Ask many Americans about the Korean War, and they’re apt to tell you it was where the men and women of the 4077th served, where Dick Whitman became Don Draper, or simply that it was a conflict involving Korea. Ask most people in North Korea, and they’re likely to tell you it was an epochal, earth-shaking calamity that left their country a craterous, barren hell and killed at least one of their relatives.

Often, the North Korean leadership’s actions are viewed as those of irrational madmen who know only the language of force. But while the dictatorial nature of the DPRK is unquestionable, the fierce anti-Americanism that sits at the core of the Kim dynasty stems from a clear memory of the US-led war in Korea.

Though serious reporting on it was censored at the time, and today it’s assumed the mantle of the “forgotten war,” living on largely in throwaway pop culture references, the Korean War was a traumatic, foundational event for North Koreans — a first-hand demonstration of both the terrible might of an unleashed US military arsenal, and why the country could never again be caught with its defenses lacking.