Casualties

A casualty of war is someone who has been killed, captured or injured as a result of the war...

There are two kinds of casualties, military and civilian. Armed forces record their casualties where possible but during a war it is frequently not possible to record with accuracy the number of civilians who die or are injured. After the war this is done but by then it may be impossible to do other than broadly estimate the casualties among civilians caught up in the war. Thus the estimates for Korean civilians who were injured as a result of the war are unreliable. Estimates of those who died vary between one and two million but probably about 700,000 South Korean and 900,000 North Korean civilians perished as a result of the war.

Military casualties are more accurately recorded though there are still difficulties as nations vary in their manner of recording casualties. Some include deaths not in battle – to accident or illness – and some do not. There is also a category 'missing in action' to record those whose exact fate is unknown. However at this distance in time they can be presumed to be dead and are included below in that category.

 

  
Communist armed forces

Country

Dead

Wounded

Captured

North Korea

140,000

240,000

111,360*

China

183,108

383,218

21,440

Soviet Union

282

1381**

n/a

* excluding 40,000 South Koreans pressed into the North Korean army and later captured by the United Nations Command

** probably includes casualties to illness

Total communist military casualties were about 1,100,000

United Nations Command

Country

Dead

Wounded

Captured

South Korea

47,000

183,000

41,971

USA

36,574

105,785

30

Australia

340

1216

30

New Zealand

33

79

1

United Kingdom

1,109

2,674

1,060

Canada

516

1,042

33

Türkiye

879

2,111

216

France

312

1350

12

Greece

194

459

n/a

Colombia

165

448

28

Thailand

134

1,139

n/a

Netherlands

119

381

1

Philippines

92

356

n/a

Belgium

101

478

n/a

South Africa

20

16

8

Luxembourg

2

17

n/a

Ethiopia

121

536

n/a

Total United Nations Command military casualties were about 440,000


Last updated:

Cite this page

DVA (Department of Veterans' Affairs) ( ), Casualties, DVA Anzac Portal, accessed 17 February 2025, https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/wars-and-missions/korean-war-1950-1953/events/ceasefire-panmunjon-27-july-1953/casualties
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