video transcript

ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION) STORY: Residents of Pyongyang placed flowers beneath the statues of past North Korean leaders Kim il-sung and Kim Jong-il to celebrate the nation's founding on Sunday. Officials from the government also placed their flower tributes and bowed in respect to commemorate the state's 64 years as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. A United Nations-supervised election held in 1948 led to the creation of separate Korean governments for the two occupation zones, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north led by Kim Il-Sung, and the Republic of Korea in the south. North Korea and South Korea claim sovereignty over the entire Korean peninsula, which led to the start of the Korean War in 1950. An armistice in 1953 committed both to a cease-fire, but the two countries remain officially at war, since a formal peace treaty was never signed. Current leader Kim Jong-un, believed to be in his late 20s, has already stamped his image on North Korea, an impoverished nation with nuclear weapons ambitions and where a recent U.N. report said malnutrition stunts one in three children.