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The Korean War on Videotape: A Review

© Dane Mitchell Donato

The Cold War, already a chilly affair with the end of World War Two and communism’s many successful strides across the globe, suddenly got much colder by, paradoxically, becoming suddenly hot. On June 25, 1950, North Korean forces slammed across the 38th Parallel, ushering in 3 years of a conflict that, more than anything else, entrenched the ideological viewpoints that would dominate world politics until the crumbling of Soviet Union and the gasping close of the Cold War.

How much do we know today about the Korean War? In the United States, even those who lived through the time period of that conflict, for the most part, have no real idea what went on half-way across the globe, or why, for that matter. And for the members of the generations that followed -- myself included -- tend to perhaps think of the Korean War as a setting for the television program M*A*S*H*, if we think of it at all.

No wonder Korea is called “The Forgotten War.“ The men and women who served there, and died there, battling the North Koreans and the Chinese, deserve much more than a footnote in pop cultural and a few musty names and dates that tend to be forced upon high school students and college undergrads.

Well, the good news is that, with the 50th anniversary of the war (June 25, 1950 through July 27, 1953), much more interest in what happened in those early Cold War years. Many of the WWII lessons we learned, both militarily and politically, were applied to the Korean battle front. In many ways, the war was mismanaged and the political aims were not particularly well defined, particularly for the front line troops -- the grunts, airplane pilots, nurses, supply sergeants, Red Cross workers, and all the rest -- for the people who were not making policy, but instead, being required to do a dirty, dangerous job, it was and is an effort that deserves nothing but praise today.

I think that one of the best ways to begin to understand the Korean War is not through a thick textbook or history volume, but instead, through “Korean, The Forgotten War, 1950 -- 1953.” An excellent 7-video set by Marathon Music & Video, the footage on the seven tapes that make up this set are superb, as is the narrative that guides you through the fifty-year-old military and civilian motion picture footage, interviews and graphics. Nothing beats good video, and sometimes, these old black and white video images strike home so hard, I felt right there on the front lines.