From a veteran wounded in combat to a conscripted grandson, three generations of a South Korean family illustrate changing views of the North and the Korean War, 70 years after it began.

The conflict broke out in June 1950 and ended three years later, with an armistice rather than a formal peace treaty, after the two sides and their allies fought each other to a standstill.

The two Koreas remain technically at war to this day, with the Demilitarized Zone that forms their border often referred to as the world's last Cold War frontier.

- The veteran and grandfather -

Yang Tae-sung, 89, vividly remembers the summer day when North Korea invaded.

Already a soldier, he was returning from leave on June 25, 1950, when he was rushed from the train station to the battlefield north of Seoul.

The South's ill-equipped military had been utterly unprepared for war, Yang recalls, with only around 103,000 soldiers and not a single tank.

In comparison, the Soviet-backed Korean People's Army had nearly twice as many troops, supported by hundreds of tanks, fighter jets and warships.

Yang supplied ammunition to frontline troops and experienced the full brutality of war, his left thigh bearing the scars of when enemy fighter jets bombed his unit, killing a close friend.

"When I regained consciousness after the shelling, I saw blood streaming out of him," Yang said. "Pieces of the shells had gone right through his stomach and out the other side."

And he is still haunted by the memory of an injured soldier whose wound had been infested with maggots.

Yang said he hoped for a peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula -- under Seoul's rule -- but remains wary of the communist North, which has "time and again violated inter-Korean agreements".

Seoul must always be prepared for another invasion, he said, after a conflict that killed millions of people on both sides.

"The post-war generation don't know just how fierce and devastating the Korean War was."

- The son -

Born six years after the ceasefire, Yang Kyung-mo grew up at the height of the Cold War, when the North still mounted occasional attacks on the South.

"From a young age, I was taught that North Korea was absolutely evil," said the 61-year-old.

He was nine when Pyongyang sent a squad of commandos to try to assassinate then South Korean president Park Chung-hee. They were stopped in a gun battle that left dozens dead on both sides.

Six years later Pyongyang mounted another failed attempt to assassinate Park, with a North Korean sympathiser from Japan this time killing the South's first lady during a Liberation Day ceremony.

Yang remembers taking part in regular rallies against Pyongyang in elementary school, and training in military uniform as a high-school student.

But while he understands the "lifelong trauma" his father's generation suffers, he considers their aspirations for reunification "pointless".

"I don't think any good would come from the collapse of the North Korean regime," he said.

- The grandson -

Yang Hee-kon has never been very interested in his grandfather's war stories. And until he had to enlist in the army for his mandatory military service, his awareness of the Korean War came largely through movies or TV series.

All able-bodied South Korean men are obliged to serve in the military for nearly two years, making up the bulk of Seoul's 600,000-strong forces -- smaller than North Korea's combined forces of 1.3 million.

While he was enlisted, Yang, now 30, found himself stationed in the Demilitarized Zone.

"As I moved further into where there is no one living to finally reach the barbed wire fences, I could feel it," Yang said.

"Once I was in the field, the situation felt real."

During his two years in the military, the North sank a Southern warship and shelled a border island, sparking concerns of a bigger armed conflict.

"It was like war was right in front of our noses," he said. "I felt a sense of duty."

But back in the civilian world, Yang says, his interest in reunification has diminished.

Younger South Koreans tend to have less connection with the nuclear-armed North, having spent their adult lives in a culturally vibrant democracy regularly menaced and occasionally attacked by Pyongyang.

"I don't think that deeply about inter-Korean relations," Yang added.

"In the past I used to be very optimistic but now I think unconditional reunification could be bad realistically and economically."

The Korean War: carnage, stalemate and ceasefire
Seoul (AFP) June 23, 2020 - As well as pitting North against South, the Korean War embroiled each side's communist and Western allies -- with the Soviet Union and China backing Pyongyang, and a US-led coalition under a United Nations banner supporting Seoul.

AFP traces the course of the conflict, which broke out on June 25, 1950 and ended with a ceasefire rather than a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas still technically at war.

- Two Koreas created -

The Soviet Union declared war on Japan, Korea's colonial ruler, between the US nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and sent troops pouring into the peninsula.

Washington and Moscow agreed to divide it into two occupied zones along the 38th parallel, a line of latitude that splits the territory roughly across the middle.

Two rival states emerged in 1948. In Seoul, the capital of the South, the Harvard- and Princeton-educated Syngman Rhee led a US-oriented regime.

Moscow appointed Kim Il Sung, who had led a Korean contingent in the Soviet army, as head of the North. His son and grandson have since retained an absolute grip on power in Pyongyang.

Both the communist North and the capitalist South claimed to be the legitimate government of the entire peninsula.

- Invasion and counter-attack -

On June 25, 1950, the North invaded the South as Kim Il Sung attempted to reunify Korea by force.

The UN Security Council authorised armed intervention in support of the South -- Moscow did not veto the resolution as it was boycotting the body.

But the South's forces crumbled before the Northern advance, and Pyongyang's army seized Seoul just three days after crossing the 38th parallel.

Multinational UN forces, led by the US, arrived in the South to help. But they were pushed back to the Pusan Perimeter, a pocket on the peninsula's southeastern tip around the city now known as Busan.

The Incheon Landing -- a bold counter-offensive launched in the city to the west of Seoul -- recaptured the capital, split the North's forces and turned the tide.

UN units swept north, seized Pyongyang on October 19 and advanced almost to the Chinese border.

But Pyongyang's allies reversed the war's course again as Beijing sent hundreds of thousands of troops to help.

Seoul fell to them again in January 1951, only for the UN coalition to recapture it once more two months later -- the fourth time the city had changed hands.

- Armistice -

By June the front line had stabilised roughly where the Demilitarized Zone runs today -- not far from the pre-war division along the 38th parallel.

Another two years of attrition -- accompanied by large-scale US bombing of the North, despite Moscow providing air power -- followed as the fighting wore its way to a stalemate.

After more than two years of truce talks and 158 meetings, an armistice was finally signed in July 1953 by North Korea, China and the UN Command.

But Rhee, who still wanted to defeat the North, refused to sign.

- Casualties -

Exact numbers are impossible to establish given the scale of the conflict and multiple contradictory accounts on all sides, but up to three million Koreans died, the vast majority of them civilians.

According to Seoul's defence ministry, 520,000 North Korean soldiers were killed, as were 137,000 Southern troops.

A display at Pyongyang's main war museum says more than 1.5 million of the "enemy" were killed or captured.

Chinese casualty figures remain disputed, with Western estimates commonly citing a figure of 400,000, while Chinese sources put it at about 180,000.

Nearly 37,000 American soldiers were killed, while other UN fatalities included more than 1,000 British soldiers.

- The longest ceasefire -

The ceasefire was supposed to be replaced with a final peace settlement, but that has never happened.

Washington still stations 28,500 troops in the South, while the North -- which has the world's largest standing army -- has spent decades developing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, saying it needs them to deter a US invasion.

It has been isolated internationally as a result, and subject to multiple sets of UN Security Council sanctions.

Both Pyongyang and Seoul continue to claim sovereignty over the whole Korean peninsula.

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