Distant it certainly was. Despite a brief flurry of activity in the late nineteenth century, which included the temporary occupation of one of Korea's many island groups, British interest in Korea before 1950 was largely limited to a handful of missionaries, a few scholars of porcelain, and even fewer diplomats. In the 1930s, a couple of British academics had produced historical works which touched on Korea in the nineteenth century, but there were no real Korean scholars in Britain. In 1950, it would be safe to say that for most people in Britain, Korea and its problems were unknown territory. The ancient and out-of-date maps and photographs which British newspapers produced to illustrate the stories they ran on the early stages of the conflict were further proof, if such were required, of the general British lack of knowledge of Korea.

The war which began on 25 June 1950 was to change that. By the time an uneasy armistice was agreed some three years later, 60,000 British servicemen and women had been involved in Korea, over a thousand had lost their lives and many others had been wounded. Large numbers had been taken prisoner, enduring the primitive conditions of North Korean and later Chinese POW camps. The British economy, fragile after six years of world war and five more years of austerity, was hit again by the demands of the unexpected involvement in Korea. By April 1951 – a little beyond the scope of this volume – when the “Glorious Glosters” held the Chinese at bay at the village of Solmari north of Seoul in the battle of the Imjin River, the distant shores of Korea seemed almost as familiar from newsreel and newspaper accounts as Normandy or the Ardennes had done six years previously. In the end, though, for all but a handful the perception was short-lived. Other conflicts quickly overlaid the Korean war in British consciousness. The term “forgotten war” could justly be applied to the British perception of this particular war. The fact that it has taken from the end of the conflict in 1953 until 1990 to produce an official history is further evidence of how remote from Britain's interests the Korean war has generally appeared.