Michelle Suh grew up in South Korea hearing her mother’s stories about hunger, deprivation, and the death of her first husband in the Korean War. Now, she fears North Korea’s increasingly bellicose rhetoric and missile tests could trigger even greater devastation.

“It’s going to be worse,’’ said Suh, 49, who owns Kaju Tofu House, one of the many Korean shops along Harvard Avenue in Allston. “My mom’s generation, they got a bullet. This time, it’s maybe chemical weapons or atomic bombs. I don’t want to even imagine it.’’

But Gahyeon Lee, who is 22 and works a few doors down from Suh, at another Korean restaurant, said that when she spoke to her parents in South Korea recently, the talk turned to the mass shooting in Las Vegas and the threats she faces in the United States. Her family, she said, doesn’t worry much about the prospect of nuclear war on the Korean peninsula.

“I’m not scared,’’ Lee said. “I’m used to it because we have a long history with North Korea.’’

The mounting tensions with North Korea have touched off anxiety for many in the state’s Korean community, but the feelings appear to be divided by age.

Some younger Koreans say they’ve grown up hearing three generations of North Korean leaders threaten to destroy their country and have come to regard the menacing talk as hollow bombast. But many older Koreans cannot so easily dismiss the belligerent rhetoric and missile tests.

“People who experienced the Korean War in the 1950s or grew up hearing the experiences of their parents are gravely concerned because they know what war is like and they don’t want there to be a repeat,’’ said Kim Byung, a computer science professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell who is president of the Korean Cultural Society of Boston. “The younger generation tends to be somewhat nonchalant about it.’’

For some younger Koreans, he said, North Korea’s vows to annihilate its enemies have become part of the background noise of life in South Korea.

“Without experiencing war or listening to the parents who have gone through the war, they’ve been hearing about potential wars for the last 40 years and nothing happened, so it’s become like the boy who cried wolf,’’ he said.

About 29,000 Korean-Americans live in Massachusetts, making it 11th-largest Korean community in the United States. Many have relatives in South Korea, whose safety they worry about every time the North test-fires a missile, sparking another round of insults between Kim Jong Un and President Trump.

“President Trump cannot do much because he has such a big mouth,’’ said Kay Dong, a realtor who is president of the Korean-American Citizens League of New England. “I just hope there’s no war because there would be too many victims, too many problems in the world. I just hope no more Korean war.’’

Trump has vowed to “totally destroy North Korea’’ if it threatens the United States and has dismissed Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson’s attempts at diplomacy, tweeting that Tillerson “is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man.’’

Kim, in turn, has belittled Trump as a “mentally deranged US dotard’’ and promised to reduce the United States to “ashes and darkness’’ for supporting tougher sanctions in the United Nations.

The sanctions followed a series of provocative missile tests by North Korea, including the detonation of its sixth and most powerful nuclear bomb last month and a missile that sailed directly over Japan in August.

Wha Kyung Byun, a piano instructor at the New England Conservatory, said the North’s increasingly aggressive posture prompted one of her former students to try to move her elderly parents from South Korea to Boston.

“They say they want to die in Korea, but every day she says she worries, and she doesn’t want to regret some day that she didn’t do enough,’’ Byun said.

Joy Van Luvan, 20, who is not Korean but fell in love with the culture, said she decided this summer not to return for her second semester studying Korean language and literature at Yonsei University in Seoul. Her parents, she said, felt it wasn’t wise.

“Because of the missiles that Kim Jong Un keeps shooting around the area, they thought the guy’s a madman, so what if he just decides to shoot a rocket in South Korea,’’ Van Luvan said.

Dong, of the Korean-American Citizens League, said she is worried about the people of North Korea suffering under Kim’s regime.

“They have no freedom,’’ said Dong, who came to the United States in 1971 and serves on the state’s Asian American Commission. “I’m really crying when I think about that.’’

She said her church in Lexington has raised money for winter coats for North Koreans.

The Rev. Young Ghil Lee, pastor of the Korean Church of Boston, said his congregation prays for the people of North Korea but doesn’t believe Kim will attack South Korea because it would “mean he is committing suicide.’’

“We think he is not so stupid as to do some fatal thing,’’ Lee said.

Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @mlevenson.