text that accompanied the video said. "It seems that the nest of wickedness is ablaze with the fire it started."

'Petulant child'
Tension has been high on the Korean Peninsula since the North carried out a rocket test in December and then a nuclear bomb test in February.

It also took the opportunity to threaten South Korea with “final destruction” during a United Nations Conference on Disarmament last month.

And then on March 9, the North threatened to exercise its “right to a pre-emptive nuclear attack" as new sanctions were unanimously agreed by the United Nations Security Council.

Heather Williams, a research fellow at the U.K.’s Chatham House website, said North Korea was “almost like a petulant child,” constantly wanting to remind people of its existence by acting out.

She said images like the Capitol and New York explosions fitted the theme of previous propaganda from Pyongyang, but added “at the same time, it’s a more serious situation than we have seen in quite a while.”

“It is a reminder of the situation and that things could escalate,” she said.

Williams said Kim Jong Un was a “young, new leader” who still needed to “prove himself” to the country’s powerful military.

“My take is that it is overwhelmingly bluster for domestic reasons, not international ones,” she said.

Last week, Director of National Intelligence  James Clapper told Congress he was "very concerned" about North Korea's recent rhetoric as well as the rocket and nuclear bomb tests, The Associated Press reported.

"These programs demonstrate North Korea's commitment to develop long-range missile technology that could pose a direct threat to the United States, and its efforts to produce and market ballistic missiles raise broader regional and global security concerns," Clapper told the Senate Intelligence committee.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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KCNA via Reuters, file

A banner reading "Accomplish task suggested by Workers Party Central Committee and Central Army Committee" appears at a rally commemorating the 65th anniversary of North Korean Workers Party in Pyongyang on Feb. 13, 2010.

North Korea’s leaders are “peerlessly great” and capable of “immortal feats,” Americans are “imperialists” who use “brigandish logic” and critics are just “rats” scurrying about in a ditch.

And not to forget the gushing ode to the “threadbare and discolored” parka worn by the late “dear leader” Kim Jong Il or the discovery of a unicorn lair.

Official pronouncements from North Korea’s state-controlled media have always had a certain poetic quality -- although the poet in question would appear to be extremely angry, somewhat paranoid and possessed by an overly active imagination.

And more than a year after Kim Jong Un, son of Kim Jong Il, came to power, it is clear that the planet's only hereditary communist state is still pleased with its flowery rhetoric, despite mocking laughter from the rest of the world.

After all, foreign journalists who dare to criticize can be easily dismissed as “a sordid hackwork of rubbish media,” according to one release Wednesday from the KCNA news agency.

Slideshow: The life of Kim Jong ll

Kcna / AFP - Getty Images

A pictorial look at the North Korean leader through the years

Launch slideshow

And not to worry. “The sun will always give off its light even though rats make nonsensical remarks moving around ditch, while finding it hard to raise their heads to the bright human world.” So there.

On Thursday, KCNA's latest statement hailed its recent satellite launch as a demonstration of its “space science and technology and its overall national power.” This “stark fact” was “favored by the world.”

No matter that the United Nations Security Council had agreed to a resolution to sanction North Korea over the launch, which is feared was actually a test of long-range missile technology.

This claim was simply the “brigandish logic” of the U.S. and the Security Council was nothing more than “a marionette.”

But, again, there is really no need for North Koreans to worry, given their country is “a political, ideological and military giant” run by “peerlessly great persons of [the sacred] Mt. Paektu.”

However, occasionally there are hints that not everyone is quite so on-message.

At a meeting of the Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League and Central Committee of the General Federation of Trade unions of Korea Wednesday, KCNA said that “reporters and speakers” had “underscored the need to dynamically conduct ideological education to firmly defend and glorify the sacred revolutionary careers and immortal feats” of said peerlessly great leaders.

Slideshow: Daily life in North Korea

Elizabeth Dalziel / AP

From work to play, see pictures from inside the secretive country.

Launch slideshow

Among Kim Jong Il’s accomplishments were: Shooting 11 holes-in-one during the first round of golf he ever played, writing operas, producing movies, and flying jet fighters.

His death, of course, was due to “physical and mental over-work” on behalf of the nation.

Another reason why he was so great was that he wore an old jacket, which was the subject of a radio essay last month called the “Parka of Kim Jong Il during his field guidance” on North Korean broadcasting service, Voice of Korea.

"His parka was that of a great father, with which he kept all the people on this land from snow, rain and cold,” the Voice of Korea report said.

Kim – a "peerless sage of mankind, possessed with warm humanity, broad magnanimity and noble sense of moral obligation” – had apparently worn the parka as a reminder of his country’s grim history after the death of his father Kim Il Sung.

'Outlandish superlatives'
Seoul-based North Korea expert Daniel Pinkston, North East Asia deputy project director for the International Crisis Group, said stories about unbelievable golfing prowess and the like were not really meant to be taken literally.

“The whole point is not that people necessarily believe it,” he said, noting there was also a degree of mythologizing about revered figures from the past in the West.

And Pinkston said what often sounds “comical” or “bizarre” in English “doesn’t come off as the kind of stilted, strange language” in Korean.

But he said North Korea perhaps suffered from its isolation and the lack of feedback on its writing style.

“They do have a tendency to use outlandish superlatives” to emphasize a point, he added.

The main message, however, of many of the statements is seldom lost in translation, Pinkston said.

“It’s just very harsh and militant,” he said.

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