AHC: Korean War not forgotten

In America the Korean War is often referred to as the Forgotten War. Compared to WW2 or Vietnam, it has almost no presence in American pop culture. Outside of MASH, I can't think of any media about the war, and MASH really isn't about the Korean War, even though it's set during it. While America's victories in WW2 are frequently extolled, and America's defeat in Vietnam still debated, the battles of Korea seem forgotten.

With a POD after the armistice of 1953, how can this situation be changed? What kind of scenario is needed so that people speak of Inchon in the same breath as D-Day, and Chosin Resevoir in the same breath as the Fall of Saigon?
 
In America the Korean War is often referred to as the Forgotten War. Compared to WW2 or Vietnam, it has almost no presence in American pop culture. Outside of MASH, I can't think of any media about the war, and MASH really isn't about the Korean War, even though it's set during it. While America's victories in WW2 are frequently extolled, and America's defeat in Vietnam still debated, the battles of Korea seem forgotten.

With a POD after the armistice of 1953, how can this situation be changed? What kind of scenario is needed so that people speak of Inchon in the same breath as D-Day, and Chosin Resevoir in the same breath as the Fall of Saigon?

I don't think Korea could be remembered on the same level as Vietnam, since Korea didn't play the same divisive role in US society and didn't last as long. However, if Vietnam had not happened then at least for the next few decades Korea would be remembered as America's most recent war. If the US had allowed unity elections in Vietnam in 1954, the Vietnam war wouldn't have happened. That's one POD that could work.

Also, had Bob Dole been elected President at some point then the US would have a Korean War veteran in the White House. That would help to promote awareness of the war in the public consciousness.
 
Also, had Bob Dole been elected President at some point then the US would have a Korean War veteran in the White House. That would help to promote awareness of the war in the public consciousness.
Or if Pat Robertson was elected, public consciousness would be raised for almost the exact opposite reason
 
I draw a blank. I learn from Wikipedia that the US had conscription during the Korean War, but it seems to have been uncontroversial, or at least nowhere near as controversial as with Vietnam. The war reached a stalemate before The Wild One and Jack Kerouac's On the Road etc, at a time when the counterculture wasn't yet a mass movement. I have the impression that the media in both the UK and US was still willing to toe the government line in the immediate post-WW2 years. Furthermore Korea was generally perceived as a "good war" along the lines of the Falklands conflict or the Finnish Winter War - the politics were easy to grasp, both sides wore uniforms and in theory fought under the rules of war. There were "goodies" and "baddies".

I note that the US armed forces suffered almost 34,000 deaths in the three years of the Korean war, versus less than 60,000 for almost a decade in Vietnam, but again I have the impression that people in the early 1950s were less fazed by high casualty figures after a massive war that had killed hundreds of millions of people.

And of course it was at the time overshadowed by the Second World War. They were still making WW2 films in the early 1950s and for many years afterwards. And Korea was just before the widespread adoption of television, so footage of dead GIs wasn't broadcast into people's living rooms, not that it would have been anyway. And to top it all the generation that fought in Korea didn't tend to talk about their experiences. They were silent. There was some grumbling a few years ago about the US army's treatment of Korean prisoners, but I think the general consensus is that the Koreans were no better.

It has to be said that during the 1980s and most of the 1990s the Second World War was almost a forgotten war as well. After A Bridge Too Far in the late 1970s there was a dearth of WW2 films right up until Saving Private Ryan in 1999. My hunch therefore is that a really good film about Korea might have revived interest in the war. As you point out MASH was huge, but didn't feel Korea-y. Basil Fawlty was a Korean War veteran. That confused me as a kid. In one episode he talks about fighting in the war, but he was obviously too young for WW2. I just wanted to say that.

The paradox is that Steven Spielberg, George Lucas etc were inspired by the WW2 films they saw when they were kids, so in order for one or other of them to make the definitive ground-breaking Korean War film they would have had to grow up with Korean War films, which wasn't going to happen unless Korea was already popular, which it wasn't.
 
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Have Red China be a more active "Spread the Revolution!" party in the Cold War, slowly taking up the Soviet role as Big Bad after reaching a lasting Detante in Europe (No involvement in Cuba would go a long way towards this). Make Mao, and Pol Pot rather than Castro the flag wavers and gun runners of the Agrarian Left, and Korea will likely be held up as the first great stand to contain China and the shot that started the Eastern Cold War.
 
Basil Fawlty was a Korean War veteran. That confused me as a kid. In one episode he talks about fighting in the war, but he was obviously too young for WW2. I just wanted to say that.

Is it certain that he was a Korean war veteran? My recollection is that, due to the head injury, he kept making offensive references to World War II, and when he says that he got his leg injured in "the war", he tries to save himself by immediately claiming that he meant Korea. In the episode about the German tourists, of course.

(And by the way, as brilliant as that episode is, the set-up is pretty artificial. Even for a guy like Fawlty, making those kind of comments to paying customers would be such a ludicrous thing to do, Cleese had to posit a head injury to make it seem even remotely plausible.)

EDIT: I stand corrected. Apparently, there is another episode in which he talks about fighting in the Korean War, and it's confirmed by Sybil.
 
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