Korea War question

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I was curious as to why the Kim regime in the DPRK decided to attack the RoK when they did in 1950. It seems curious that they invaded South Korea when the USSR was boycotting the UN (thus unable to veto the UN intervention), and when their military was still relatively young and untested (their republic had only been founded recently). North Vietnam spent longer preparing for an extended military campaign, which seemed to work for them, building up a substantial support base and guerrilla movement in the South as well as a very powerful self defense force, including AA capabilities and a million man army. North Korea's invasion of the RoK, while it was effective at defeating South Korea's early military, was at a time when they were utterly unable to fight back against UN intervention without help from Mao and the USSR.

Any thoughts?

[Bolshevik Sickle]

I was curious as to why the Kim regime in the DPRK decided to attack the RoK when they did in 1950.

Expansionism.


North Korea's invasion of the RoK, while it was effective at defeating South Korea's early military, was at a time when they were utterly unable to fight back against UN intervention without help from Mao and the USSR.

You have any idea how small North Korea is? Of course they would need help fighting off the entire United Nations.


Any thoughts?

Wars just happen.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I think you misunderstand my question - it's why they invaded when they did. Had they invaded later, the USSR could have vetoed the UN intervention, slowing down any US and Commonwealth response and buying the DPRK more time, as well as giving them more time to build up their armed forces.

[Bolshevik Sickle]

I think you misunderstand my question - it's why they invaded when they did. Had they invaded later, the USSR could have vetoed the UN intervention, slowing down any US and Commonwealth response and buying the DPRK more time, as well as giving them more time to build up their armed forces.

Impatience, most likely.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

"Wars just happen" - Karl H. Marx

[o well this is ok I guess]

War is two sided. One doesn't merely build up their forces, but does so in comparison to their possible opposing forces. They were perhaps worried that South Korea would build up at a greater rate than they. I'd assume they'd do so because they'd hoped for a quick victory over the South Korean forces, who they knew they could overwhelm at the present, before foreign armies entered into the conflict.

[Venas Abiertas]

Let's see what Wikipedia has to say: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War

In the first half of 1950, Kim Il-sung travelled to Moscow and Beijing to secure support reunification with the South by force. The Soviet military became extensively involved in North Korea's war planning.

Initially, Stalin did not think the time was right for a war in Korea. Chinese Communist forces still were fighting in China. American forces were still stationed in South Korea (they would complete their withdrawal in June 1949) and Stalin did not want the Soviet Union to become embroiled in a war with the US. But by 1950, Stalin believed the strategic situation had changed. The Soviets had detonated their first nuclear bomb in September 1949; Americans had fully withdrawn from Korea; the Americans had not intervened to stop the communist victory in China, and Stalin calculated that the Americans would be even less willing to fight in Korea - which had seemingly much less strategic significance. Stalin began a more aggressive strategy in Asia based on these developments, including promising economic and military aid to China through the Sino-Soviet Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance Treaty.

Remember that there had been massacres of leftists is South Korea killing tens of thousands, including most of the communist guerrillas operating in the South. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_Uprising)

In April 1950, Stalin gave Kim permission to invade the South under the condition that Mao would agree to send reinforcements if they became needed. Stalin made it clear that Soviet forces would not directly engage in combat to avoid a war with the Americans. Kim met with Mao in May 1950.


Mao was concerned that the Americans would intervene but agreed to support the North Korean invasion. China desperately needed the economic and military aid promised by the Soviets. At that time, the Chinese were in the process of demobilizing half of the PLA's 5.6 million soldiers. However, Mao sent more ethnic Korean PLA veterans to Korea and promised to move an Army closer to the Korean border. Once Mao's commitment was secured, preparations for war accelerated.

We can see here that the decision to invade was not entirely Kim's to make.

[Lensky]

Thanks for actually doing some research, even if it is just a wikipedia article. The South Korean left was getting massacred every day the DPRK didn't move in.

[adipocere]

I think the NK invasion of SK is a bit of western mythology as causus belli. According to North Korean history and and recorded events of the actual day of the "invasion" it was South Korea who was several days into the bombing of NK border towns during what had been ongoing border skirmishes for over a year.

Author William Blum devotes a chapter to Korea in his book Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (http://williamblum.org/books/killing-hope) A large part of that chapter it is devoted to questioning, with evidence, the official version.

"On the 25th, American writer John Gunther was in Japan preparing his biography of General Douglas MacArthur. As he recounts in the book, he was playing tourist in the town of Nikko with "two important members" of the American occupation, when "one of these was called unexpectedly to the telephone. He came back and whispered, 'A big story has just broken. The South Koreans have attacked North Korea!'" That evening, Gunther and his parry returned to Tokyo where "Several officers met us at the station to tell us correctly and with much amplification what had happened ... there was no doubt whatever that North Korea was the aggressor".If you assume that the invasion by NK was overstated/manufactured by the US who was searching for an excuse to escalate, then the absurdity of the timing as far as NK goes makes a lot more sense.

[Japan]

It should be noted that Kim Il-sung was an avowed nationalist. He'd basically been fighting for a really long time for Korean independence from the Japanese, and was probably only a "communist" by convenience. The North Korean government didn't even really know anything about Marxism until given a crash course by the Soviets in 1948. Even then, those who met Kim Il-sung (such as this one East German guy, I don't remember him, sadly) noted that he didn't have a very good understanding of ideology.

According to legend (although most certainly untrue, considering writing didn't come to Korea until much later), Korean nation was first founded in 2333 BCE. Although this is pretty much from an old folk tale from a collection of folk tales compiled during the Goryeo dynasty, it's had its mark on Korea.

Since the unification of Korea by Silla around the mid-late 600's CE, Korea's largely existed as a single political unit. Korean culture is also pretty distinct from that of its neighbors, although there was an increasing Chinese influence beginning with the Tang dynasty in China. Language wise, Korean is more genealogically related to English than Mandarin. However, Korean grammar is virtually identical to Japanese grammar, although native vocabulary diverges quite a bit, which is what puts many off when considering a genealogical relationship between Japonic and Koreanic languages.

Korea had also historically been repressed and invaded by foreign imperial powers, whether it be China, Japan, Mongolia, and later on, countries such as the United States (1871) and France (1866). By the late Joseon dynasty, Korea had been in considerable decline for a while, and at the time was a vassal of the Manchu Qing dynasty, which later sought to annex the place.

Crap, I'm getting a bit lazy. Either way, Korean independence ended in 1910 with the annexation of Korea by Japan. In 1945, after the US nuked Hiroshima, the Soviets, invaded Manchukuo, making war with Japan, and after a rapid advance and capture, it was decided between the US and USSR that the USSR would stop advancing at the 38th parallel.

Elections were planned, but they never occurred, so the country remained divided between the Soviet and American occupation zones, and governments on both sides of the government were set up, both claiming to be the sole legitimate government of the entire country. It should be mentioned that the idea of a "South Korean" or "North Korean" identity was something wholly foreign to them at the time. A single Korea was all that they ever knew, and anyone who was over the age of 35 had been born in an independent Korea that hadn't been divided in over a thousand years.

Both the newly established South and North Korean governments planned to invade each other and reunite the country after an odd five years of division (which honestly, weren't even really like that, you could cross the borders whenever you wanted, like my grandpa; heck, South Korea's first president was from what we today call North Korea). However, the US at first denied many arms to the ROK government, while Kim Il-sung had Stalin's full support. He planned for a quick reunification, and it was something he almost got.

[Japan]

Thanks for actually doing some research, even if it is just a wikipedia article. The South Korean left was getting massacred every day the DPRK didn't move in.

While that did occur and probably helped for propagandistic purposes, I really doubt that it was really influential at all in the DPRK's decision to invade.