North Korea commemorated the 64th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War with a mass rally earlier today.

The North's state-run television KRT showed thousands of people including senior party and state officials at the rally on Kim Il-sung Square in Pyongyang.

People at the rally also marched down the street while chanting anti-U.S. slogans such as "down with U.S. aggressor", KRT showed.

The rally was broadcast live on KRT - but the young leader Kim Jong Un was not seen during the broadcast.

The Korean War started on June 25, 1950, when Communist North Korean troops launched a surprise attack across the 38th parallel into South Korea.

U.S. led United Nations forces battled Chinese and Soviet backed North Korea, in which three million soldiers and civilians were killed and five million became refugees.

The Korean War ended roughly where it started - near the 38th parallel. The armistice of Aug. 30, 1953, stipulated that both sides withdraw their forces two kilometres from there to form a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). It remains the world's most heavily-fortified frontier.

North and South Korea are still technically at war since the 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce without a peace treaty.

The two Koreas station about one million troops near their respective sides of the Demilitarized Zone that has divided the peninsula since the Korea War ended.

The isolated and poverty-stricken North regularly threatens to destroy the United States and South Korea in a sea of flames.