Living Through the Forgotten War

Book excerpt: The year 2003 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the armistice that ended the hot war on the Korean peninsula. The Korean War started as a civil conflict and then grew into an all-out superpower war. Whole cities were levelled, factories destroyed, homes torched, farmers uprooted from their fields. This book presents an expanded view of the war in Korea that Americans know little about. In addition to dramatic photographs are two insightful essays that provide an introduction to events during and after the war. The photographs here have been selected from among the tens of thousands that were taken by American military photographers and are now held by the National Archives and Record Administration. Most of those document combat, war materiel, and the life of GIs. The group in this book show something deeper. Here are the faces of people who lived through the effects of the headlines. They are POWs, Koreans, GIs, people mostly without nice clothes, with simple, generic titles like son, comrade, ajumoni (auntie), or private; people mostly afoot, a few armed, many just waiting. These people caught in war share a silent unity that bridges the categories of North, South, civilian, soldier, and prisoner. They become a part of history and memory.