The 76-year-old North Korean veteran is unlikely to celebrate Sunday's truce anniversary, since for him the war is not over until his country is reunified.

"We loathe the US Army, because it has occupied the south of our country for the past more than 50 years," he told AFP during a recent reporting trip to Pyongyang.

"They're trying to stifle our socialist system, but we're not afraid because we have the leadership of Kim Jong-Il and the single-hearted unity of the people."

The cease-fire agreement that was signed on July 27, 1953, ushered in 50 years of uneasy peace on the Korean peninsula.

It is a peace that now again looks dangerously close to dissolving into war, as the anniversary coincides with a rapidly escalating crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

Even though the 1950-53 Korean War was bloody enough -- killing or maiming more than a million Koreans and 900,000 Chinese -- a second war could be even worse.

Today's military technology is several times more lethal than 50 years ago, and the willingness to use the weapons seems entirely unabated, even among people who were born a generation after the end of hostilities.

"If the US Army attacks again, we will annihilate them, all of them, wipe them off the face of the earth, and then the North and the South can live together peacefully," said Kim Mi Gyong, a Pyongyang woman in her 20s.

During the first Korean War, the South was helped in its defense against northern attackers by an international force dominated by the US Army, but with soldiers from as unlikely places as Turkey and Ethiopia.

Faced by this powerful coalition, the North would probably have collapsed within a few months, if it was not for support of hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops pouring across the border in late 1950.

After one year of World War II-style mobile operations, the last two years were characterized by grueling trench fighting more reminiscent of World War I.

North Korean and Chinese veterans' memories of what they felt when they went into battle more than 50 years ago suggest the vehemence with which a new Korean War would be waged.

Wang Sheng, now a retiree living on meager Chinese pensions, was determined to stop the arrogant American enemy when he entered Korea's mountainous north as a 22-year-old soldier in October 1950.

The way Wang and his comrades saw it, the United States had just tried unsuccessfully to prevent China's communist revolution, and was now repeating its mistake, propping up a corrupt, crumbling regime in South Korea.

"We all wanted to kill as many Americans as possible," he said.

Wang's blood-lust soon turned into a simple struggle for survival as the reality of war dawned upon him.

"Our enemies, American and British, looked huge," he said. "But that also had drawbacks for them. They made for bigger targets and had to dig bigger foxholes for themselves."

Kim, the North Korean veteran, commanded 700 men during the war and took part in some of its bloodiest battles.

Three years of carnage did not shake his faith in his mission, and he learned to turn grief over the deaths of his comrades into hatred and scorn, he said.

This is a scorn that has not been dulled at all by the passage of five decades.

"Once the battles started, our enemies always ran away," he said. "I have experience fighting with the Americans, the British and the Turks, and they were all afraid of dying."

In case a new war erupts on the peninsula, Kim has no doubt about its outcome.

"If the Americans don't remember what they suffered in the last Korean War, we'll wipe them out in a second Korean War," Kim said. "This time, the fighting will be over in just a few days."

WAR.WIRE