The following article was published by the National Journal on July 27, 2012:

By Kenneth Chamberlain

It was the war that stopped, but didn't officially end.

Fifty-nine years after the United States and the United Nations signed an armistice agreement with North Korea and China to end the three-year-old Korean War, all the parties to the war are still technically at war. No formal peace treaty was ever signed.

"During the terrible war, nearly 1.8 million members of the United States Armed Forces served alongside the forces of the Republic of Korea and 20 other allied nations from June 25, 1950 to July 27, 1953," Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said in a statement marking the 59th anniversary of the armistice on Friday. In those three years, the "war was responsible for taking 36,574 American lives and wounding over 103,000," said Rangel, a veteran of the war.

Veterans had "halted the tide of Communism on the Korean Peninsula and it is largely because of their efforts that the Republic of Korea was able to develop into a modern and prosperous democracy," Rangel said.

Below are some photos of the first few months of the war and from the time of the armistice. (A more detailed history of the war can be found on the Korean War 60th Anniversary Commemoration Committee website.)