The Korean War is the forgotten war in US history, smashed between the popular WW2 and the unpopular Vietnam War. It was one of the more brutal ones though.
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
On both sides the Koreans were wiping people out, and North Korean propaganda about the time period has a grain of truth to it, as US troops did do some pretty sick stuff at times.
In terms of strategy, it would have been difficult to do better. The ideal method would have been to use the water on either side of the peninsula to control the field of battle by being able to hit basically wherever you want. Except on one side you have China and the other the USSR, so that wouldn't work.
It is possible that if the US had gone to war with China, fully invaded it as a response to their involvement in the Korean conflict, that the USSR would have stayed out of it. Stalin and Mao had a really bad relationship, which started when Mao visited Moscow in '49, the war started in '50. The Communist Revolution only ended in '49 as well, so it would have been a pretty effective interventionist strategy since the Communist government would have had little time to consolidate nor recruit.