DPRK holds rallies denouncing US

SEOUL/PYONGYANG — Tens of thousands of people in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea marched in anti-US rallies in the nation's capital over the weekend, denouncing "US imperialists", as the country marked the 73rd anniversary of the start of the Korean War (1950-53), state media said on Monday.

More than 120,000 people participated in Sunday's mass rallies in Pyongyang, the DPRK's official Korean Central News Agency said.

The demonstrators who gathered in Pyongyang accused the United States of provoking the war and leaving Koreans with "wounds… that can never be healed".

They also expressed pride in the DPRK's expanding the nation's defense construction and capability, insisting their country now has the "strongest absolute weapon to punish the US imperialists and the war deterrence for self-defense which no enemy dare provoke".

Photos published by the DPRK's Rodong Sinmun newspaper showed a Pyongyang stadium packed with likely tens of thousands of people, raising their fists in the air and holding signs that read: "Let's eradicate US imperialist invaders" and "The entire US mainland is within our striking range".

The weekend rallies came amid heightened tensions in the region, as the pace of the DPRK's weapons demonstrations and the United States' joint military exercises with the Republic of Korea have both intensified in a cycle of tit-for-tat.

In a separate report released by the KCNA on Sunday, the DPRK said the US was "making desperate efforts to ignite a nuclear war", accusing Washington of sending strategic assets to the region.

The report, released by the Institute for American Studies of the Foreign Ministry of the DPRK, stressed that the US is the provoker of the aggression war against Pyongyang, adding that the US has had its eye of greed on the Korean Peninsula, the gateway to the Asian continent, since the mid-19th century.

The US is a "wrecker of peace and stability" on the Korean Peninsula and in the region, the report said.

Agencies Via Xinhua