Mention the Korean War today and most people will look at you with a blank stare.

At the time it was fought just five years after World War II ended,

everyone recognized it as a world-shaping conflict, a stark confrontation between the forces of democracy and communism.

Begin on June 25, 1950, when Soviet-backed communist North Korea crossed the 38th parallel and invaded

its US-backed anti-communist South Korean neighbor. Within weeks the communists had nearly

absorbed the entire country. United States at first was confused over whether it should or even

could respond. America had slashed its military budget after the end of World War II and was

short both men and equipment. It still had not awakened fully to the expansionist threat of Soviet Russia.

Soviets, boyed by their own recent development of an atomic bomb and Mao Zedong's communist

victory in China, sensed America's lack of resolve and encouraged the North's aggression.

Yet within weeks present Harry Truman rushed troops to save the shrinking allied perimeter at

Poussin on the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula. By late September 1950 General Douglas MacArthur

had successfully completed the Inchon landings and launched counter-attacks. He quickly reclaimed

the entire South and sent American-led United Nations forces far into North Korea to reunite

the entire peninsula, only to be surprised when hundreds of thousands of Chinese-red army troops

crossed the Yellow River at the Chinese border and sent the outnumbered Americans really and back

into South Korea. Thanks to the genius of General Matthew Ridgeway who arrived to assume supreme

command in South Korea in December 1950, over the next 100 days US-led UN forces pushed the

communists back across the 38th parallel. The fighting was fierce. Seoul, the capital of South Korea,

exchanged hands between communists and US-led forces five times before it was finally secured.

During the years 1952 and 1953 the war grew static, neither side able to deliver a knockout blow.

Eventually the conflict ended with a tense armistice in July 1953.

...