North Korea on Friday marked what it calls its victory in the 1950-53 Korean War with pledges to uphold the military-first policy and remain loyal to new leader Kim Jong-Un.

North Korea on Friday marked what it calls its victory in the 1950-53 Korean War with pledges to uphold the military-first policy and remain loyal to new leader Kim Jong-Un.

Across the country, soldiers, workers and students laid floral baskets and bouquets before the statues of late founding leader Kim Il-Sung who died in 1994 and his son Kim Jong-Il who died last December, state media said.

The conflict began with a North Korean invasion of the South and ended on July 27, 1953, with an armistice. The truce was never followed by a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas technically at war.

The North was saved from defeat when Chinese forces intervened in late 1950 to support it against US-led United Nations forces backing the South.

The conflict left some two to three million soldiers and civilians dead, and the peninsula remained divided along roughly the same latitude.

The nuclear-armed country has celebrated the "day of victory" every year since the armistice with cultural events and gatherings of party, government and military officials.