Korean War

During the Persian Gulf war in 1991, Michael Strobl was a lieutenant in a Marine artillery unit in the thick of the action. By the time the Marines led the U.S. assault into Iraq in 2003, Strobl had been promoted to lieutenant colonel and had a desk job crunching manpower numbers at Quantico, Va. Nagged by a sense that he should be at the front rather than behind a desk, Strobl volunteered as a military escort for a Marine killed near Ramadi.

China has agreed to allow access to military records that may provide information on 8,100 Americans missing from the Korean War. U.S. officials say that, at least at first, only Chinese archivists with security clearances will do document searches and turn over relevant records to U.S. analysts. Chinese troops killed and captured thousands of American troops during the war and managed many of the prisoner of war camps in North Korea.

For the musicians of the New York Philharmonic, when the invitation came from North Korea, the answer was not automatic. They posed many questions: Is it morally wrong to perform in a country with such an abysmal human rights record? Would we be in personal danger? Do we need to bring our own toilet paper? With some queries still unanswered, the orchestra landed Monday in what is essentially terra incognita.

More than a quarter-century after his death and 56 years after he single-handedly took out three enemy machine-gun nests in the Korean War, Army Master Sgt. Woodrow Wilson Keeble was awarded the Medal of Honor on Monday -- the first Sioux to receive the nation's top decoration for bravery in battle.

Here at the Museum of the War to Resist American Aggression and Aid Korea, it's as if the clock stopped 55 years ago. "I feel like I am right there on the front lines," said Wang Binyan, a 23-year-old teacher. "I can feel what the Chinese soldiers felt. In this place, Americans are the enemy." The museum in this provincial city on the North Korean border tells a personal version of the Korean War, one that casts U.S. foreign policy and military tactics in a decidedly negative light.

When House Republicans needed a John McCain-like war hero to lead their fight against Democratic assaults on President Bush's Iraq strategy, they turned to another former POW, a Texas Republican named Sam Johnson. Though less known than Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.), his onetime cellmate in Vietnam, Johnson spent nearly seven years in a prisoner of war camp, about half of it in solitary confinement.

With Tuesday's fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Current looks at American involvement in previous wars.

Military authorities have identified the remains of a Korean War soldier from San Francisco who was missing for more than 56 years, the Department of Defense said Monday. Army Cpl. Pastor Balanon Jr. was assigned to L Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment when he was declared missing in action on Nov. 2, 1950, after fighting in a battle south of Unsan, North Korea. A U.S.

The leaders of North and South Korea will hold their second-ever summit this month, the South's Yonhap news agency reported today. Leader Kim Jong Il of the North and President Roh Moo-hyun of the South will meet Aug. 28-30 in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, Yonhap said. In June 2000, Kim met then-South Korean President Kim Dae-jung in Pyongyang.

In a conversation the day before he was killed in an auto accident last spring, David Halberstam told me that the book manuscript he had delivered to his publisher four days earlier was "the best work of my life." Given the 20 books that preceded it, his claim struck me as touchingly audacious, even for a writer as preternaturally enthusiastic as David always was. Now, after spending hours enthralled with "The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War," it's easy to see why he felt as he did.