By Kim Jae-won
More than half of teenagers said they didn’t not know the date the Korean War (1950-53) broke out, a government survey showed Sunday.
According to the survey conducted by the Ministry of Security and Public Administration on 1,000 middle and high school students from May 25 to June 6, 53 percent of them failed to correctly say when the war broke out.
In a separate survey of 1,000 adults aged 19 and over, 36 percent of them could not correctly answer the same question.
The Korean War broke out on June 25, 1950 when North Korean launched a surprise invasion of the South. The war continued for three years until July 27, 1953, when multinational forces under the United Nations Command, which supported the Republic of Korea, signed an armistice agreement with the Korean People’s Army and the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the cease-fire agreement.
Even though more than half of the students didn’t know the year the Korean War broke out, 51.3 percent of them said that North Korea was the enemy.