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The Forgotten War.

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Oh, gee, thanks -- a present? For me?

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My birthday was last month, but that's okay.

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I'm used to things I do being forgotten.

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So I won't hold a grudge. For long.

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Back in the fifties, I fought in the Korean War.

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The what-huh war?

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Yeah. Exactly.

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History remembers World War II from a decade earlier, of course...

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...and we recall the Vietnam War of the following decade...

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because it's always easy to dwell on one's mistakes...

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...but the Korean War, waged between 1950 and 1953, we call The Forgotten War.

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Tough to imagine anyone could forget an entire war.

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I mean... we put up sticky notes and everything.

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Most likely, the reason the Korean War has vanished so much into oblivion

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is that both its beginning and ending are a little... foggy.

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Many people don't believe it was necessary for us to have even gotten involved over there...

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...that it was just a knee-jerk reaction to Cold War hysteria.

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Oh, not you... don't be so sensitive.

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The war was fought along the 38th parallel.

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You can find it on a globe, but it's not like there was an actual line drawn in the

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sand where the battles were fought.

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Although that certainly would have made it easier to see who was on your side and who wasn't.

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That line divides North and South Korea.

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It's sort of Korea's "Mason-Dixon" line.

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But without all the roadside fruit stands.

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The Soviet Union was backing North Korea and providing them with oodles of weaponry.

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We couldn't let the reds win, so we fought in support of South Korea...

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...helping to defend them against the Northern aggressors.

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With all the deep-seated hostility, everyone was afraid that

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the Korean War would trigger World War III.

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And we'd already had enough major world wars to last us a while, thank you very much.

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Fortunately, North and South Korea signed armistice agreements...

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...in which they agreed to at least pause their fighting.

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Even if they both felt they still had some unfinished business.

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Too bad Chuck Norris wasn't a soldier around then to write a decisive finish to things.

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Unfortunately... nothing was really resolved.

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To this day, there's a "cease-fire" between North and South Korea, even though

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they're still technically at war.

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Kind of like when you and your brother declare a "cease-fire" in the back seat on the

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way to grandma's house...

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...even while you are both desperately trying to give the other an atomic wedgie.

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I'll say this for the war though. The ceasefire between the two sides may have calmed everybody down.

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The fear of a global war diminished somewhat...

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...and people thought, "Hey... maybe communists aren't trying to take over the world."

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Which helped some of us sleep at night.

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That whole area is still in limbo though.

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There remains a demilitarized zone around the 38th parallel...

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...and the country is still divided into North and South Korea.

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And they both forgot my birthday.

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So... I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same.

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