South Korean teens fuzzy on who started Korean War

Veterans stand in front of statues of 1950-53 Korean War soldiers, at a war museum in Seoul March 28, 2008.

SEOUL (Reuters Life!) - Nearly half of South Korea's teenagers do not know who started the Korean War and have a difficult time sorting out the country's allies from its foes, a survey published on Tuesday said.

About one in eight South Korean teens thought the United States, which came to the South's defense in the conflict, started the 1950-1953 war, it said.

The survey was taken by the Ministry of Public Administration and Security to mark the anniversary of North Korea's invasion of the South on June 25, 1950.

"Middle school and high school students seem to be confused about national security, and many of them get the facts wrong," ministry official Bae Im-tae told local media.

Only 48 percent of teens correctly said the war was started by the North, according to the survey of about 1,000 junior and senior high school students.

The two Koreas, which agreed to a ceasefire, are technically still at war because a formal peace deal has never been struck.

About 28 percent of teens called the United States, which stations troops in the South to defend against another North Korean invasion, the biggest threat to South Korea.

North Korea, which positions most of its 1.2 million-man military near the border with the South and trains thousands of pieces of artillery towards Seoul, was seen as the second biggest threat, the survey said.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Kim Junghyun; Editing by Jonathan Hopfner and David Fox)