HISTORY : Memorial Helps Nation Recall a Forgotten War : Dedication of Korean conflict monument set for Thursday. Tribute depicts impressive sprawl of wartime images.

It is called the forgotten war. But beginning Thursday, the Korean War will be remembered for the ages with the dedication of a memorial honoring the 1.7 million veterans who served in the four-year conflict.

“Recognition was long overdue,” said Bill Norris, an Army veteran from Halfmoon, N.Y., and founder of the Korean War Veterans Assn. that labored for a decade to build the 2.2-acre memorial.

The monument is an impressive sprawl of images, unlike any other in Washington. Nineteen seven-foot tall soldiers cast in steel and wearing foul weather gear trudge uphill against the backdrop of a 146-foot-long black granite wall.

From a distance, the wall appears to be etched with snow-capped mountains, but a closer look reveals the images are of war scenes and of people who served, taken from actual photographs of the war. At the end of the wall is an inscription: Freedom is Not Free.

Across from the wall is a reflecting pool edged in black granite that bears a set of inscribed figures intended to tell the cost of freedom. It lists the number of dead and missing Americans and troops fighting under the United Nations flag. More than 54,000 Americans died in the war that lasted from 1950 to 1953.

Events celebrating the new memorial will stretch throughout the week, including fireworks and a parade. It will be dedicated exactly 42 years after the war’s end at a ceremony attended by President Clinton and South Korean President Kim Young Sam.

Among current generations, the Korean War has captured far less attention than World War II or even the divisive struggle in Vietnam--in which far fewer Americans served. The Korean War was relegated to the back pages of the nation’s newspapers--and television was not yet commonplace, keeping the war’s images distant.

Even so, it can be remembered as the last major conflict that enjoyed full public support, coming at a time when Americans overwhelmingly backed efforts to staunch Communism at every turn.

“This memorial is really about a time in our history when military service was something one should do and is proud of doing,” said William Lecky, an architect with Cooper-Lecky, the Washington firm that worked on design of the Korean and Vietnam war memorials.

“Since then the public has challenged [every war],” said Lecky who served in the Army during the time of the Korean War, but was not stationed there.

Ironically, it took a memorial to an unpopular war to help build support for a memorial to a war few Americans questioned.

During the 1980s, when Vietnam veterans groups loudly expressed the need for a memorial to help heal the emotional wounds caused by the war, Korean War veterans quietly worked for recognition.

“I guess we felt they were getting all of the limelight,” said Harry Wallace, a Korean War veteran from Baltimore.”

But their efforts were done in the style of most Korean War veterans, unobtrusively and quietly. “Most guys just came home and melded back in . . . marriage, kids, jobs,” Wallace said.

Given that history, it was difficult for Korean War veterans to generate enough support to build the $18-million memorial that now sits on the National Mall, near the Lincoln Memorial and across the Reflecting Pool from the popular Vietnam War Memorial.

“It’s a miracle,” said Ret. Col. Rosemary McCarthy, who served as an Army nurse toward the end of the war and as part of the 12-member advisory commission in charge of erecting the memorial.

The committee worked nine years to raise millions in private funds, get the approval of a half-dozen area commissions, including the National Park Service, incorporate at least a dozen design changes and fight and win a lawsuit filed by the original designers, who attempted to keep their design from being changed.

“Everybody had a say,” said McCarthy, 69. “It’s been quite a struggle, there were many hoops to jump through.”

The 10-year-old Korean War Veterans Assn. is given credit for lobbying Congress to win passage of a 1986 bill authorizing such a memorial after several failed attempts since the 1960s.

The legislation called for an advisory board and provided $1 million in seed money to get started--money that has been repaid with private funds.