In 1950, there were less than 50 miles of paved road in all of North and South Korea combined.²²

The Korean conflict was never officially declared a "war" by any of the foreign nations involved in the territorial struggle between the northern and southern halves of the peninsula. Throughout the 1950 to 1953 period, Korea was officially deemed a "United Nations peace action."²³

Though Black soldiers had fought in every American conflict from the Revolution onward, Korea was the first war in which Black and white U.S. troops were officially integrated. Some integrated American units fought in the Spanish Civil War, but those brigades weren't officially deployed by the American government. Desegregation in the U.S. military became official policy when President Truman signed Executive Order 9981 on July 26th, 1948.

General Douglas MacArthur never actually spent a single night in Korea during the entire time that he commanded American forces there. He did make an appearance in Pyongyang on October 20th, 1950, when Ameican forces entered the North Korean capital, but then got back on his plane and returned to Tokyo that night.²⁴

Up until March 1991, a Military Armistice Commission composed of communist and anticommunist delegates continued to meet monthly in Panmunjom, the "truce village" that lies on the border between North and South Korea. But the delegates always failed to bring about any resolution to the stalemate that kept Korea divided in half. 

Then the U.S. broke with tradition and appointed a South Korean general—rather than an American one—to handle the Korean Armistice Agreement. The North Koreans used this change as a rationale for refusing to engage in future talks, as they demanded dialog exclusively with the Americans. In 1994, they declared the Armistice Agreement an empty shell as a result of American actions. As U.S. military aid to the South Koreans continues and North Korean intransigence remains intact, the future of the Armistice today appears precarious.²⁵