FACTBOX: A quick look at North Korea

(Reuters) - North Korea was marking the 60th anniversary of its founding on Tuesday with what is expected to be its biggest military parade.

Here are some basic facts about North Korea:

OFFICIAL NAME: Democratic People's Republic of Korea

(DPRK).

POPULATION: 23.2 million (2007 estimate)

FORMATION: Japan is defeated in World War Two, ending its colonial rule over Korea. In 1945, the peninsula is divided at the 38th parallel with the Soviet Union administering the North and the United States the South. North and South Korea officially establish governments in 1948.

POLITICS: Communist state, one-man dictatorship under Kim Jong-il

CAPITAL: Pyongyang

AREA: 120,540 square km (46,540 square miles) bounded by China and Russia to the north and South Korea to the south. North Korea makes up 55 percent of the Korean peninsula and is slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Mississippi.

ECONOMY: North Korea's gross domestic product in 2007 was about $20 billion, which is less than 3 percent of the size of the South's economy. The North Korean economy is weaker now than it was 20 years ago.

ARMED FORCES: It is the world's most militarized nation relative to population size, with active forces of 1.2 million. More than half of North Korea's army is deployed within 65 km (40 miles) of the Demilitarized Zone dividing it from South Korea.

Technically the two Koreas are still at war because the truce that halted the 1950-1953 Korean conflict never gave way to a peace treaty.

NUCLEAR MATERIAL: A conservative estimate would be that North Korea has enough fissile material for at least six to eight nuclear weapons, proliferation experts have said.

MISSILES: North Korea has hundreds of short-, intermediate- and long-range missiles, putting South Korea and Japan at risk, experts say. It has more than 800 ballistic missiles.

(Sources: CIA World Factbook, Bank of Korea, Reuters reports)

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Alex Richardson)