I admit to weariness with the phrase “forgotten war.” Forgotten by whom, exactly? Certainly not by Koreans, especially those who live in Seoul, a mere fifty kilometers from the demilitarized zone. Surely not by Chinese, who regard the altruistic intervention of the People’s Volunteer Army on behalf of North Korea as a moral triumph for their new communist state. Certainly not by US policymakers, who turned to the Korean War for lessons during the Vietnam War, who have figured out how to wage war without a formal declaration, and who have since become accustomed to (if not satisfied with) “limited wars” with indeterminate outcomes. Definitely not by the Korean combat veteran I met on the grounds of the War Memorial of Korea in Seoul in June 2003, who bought me a bottle of water and thanked me personally as an American for saving his country. And certainly not by my...

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