On June 25, 1950, Communist North Korean forces backed by the Soviet Union and Red China swept across the 38th Parallel in a massive invasion of South Korea. The lightly armed South Korean defenders and their American advisers quickly fell back before the much larger, better equipped Red Army. All of the Korean Peninsula would soon have fallen to Stalin's Korean troops, except for the intervention of U.S.-led Allied forces. Americans, the majority of whom probably could not locate Korea on a world map, were soon to pay a terrible price in blood, treasure, national sovereignty, and world standing for this Asian venture.
That still mounting price could escalate astronomically should the current totalitarian regime in Pyongyang launch a concerted attack on South Korea. A massive attack by the heavily armed North Korean forces--whether using conventional, nuclear, or biochemical weapons--would prove disastrous not only to the people of South Korea, but to the nearly 40,000 U.s. troops stationed there. In such an event, these American servicemen would face mass annihilation or capture.
The Korean War has been presented to three generations of Americans as an event that proved the necessity and effectiveness of the newly founded United Nations for stopping international aggression and opposing Communist