38th parallel 1945-50
Occupation line that became two capitals' frontier.
Maps that only show the 38th parallel miss the 1950 race to Pusan and the Yalu. The DMZ is a 1953 artefact, slightly different from the 1945 line.
The UN Memorial Cemetery in Busan and the War Memorial of Korea are the two poles of public geography -- one coalition, one national.
Maps
Pusan Perimeter
August 1950 southeastern arc.
Inchon to the Yalu
September-November 1950 UN high-water.
1953 MDL / DMZ
The ceasefire line, not identical to the 38th.
UN cemetery and memorials
Busan, Seoul War Memorial, Washington Mall -- memory as a map.
Portrayals
Pork Chop Hill (1959)
US ridge-war film that set an English visual for the stalemate.
M*A*S*H (film and TV)
Korea as a satirical stage, often read as Vietnam -- a memory slip worth naming.
Taegukgi (2004)
South Korean blockbuster that recentred Korean brothers, not UN generals.
The Front Line (2011)
Armistice-eve outpost war for a Korean audience.
War Memorial of Korea
The Seoul museum as the main public textbook.
JSA tourism
Panmunjom tours as geopolitics-as-sightseeing -- tightly scripted.
Rituals
6-25 commemorations
June ceremonies in the ROK; a national date, not a borrowed 11 November.
27 July armistice days
UN veteran associations in English-speaking countries; quieter than November.
Memorial Day / veterans' parades
Korean War names added late to US and Commonwealth rolls already built for 1918 and 1945.
Sayings
English-language "forgotten" talk should not be imported into Korean classrooms as if it were a fact about 6-25.
Veterans from Turkey to Ethiopia left small memorials; a full atlas of the war is multilingual.