Web Site Review: The Korean War

http://www.koreanwar.org/

http://ssd1.cas.pacificu.edu/as/students/stanley/home.html

     The growing use of cyberspace provides a new medium to relay information. This new medium, mostly through the World Wide Web, allows anyone with access to a computer and modem hook-up the ability to obtain vast amounts of data with the click of a mouse or the typing of a word. The Internet is quite useful to students, as many web sites house educational data. One topic which many sites contain information on is the Korean War. The following is a review that critiques two such sites, the Korean War Project and "Examining the Korean War."

     The Korean War Project is a home page set-up and maintained by Ted and Hal Barker. The site is the home page for a project to help remember Korean War veterans as well as a site for veterans and family and friends of veterans. The site presents all types of information. There are sections with information ranging from asking for support to a travelogue to a database of KIA (Killed in Action), MIA (Missing in Action), and WIA (Wounded in Action) soldiers.

     The main purpose of this web site is to help ensure that the Americans who fought the Korean War do not go unnoticed and forgotten. The site stems from the Barker brothers whose main intention is to keep the web page on-line. In order to do this the site needs financial support. The Barker brothers have chosen two main paths in an attempt to accomplish the sites goal of honoring the veterans of the Korean War. One way the Korean War Project hopes to honor the veterans of the war is through a traveling memorial. The Korean War has no memorial and the site openly asks for donations strictly for this purpose. The other path the site uses is education. The Barker brothers use two types of education. The first is general education about the war and area. The site provides different viewpoints about the war from a link to the Center of Military History to links that provide first hand accounts of the war. The second way the site uses education is by maintaining a database of soldiers who were killed in action or are missing in action. The Department of Defense provides this information.

     The Korean War Project organizes its information in no particular order other than the first four links on the sight are dedicated to immediate information on the war. After these first links the information is conveniently broken down by theme. Each link that needs one has a quick summary of the information it will take the user to.

     The Barker brothers have designed a site that is a prime example of the technology of the World Wide Web. The site takes advantage of the capabilities the web provides, such as numerous links to areas that can give the information as well or better than the site itself. The site is extremely easy to navigate and provides a convenient search engine for its navigators. I would strongly recommend this site to anyone who is interested in the Korean War. More directly however, I would urge anyone who has a family member or friend who fought in the Korean War to visit the Korean War Project.

     The other site I am reviewing is "Examining the Korean War." This site was constructed by Nathan Stanley and has a copyright by Pacific University. "Examining the Korean War" is a quite different site than Korean War Project. This presents numerous historical accounts from book reviews to oral history to maps dealing with the Korean War. The information the site presents is entirely composed of different programs and studies by different people. Stanley provides his own masters thesis, but also provides many other views that deal with specific aspects of the war.

     "Examining the Korean War" is strictly for educational purposes. Stanley has created a site that is here simply for information, not a memorial or database like the Barker brothers site. Stanley’s site presents his thesis, Discussion of the Treatment of African-Americans in the Korean War, and the main purpose for the site is to provide this thesis to navigators interested in the war. However, this site does not limit itself to Stanley’s viewpoints in his personal thesis. "Examining the Korean War" gives accounts of just about every possible position in the war, from the perspective of specific types of fighters, to maps of the area, to strategy.

     Stanley organizes the information in the site thematically by five broad divisions: 1) Book Reviews, 2) Oral History, 3) Maps, 4) Senior Thesis, and 5) Links. Each division presents the title of the link, but that is all. There are no convenient summaries of the information presented under the links. Most of the titles to the links provide adequate information about the contents of the link and therefore do not need summaries, however.

     "Examining the Korean War" is a web site that takes some advantage of the web, but for the most part the information presented is simply a cabinet file on computer. The links are conveniently divided and do present numerous viewpoints, but they are almost completely text and are extremely linear. While there is no search engine to help navigate the site, there is really no need for one because the page is relatively compact. Stanley’s site is extremely easy to navigate, and there is really no possible way to get lost within the site or at the links is provides.

     I would recommend "Examining the Korean War" to people who were extremely interested in studying the war. Stanley’s site takes into count things that many sites do not, and for that reason it is extremely useful for reference purposes. Other than for scholarly use, though, Stanley’s site is not as neatly packaged or interesting as the Korean War Project.

     The new medium cyberspace presents is one that is extremely useful. The ability it gives navigators to visit numerous sites quickly and easily is becoming invaluable in education. As a history major I am somewhat disappointed I did not take advantage of the Internet all four of my years at Wake Forest. Unfortunately, the web is not one hundred percent accurate all the time however and therefore should be used with caution when obtaining vital information from its sites.