A former top general of the South Korean Army, Paik Sun-yup, gave the opening speech, and the crowd, estimated at 110,000 people, waved the South Korean and U.S. flags throughout the rally.

Another speaker, Lee Sang-hun, president of the Korean Veterans Association, said the country's younger generation had a deluded image of the North's Kim Jong Il regime, and said the nation's defense situation was more dangerous than it was during the Korean War.

Lee Sang-jin, president of a civic group called the Korean Principles Association, said that the teachers in the left-wing student's union, Jeongyojo, were imposing "imbalanced ideologies" upon their students.

A leader of another civic group, Bong Tae-hong, voiced support for the South Korea-U.S. alliance, saying that if the U.S. Forces in Korea withdrew from the peninsula foreign investors would stop investing here and the economy would collapse. The government should strengthen the alliance, he said.

Parents of sailors killed during last year's North-South naval clash in the West Sea also participated in the rally.

Hwang Eun-tae, father of the late Hwang Do-hyun, said, "My father was killed in the war by a bullet from a North Korean soldier, and now my son has also been killed by the North. The public commemorates the death of the two middle-school girls killed by a U.S. Army vehicle, but they do not remember the people killed by the North."

At 6 p.m., the participants tried to burn a 3x1 meter North Korean flag, but the police stepped in and quickly put out the flames. A brief tussle ensued. (Kim Seung-bum, sbkim@chosun.com )