'How devastating it was': new Cold War gallery opens at the War Memorial

He had signed up on his 17^th birthday as part of Australia's war against communism.

"It was terrible," he said.

"People were living in humpies and shelters made out of flattened out beer cans.

"They were in the most awful plight and starving and dying of starvation."

The suffering of civilians in the Cold War, which spanned multiple conflicts in Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam, has been recognised with a new gallery at the Australian War Memorial.

Precious possessions from those who were on the front line and those who sent their sons far away to fight are on display in a revised exhibition.

For Colonel Jinbu Kim, Defence Attaché at the Korean Embassy, the display was a small snapshot of what parents back home experienced.

"What hit me the hardest was the telegram that the mother of a soldier named Stanny [received], which read, 'we regret to inform you that your son Private Stanny was wounded in an occasion and evacuated'," he said.

"I can't imagine what his mother must have felt from that telegram."

Colonel Kim's own grandparents fought in the Korean War. More than two million civilians were killed in the conflict, with millions displaced and about 100,000 children left as orphans.

The exhibition isn't just about overseas wars, with displays on the creation of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the referendum on the Australian Communist party.

The gallery starts with the dropping of the atomic bomb in Japan and ends with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The exhibition is particularly relevant today with the recent visit of Russian president Vladimir Putin to North Korea, historian Michael Kelly said.

"What's going on in the wider world with Ukraine, Korea, it's very similar to what was going on in that late forties, early fifties period with proxy wars and the rise of the dictator states," he said.

"It's telling that story of then which can really inform what's going on now."

Items in the exhibit include an original North Korean army uniform, a South Korean traditional dress and a lighter gifted to an Australian solider by a Korean child adopted into his unit.

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Mr Kelly said that while the exhibition is small, every item tells a story.

"The lovely traditional dress on display just goes to show the smallness of a child, and how huge that war was and how devastating it was, particularly for the civilians," he said.

"Through such a simple object, we try and tell a very devastating story."