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“Who knows? Maybe the Americans would have thrown another 10 divisions in. I don’t know. But as it happens, they did stop them,” the Toronto-based Stevens says of the successful Canadian stand at Hill 677.

“Next time you’re watching a Samsung television or driving in a Hyundai or dancing to Gangnam Style, you might just give a thought to those guys and the fact that Seoul is not under the North Korean regime.”

Chroniclers of Canadian military history have highlighted the significance of Kapyong.

Last year, Dan Bjarnason, a former CBC television correspondent who describes the Canadian action on April 24, 1951, as “one of the most perfectly fought defensive battles in history,” published a book about how the 700 Canadians halted the invading army of about 5,000 Chinese infantrymen. The key battle from the 1950-53 Cold War conflict has not gone unnoticed in official circles.

Last year, at a ceremony honouring Korean War veterans, Prime Minister Stephen Harper described how “for 24 hours, there was intense hand-to-hand fighting and unimaginable bravery” shown by Canadian troops facing “human waves” of hundreds of enemy soldiers.

“But when the smoke cleared, the Canadians held and the communist invasion would go no further,” he said.

However, Kapyong doesn’t rank high in Canadians’ collective memory of the country’s most noteworthy battles of the 20th century. And Stevens’ film doesn’t resound with pure triumphalism.