Key takeaways from AP’s examination of South Korea’s split views on North Korea’s nuclear threats

POHANG, South Korea (AP) — The Associated Press spoke with dozens of South Koreans for a detailed look at the nation’s stark division in views about North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s aggressive pursuit of nuclear-tipped missiles targeting the South and its major ally and protector, the United States.

How South Korea sees its northern rival is a famously complicated subject, split along deep societal fault lines: Age, wealth, politics, status, history, sex.

The result is that some see little danger in North Korea’s threatening rhetoric, weapons tests and aggressive military maneuvers — and some are stocking bunkers with goods meant to get them through a nuclear strike.

Here are some key takeaways from the AP examination of South Korea’s unique, fragmented perception of its biggest enemy and closest neighbor, North Korea.

North Korea is fast becoming a nuclear power

The exact details of the North’s secretive nuclear program are difficult for outsiders to determine.

But a consensus has formed that the country, one of the world’s poorest, is making steady — occasionally dramatic — progress in its drive for an arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles. That progress was underlined Thursday when North Korea test-fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles just days after leader Kim Jong Un vowed to make his nuclear force fully ready for battle.

The end of the three-year Korean War in 1953 resulted in an uneasy cease-fire, which means that the Korean Peninsula, separated by the world’s most heavily armed border, is technically still at war. Those tensions are palpable in South Korea, where every able-bodied man must serve in the military.

North Korea has been working on its nuclear program for decades, but it started in earnest in