A casualty of war is someone who has been killed, captured or injured as a result of the war...
More than 18,000 Australians served in Korea during the war and post-armistice period. Others served in Japan. Australia made a significant contribution to South Korea’s defence, helping secure a new democracy.
The Roll of Honour includes the names of 340 Australians who lost their lives in Korea during the war (43 with no known grave), 16 in the post-armistice period and 11 in Japan. In addition, at least 1,200 Australians were wounded, and 30 became prisoners of war (including one who died).
Reflecting on their service and sacrifice, Robert O’Neill, Australia’s official historian for the Korean War, noted that Australians earned a high reputation and ‘most importantly they helped to demonstrate firmly and clearly in the 1950s, as other Australians had done in two world wars, that aggressors would not be tolerated by the international community.’
There are 2 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 1 and 2 million, but probably about 700,000 South Korean and 900,000 North Korean civilians died as a result of the war.
Private 'Bomber' Brown after being wounded by a grenade during the fighting on Hill Sardine, north of the Kansas Line, 15 April 1951. (AWM 147334)
Military casualties are recorded more accurately, although difficulties remain because nations vary in how they record 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.
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 | |||
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 | |||