Korea – The Forgotten War

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, a war that has long been thought of as the forgotten war since it does not have the prominence of the World Wars and Vietnam.  The war began on June 25, 1950, when the North Korean army crossed the 38th parallel that divided North and South Korea.  Kim Il Sung, the North Korean leader, intended to bring all of Korea under communist rule and the rest of the world, America in particular, was not about to let him do that.  Some new CIA documents have been released that document how unprepared America and South Korea were for the invasion due to bad intelligence.  Those documents can be seen here.

The documents reveal that the CIA was mistaken about what was happening in North Korea in the months preceding the invasion.  They believed that the North Korean army was moving south as ”a defensive measure to offset the growing strength of the offensively minded South Korean Army.”  The report concluded that an invasion of the South by the North was “unlikely.”

I want to thank the men who served and died during this war in a foreign country as they tried to maintain freedom from communism and oppression in Korea.  I do not agree with our military being used for such purposes, but that does not affect my gratitude to those who served.  Total American deaths during the Korean War:  36,516