Three Cold War warriors from the ACT and Queanbeyan are returning to South Korea later this month for the 60th anniversary of the signing of the armistice.
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None of the men - pilots Bill Monaghan and Norman Lee, and Derek Holyoake, a sailor who had also served in the Pacific in World War II - ever thought the war would drag on until 2013.
They are three of 15 veterans who are being taken back by the Department of Veterans Affairs and will attend the armistice ceremony in Seoul on July 27.
North Korea remains an armed camp run by a communist dictatorship. South Korea is in a constant state of military preparedness and the two sides regularly exchange shell fire and indulge in potentially deadly games of brinksmanship.
''The South Koreans are playing it for real,'' Weston's Mr Lee, who retired from the navy with the rank of commodore in 1981, said. ''I went back in 2001 and they have blockaded the choke points [on major roads leading to the north] that they can blow up in the event of an invasion.''
A naval aviator in the days when Australia had two aircraft carriers, HMAS Vengeance and HMAS Sydney, Mr Lee flew bombing and ground attack missions over Korea in 1951. Like Fadden's Mr Monaghan, who retired from the RAAF in the mid-1980s as an air commodore after a 36-year career, Mr Lee braved the skies above the peninsula in a World War II-era aircraft. This was a hazardous undertaking, given the North Koreans and their Chinese allies were the first to deploy Russian-built MiG jets in a war zone.
A member of 77 Squadron, Mr Monaghan flew a Gloster Meteor. He was based at Kimpo Airbase near Seoul from May to November in 1953.
Australia's first jet, the Meteor dated back to 1943 and had served in World War II doing sterling service shooting down V-1 flying bombs. Its 660km/h top speed was actually less than that of the propeller-driven Mustangs it replaced.
Mr Lee's Fairey Firefly was, on paper at least, even less competitive. The two-seater fighter bomber had first seen combat when a squadron was dispatched to attack the German battleship Tirpitz in July 1944 and was regarded as the best British carrier aircraft of World War II.
By 1951 that war had been over for six years and the world had moved on. The Firefly's 509km/h top speed was less than two-thirds that of the MiG. Mr Lee, while acknowledging the design's limitations, still takes great pride in his plane and what it could do. ''Our job was to bomb bridges and carry out ground attack,'' he said. ''The Firefly was armed with four 20mm cannon and there's nothing like hearing those going off to give your confidence a boost.''
One recollection Mr Lee and Mr Monaghan share is of how young and relatively inexperienced they were. ''I was only 22,'' Mr Lee said. ''I recall forming up on my leader about to return from a mission one day and asking myself 'what am I doing here? I'm 10,000 miles from home.' ''
Mr Monaghan, who is a year older, said while he enjoyed the experience and the camaraderie within the squadron, he had not enjoyed the war. On his 12th mission, on June 13, 1953, his Meteor lost an engine after being hit by enemy anti-aircraft fire. He landed on a beach where, after the right engine was replaced, he was able to fly back to base.
While war was a new experience for the pilots, leading electrical mechanic Derek Holyoake was under no illusions. He had joined the Royal Australian Navy in 1940 and served in the Mediterranean and the Pacific aboard HMAS Hobart, the sister ship of the ill-fated Sydney and Perth.
By the time he went to Korea with HMAS Sydney in 1951, he had already been bombed, machine gunned and torpedoed on a range of occasions. Mr Holyoake left the navy in 1953 and retired to Queanbeyan, after a career as a trade teacher, in 1995. He is now a volunteer at the Australian War Memorial.
