On June 25, 1950, Communist North Korea launched a massive attack across the 38th Parallel against the Republic of Korea (ROK). Three years and over five million casualties later, on July 27, 1953, an armistice was signed, ending the war within miles of where it had started. Vastly smaller in scale than World War II and pushed into the background of our nation's consciousness by the extended trauma of Vietnam, it is only now, fifty years later, that its history is coming to the fore.

From the Trade Paperback edition.