Introduction

An outpouring of books, articles and film in the last decade as well as an impressive memorial on Washington, DC’s Mall have demonstrated that the Korean War (1950-53) is no longer quite “The Forgotten War”, “The Unknown War”, or “The War Before Vietnam”. But this conflict has never assumed the mythic character of, say, the American Civil War or the Second World War. Coming as it did after the clear-cut victory of the Allies over the unarguable evil of the Axis in the Second World War, the localized Korean War, with its status quo armistice, hardly seems an inspiring conflict to study. But it would be practically impossible to understand the Cold War (c. 194691) without some knowledge of the Korean War.