The killings, the hunger and the brutality of the Korean war may have ended over half a century ago but they remain etched in the memories of older South Koreans.
Many, like Oh Zhe-jung, a 69-year-old retired economist, remain unrelentingly hostile to communist North Korea, which ignited the three-year conflict by invading the South in 1950.
'After the invasion, the North Koreans didn't give us food for three months. Once a distant relative came to try and get something to eat at our house. A neighbour informed the North Koreans and they took our relative away to the hills nearby. Later I heard they had told him to sell his land and when he refused, they shot him,' Mr Oh said.
But Mr Oh is a member of a declining minority.
Most South Koreans now view the North as a partner for dialogue and assistance, rather than an enemy to be confronted, according to a new report by the International Crisis Group (ICG), a think-tank.
The ICG examined South Korean's perceptions of the North and said young South Koreans were likely to view it not as a rival but a brother to be helped.
'The generation that lived through the Korean war is being supplanted by the generation that led the fight for democratisation in the 1980s. Younger South Koreans are less easily swayed by appeals to anti-communism and less reflexively pro-American,' according to the report.