Today marks the 70th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice. Sadly, in the British media it will be forgotten that Great Britain and its Commonwealth forces, roughly some 104,000 troops in total, were America’s junior partner in the United Nations force that took on the defence of South Korea.
The United Nations’ call to arms was made possible by the absence of a veto from the Soviet Union (which had temporarily walked out of the UN assembly because of its refusal to recognize the People’s Republic of China). It became necessary after Kim Il Sung, the revolutionary founder and leader of the communist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and grandfather of the country’s current leader Kim Jung Un, invaded South Korea on 25 June 1950.
All wars get forgotten, but some get forgotten more than others. In the case of the Korean War, one wonders why?
In terms of British military lives lost, the Korean War accounted for 1,129 deaths, making it the third most costly since the second world war.
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