HISTORY WATCH : Forgotten No Longer

What some historians have called the forgotten war will be proudly and solemnly remembered when the Korean War Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington on Thursday, 42 years after an armistice ended the three-year-long conflict that took as many as 4 million Korean lives and saw more than 33,000 Americans killed in combat.

The Korean War, which involved bitter fighting in inhospitable terrain and often terrible weather, was one of the most unpopular wars in U.S. history. The United States, which led a U.N.-authorized intervention to repel Communist North Korea’s invasion of the Republic of Korea, was almost wholly unprepared to fight a major war on the Asian mainland. Rapid demilitarization after its victory in World War II and postwar defense budgets that had been slashed to absurdly low levels were to cost the nation dearly in the early crucial months of the fighting. Two years of exasperating political negotiations to end the conflict, during which casualties mounted but the tactical situation changed barely at all, intensified public frustration with the war.

Yet, however great the controversy, the United States achieved its basic strategic objective. Aggression was thrown back, South Korea remained independent and in time would become a highly developed and now democratic society. But success was costly. Besides battle deaths, 103,400 Americans were wounded in Korea, 7,000 were captured, 5,800 remain unaccounted for. A memorial to their sacrifice and valor has been too long in coming.