DPRK marks armistice anniversary with dire warning to US

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Monday issued a dire warning against "US imperialism" as it commemorated the 62nd anniversary of the Korean Armistice Agreement. In the wee hours of the day, which DPRK top leader Kim Jong Un called "the eternal v-day" for his country, Kim paid tribute to late leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il at Kumsusan Palace of Sun, according to state-run news agency KCNA. Rodong Sinmun, Pyongyang's leading official newspaper, dedicated an editorial to the occasion, recalling that DPRK forces defeated "the US imperialist aggressors who boasted of being the'strongest' in the world" and urging the whole nation "to make dynamic advance along the road of final victory." On Sunday, the DPRK held a nation meeting "to celebrate the 62nd anniversary of the Korean people's victory in the great Fatherland Liberation War," according to the KCNA. "It is more than 60 years since the ceasefire on the land but peace has not yet settled on it," General Pak Yong Sik, minister of the Korean People's Armed Forces, was quoted as saying at the conference. "If the US imperialists provoke a new war, oblivious of the lessons they drew from the documents of surrender signed by them in the past, the revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK will wipe out the aggressors to the last one so that there would be no one left to sign a surrender document," he warned. At a veterans conference on Saturday, Kim Jong Un lauded July 27 as a day of liberation "when our people defended with honour their country's dignity and sovereignty from the brigandish aggression by the US imperialists." He said that his country "has been the front line of the anti-US struggle, with the dark clouds of aggression and war constantly hovering over this land," and that the United States and its allies "are making a last-ditch attempt to stifle" the DPRK. "If the enemy, forgetful of the tradition governed by the law of history, commit another reckless act of provocation against our Republic, our revolutionary armed forces will bury them in the grave of final ruin," he said. "Our force at present is not what it was in the 1950s," he added, saying that the DPRK "now possess such a force as to fight any form of warfare of the choice of the United States" and "have a might powerful enough to deter the United States from unleashing a nuclear war." Across the 38th parallel north border, South Korean and US forces held a ceremony on Monday in the truce village of Panmunjom, according to South Korean news agency Yonhap. Lt. Gen. Terrence O'Shaughnessy, deputy commander of the United States Forces Korea (USFK), was quoted as saying that the USFK will "do everything" to keep stability on the Korean Peninsula against what he called the DPRK's "continuing provocations." Also speaking at the ceremony, South Korean Army Maj. Gen. Chang Kwang-hyun said the only sure way to sustain the peace in South Korea amid national confrontation "is by obtaining a firm war-readiness position and capacity." The Korean Armistice Agreement, signed on July 27, 1953, marked the end of the three-year Korean War, yet the absence of a peace deal means that the two neighbors sharing the Korean Peninsula are still technically at war.