Captioned: "North Korean refugees use anything that will float to evacuate Hungnam. Here they jam the decks of a South Korean LST and many fishing boats." The impact of the Korean War on the civilian population was especially dramatic. Korean civilian casualties (dead, wounded and missing) totaled between three and four million during the three years of war (1950-1953). It has been estimated that as many as one million civilians in the northern part of the country fled south ahead of the Communists in the early days of fighting. Many of those people assumed their flight to be a temporary measure. They not only left behind property and heirlooms, but also close relatives. The Korean peninsula is still divided today. Photograph credited to USN December 19, 1950.