On the occasion of the 73rd anniversary of the start of the Korean war, thousands of citizens have marched across the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's [North Korea] capital city Pyongyang over the weekend, chanting anti-US slogans and vowing revenge for the crimes committed by the US during the war. 

According to North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, about 120,000 people took part in Sunday's event.

US intervention during the 1950-53 war is remembered for the large-scale destruction it caused across Korea through a brutal bombing campaign. The US has also made use of biological weapons such as germ warfare and infecting crops and livestock as a means of producing more casualties. US forces are also remembered for carrying out mass killings and massacres against troops and civilians, as well as the killing of refugees. They have also resorted to torture to interrogate prisoners, subjecting them to the worst sorts of physical and mental treatments. 

During the rallies, Koreans expressed appreciation for Kim Jong Un's expansion of the country's defense capabilities, noting that 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."

"Let’s eradicate US imperialist invaders" and "The entire US mainland is within our striking range" are just some of the many signs and slogans that were raised and chanted during the march, as per photos published by the Rodong Sinmun newspaper.

Kore Tarzı Onur Yürüyüşü |
Abd emperyalizmine karşı mücadele günü olan 25 Haziranda ülke genelinde protesto gösterileri düzenlendi. Başkent Pyongyang’da 120.000 kişi Abd emperyalizmini protesto etti. pic.twitter.com/RH0PxbSFra

— Kore Gerçekleri #Z #Grüne_an_die_Ostfront (@dprk_kdhc) June 26, 2023

The march comes amid heightened tensions in the region over provocations initiated by the US and South Korea in the peninsula.

The US and South Korea have been conducting joint military exercises in the Peninsula for decades but in recent years they have increased the scale of their drills, simulating large-scale bombing against the DPRK.

Pyongyang has condemned the allies’ combined exercises as invasion rehearsals.

Read more: DPRK says Russia will 'emerge victorious' stressing support for Moscow

Yesterday, the DPRK's foreign ministry’s Institute for American Studies warned in a report that the Korean peninsula is on "the brink of a nuclear war" amid provocations on the part of the US and South Korea. 

"...bellicose moves of the US have pushed the military tensions on the Korean peninsula and in Northeast Asia already plunged into an extremely unstable situation closer to the brink of a nuclear war," the report, released by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), says, as quoted by the South Korean Yonhap news agency.  

The report also states that the US has been increasingly posing a serious threat to the DPRK's national security and sovereignty, noting that Pyongyang can no longer tolerate it.  

It further condemns the US and South Korea for their "delusional anti-communist military confrontation" and "rhetorical threats," warning that a war in the peninsula would "rapidly expand into a world war and a thermonuclear war unprecedented in the world," causing "the most catastrophic and irreversible consequences."  

The DPRK will continue to pursue an agenda of expanding its self-defense capabilities as long as the US continues its provocations, the report concludes.