Seoul (CNN) Political activist Gloria Steinem was in high school when the Korean War started. Now 85, she is urging politicians to bring it to an end.

In 1950, North Korea invaded the South and war broke out between the two countries and China, the Soviet Union and the United States. Although an armistice was signed in 1953 stopping hostilities, the war never officially ended. As it was in 1953, a formal peace agreement today would need buy in from the US and China.

On Friday, feminist icon Steinem spoke outside the US Embassy in Seoul, urging the US to agree to finally end the war -- and include women in the peace process. She'll also attend a peace forum at the Demilitarized Zone between South and North Korea on Thursday.

"If it didn't affect women and only affected men, I would be against war anyway," Steinem, a leading figure of the women's liberation movement, told CNN in an interview Friday. "But it's especially important for us to speak because we don't have decision making power in going to war, and yet we're affected by war."

She's not for a "competition of tears" but says that she thinks women have been more affected by the ongoing war.

United States activist Gloria Steinem, center, marches with other activists to the Imjingak Pavilion along the military wire fences near the border village of Panmunjom on May 24, 2015 in Paju, South Korea.

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