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Casualties

About 3 million people died in the war, most civilians, making it perhaps the deadliest conflict of the Cold War era. Samuel Kim lists the war as the deadliest conflict in East Asia—the region most affected by armed conflict related to the Cold War. Though only rough estimates of civilian fatalities are available, scholars have noted that the percentage of civilian casualties in Korea was higher than World War II or the Vietnam War, with Bruce Cumings putting civilian casualties at 2 million and Guenter Lewy in the range of 2-3 million.

Cumings states that civilians represent at least half the war's casualties, while Lewy suggests it may have gone as high as 70%, compared to his estimates of 42% in World War II and 30%–46% in Vietnam. Data compiled by the Peace Research Institute Oslo lists just under 1 million battle deaths over the war and a mid-estimate of 3 million total deaths, attributing the difference to excess mortality among civilians from one-sided massacres, starvation, and disease. Compounding this devastation for civilians, virtually all major cities on the Peninsula were destroyed. In per capita and absolute terms, North Korea was the most devastated by the war. According to Charles K. Armstrong, the war resulted in the death of an estimated 12%–15% of the North Korean population (c. 10 million), "a figure close to or surpassing the proportion of Soviet citizens killed in World War II ".