Recent surveys have shown that specific younger generation cohorts in South Korea have manifested unfriendly attitudes toward North Korea and skepticism about the need for unification. In this study, we argue that powerful social experiences of the Asian financial crisis of 1997, which these cohorts underwent during the most important periods of their lives, have transformed into a collective trauma, causing them to have perceptions that are neither emotional nor normative regarding North Korea and a unified Korea. We use annual survey data from 2007 to 2018 provided by the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies of Seoul National University to analyze South Korean perceptions of North Korea and unification. Our empirical analysis shows that those who have a collective memory of financial crisis during their formative ages of 17–25, i.e., the New Generation cohort, are significantly different from others in terms of their political identification, thus creating a unique cohort group that has negative opinions on the issue of North Korea and unification.