North Korea is urging the world to join its struggle to "dismember the gangster US imperialists" in a statement released to mark the 65th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War.

The statement, published by Pyongyang's English Language official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), specifically urged "Asia to cut off the right hand, Africa to cut off the left hand, the Middle East to cut off the ankles, and Europe to cut off its neck".

The statement alleges that the US launched the war in the 1950s with the intention of wiping out North Korea, but lost, and has been trying to take over North Korea and the rest of Asia since.

"Far from drawing a lesson from the defeat in the war in the 1950s, the US has intensified isolation, blockade and suffocation of the Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK) in a bid to ignite the second Korean war," it said.

It added that North Korea was "ready for a conventional war, nuclear war and cyber warfare".

"The only way for the US to [preserve itself is to make an] apology before the army and people of the DPRK and hoist a white flag."

The Korean War started on June 25 1950 with a massive North Korean attack across the 38th parallel, along which the Korean peninsula was divided into the communist North and the capitalist South.

It soon developed into an international war, drawing in the United States and its allies on the South's side and China on the North's side.

About one million South Koreans were killed or wounded, while casualties among North Korean civilians are estimated at 1.5 million.

More than 40,000 US soldiers were killed and some 100,000 wounded.

As the conflict ended with a fragile armistice rather than a peace treaty, the two Koreas are still, technically, at war.

Cross-border tension remains high, especially concerning the North's series of nuclear and missile tests over the past few years.

AFP