By SIMON COLLINS
Koreans had no time to think about the rights and wrongs of the war which hit them 50 years ago, says Korean veteran Kim Woo Hwa. All they could think about was survival.
"It was just eating, hunger - that is, human survival, basic things," says Kim, now 69.
"The fighting destroyed the paddy fields, our houses, our farms, our rice plants. It was like a fire burning.
"When we were too hungry, we were just eating natural plants, trees, roots.
"Some people were too hungry, and died. Some people were eating natural plants but didn't know which were poisonous plants, and died."
New Zealand lost 41 in Korea, Australia 339, the United States 35,000, the South Korean military 47,000, the North Korean military perhaps 500,000 and China about 1 million.
But even these numbers were dwarfed by the Korean civilian deaths: about 3 million, one in every 10 Koreans.
Auckland University geographer Dr Hong-key Yoon was six years old in 1950. His family were rice farmers near the southern city of Taegu. He remembers the American bombers that swept in low over the paddy fields to stop the North Korean Army taking the last southeastern corner of the country.
"I can never forget that shrieking noise and then, 'Boom!'" he says.
"Our houses were all burned and I saw a couple of dead soldiers. It was a frightening experience.
"We ran away to the mountains and lived in caves for a month or so to avoid the communists."
Meanwhile Kim Woo Hwa joined the South Korean Army in February 1951 and was quickly posted to the front.
He moved from bunker to bunker. He was shot in the neck, chest, arm and wrist and had to spend six months in hospital.
"It was quite terrible pain. Little pieces came out from the mouth."
There was not enough room for all the wounded in the hospital in Seoul. "People were screaming, staying outside. I stayed outside for one day, I was waiting to get in."
Of the 160 people in his Army unit, half were killed.
"It was horrible because [people of] the same ethnic group were fighting - even more upsetting than foreigners, it's difficult to describe."
<i>Korean War:</i> Single thought filled days for war civilians
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