My mother's family lived in Seoul when the war broken out. During my mother's first birthday party, her aunt and her children came through the door looking half dead. My aunt lived further north and made the few days trek with her children and only the clothes on her back. Her husband was an engineer on a power plant, when the communist party took over. He was taken away by soldiers never to be seen again. My mother's family eventually had to flee as well, losing all their possessions and farmland.
Though my mother was too young for a first hand account of the war, we still have a single photograph of my mother's first birthday party. You can see her sitting in front of all the celebratory food. What you can't see in the picture is my aunt and her children on the other side of the room on the verge of death.