Korean War (1950–1953)

In the early months of 1950, Korea seemed a rather insignificant place to most Americans. Crisscrossed by rough dirt roads and characterized by little other than poverty and illiteracy, the peninsula had been divided at the 38th parallel at the end of World War II, when the United States and the Soviet Union reached a gentleman’s agreement on the matter. Since then, various schemes to reunify the “Hermit Kingdom” had found favor in either Moscow or Washington, but no plan had yet satisfied both. With neither Russia nor the United States inclined to press the issue at the risk of war with the other superpower, Korea appeared destined to remain divided between a communist state in the north and a pro-American country in the south ...