They chanted slogans and waved banners which urged the United States to stop "invading" Iraq and seeking to start a war on the Korean peninsula.

Many of them carried pictures of civilian victims of the war in Iraq, with inscriptions reading "Is this liberation?" in reference to the US and British description of the nature of the war in Iraq.

Lee Young-Hee, a renowned pro-unification activist and former communication professor at Hanyang University, said the war in Iraq had helped open the eyes of South Koreans to the "immorality" of US foreign policies.

"The Bush administration has misled the world opinion as if Iraq had a huge stock pile of weapons of mass destruction and formidable conventional forces," Lee said in front of the crowd of some 3,000.

"But have they found any trace of weapons of mass destruction? Where are all those Iraqi forces gone?... Iraq had nothing left even before this war," he said.

Lee said the threat to peace on the Korean peninsula comes from the United States instead of North Korea, accusing the Bush administration of being intent on attacking the North.

The protestors also chanted slogans urging the South Korean government to scrap its plan to send 700 non-combatants to help coalition forces in Iraq.

There have been mounting concerns that the United States might apply military means to North Korea, as it did to Iraq, when the focus of international attention moves to the North following the Iraq war.

SPACE.WIRE