Seventy years ago this week, more than 135,000 North Korean troops invaded South Korea, starting a war that cost millions of lives and left scars that linger to this day.

Yet, the Korean War has been forever overshadowed by World War II, a much larger conflict that ended less than five years earlier. Even the US Army refers to Korea as "the Forgotten War" -- despite more than 36,000 American lives lost.
Sixteen nations, including the United States, sent combat troops in aid of South Korea under the United Nations Command. Chinese troops intervened on the North Korean side.
War broke out on June 25, 1950, when North Korean forces stormed across the 38th parallel dividing North and South Korea. An armistice signed on July 27, 1953, stopped the conflict, but the war never officially ended because there was no peace treaty.
During a day-long summit in 2018, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pledged to formally end the Korean War and negotiate a peace treaty.
Those efforts have since collapsed, as have attempts by US President Donald Trump to officially end the conflict and have North Korea give up a nuclear weapons program that could threaten the US mainland.
Trump has met three times with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and last year became the first sitting US leader to set foot inside the communist nation.
Trump steps onto the northern side of the Military Demarcation Line that divides North and South Korea, on Sunday, June 30, as Kim looks on.
While the twists and turns of today's US-North Korea relationship have put a spotlight on the Korean War's legacy, it is still a widely overlooked conflict.

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