Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (150 page)

92.
Cumings
(Origins
II
,
pp. 615–619) says it is legitimate to speculate that “a small group of officials in Tokyo and Washington saw the attack coming, prepared to meet it, and then let it happen—while keeping Congress in the dark, then and thereafter.” He approvingly quotes Stone: “The hypothesis that invasion was encouraged politically by silence, invited militarily by defensive formations, and finally set off by some minor lunges across the border when all was ready would explain a great deal” (I.F. Stone,
The Hidden History of the Korean War
[New York: Monthly Review Press, 1952]; paperback, 1970, p.
44).
Cumings states outright
(Origins
II, p. 602) that Acheson “wanted the communists to strike first along the containment periphery.”

Cumings makes the comparison of the Korea and Pearl Harbor theories, observing that “even a lifetime of research would not prove definitively that Roosevelt was either guilty or innocent of ‘maneuvering the Japanese,’ and the same is true of Acheson and Korea. We do not have signals intelligence that would suggest American advance knowledge of North Korean action, a major lacuna that we do have for Pearl Harbor”
(Origins
II, p. 435).

Maneuvering by Acheson was not Cumings’s preferred scenario for how the invasion came about. Rather, in
Origins
II, he favored the theory that South Korean troops striking north provoked a counterattack by North Korean troops who had been hoping and planning for just such a provocation so that they could unleash a full-fledged invasion in response. Evidence since publication of that book has shown that awaiting a Southern provocation “with the riveted mix of alarm and relish of a cobra lying in wait”
(Origins
II, p. 574) had indeed been Kim Il-sung’s posture earlier—because Stalin had told him not to attack first— but that Kim, tired of waiting for Rhee to hand him a provocation, had persuaded Stalin to back his unprovoked invasion.

By the way, in this chapter and others that follow I use the term “revisionist” as a neutral descriptive term, not as a value judgment. I would estimate that I agree about as often as I disagree with positions taken by many of the Korea scholars to whom the term has been applied. As one of my best teachers at Princeton, the eminent historian James M. McPherson, writes, historians “know that revision is the lifeblood of historical scholarship. History is a continuing dialogue between the present and the past. Interpretations of the past are subject to change in response to new evidence, new questions asked of the evidence, new perspectives gained by the passage of time. There is no single, eternal and immutable ‘truth’ about past events and their meaning. The unending quest of historians for understanding the past—that is, ‘revisionism’—is what makes history vital and meaningful” (“Revisionist Historians,” from the President’s column of the September 2003
Perspectives, The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association, http://www.theaha.org/perspectives/issues/2003/0309/0309pre1.cfm).

93.
Goncharov, Lewis and Xue,
Uncertain Partners,
p. 142, cite Lim Un
(Founding of a Dynasty,
p. 181) as saying that Kim, after the Acheson speech, “was convinced that ‘the U.S. would not enter the Korean War,’ or ‘even if they did enter the war, they would not hold sway over the destiny of the war.’ ” The authors add,
speech, we believe that Kim used the speech to bolster his case with Stalin irrespective of what his ‘true’ attitude to the speech may have been.”

For a contrary view see Cumings,
Origins
II, pp. 410. Cumings argued— before the Russian archives yielded their evidence—that “[e]ven the premise has always been stupefyingly improbable: that Stalin, of all people, or for that matter Kim Il Sung, would be misled by a public speech into thinking the United States would not defend South Korea. Stalin’s usual modus operandi was probably to put negatives in front of Acheson’s public statements, as a first cut at discerning enemy intentions. A dialectical logic of interacting opposites would immediately course through his mind on reading the speech: Acheson says he won’t defend them, so probably he will; maybe he means it; in any case he’s trying to mislead us; maybe by pretending to believe him we can suck the Americans into a stupid war, so on and so forth.”

94.
Nikita Khrushchev, “The Korean War,”
Ogonëk,
p. 28, cited in Goncharov, Lewis and Xue,
Uncertain Partners,
p. 143; also translated in
Khrushchev Remembers,
p. 401.

Russian scholars Aleksandr Orlov and Viktor Gavrilov, in an article whose title translates as “The Long Echo of the Korean War”
(Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye,
. Moscow, October 12–18, 2001 [summary at http://www.nautilus. org/napsnet/dr/0110/oct17.html]) say that the U.S. military response was a complete surprise to .Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang.

95.
During talks in Moscow in January 1950, Stalin “told Mao that a ‘confrontation with the United States is inevitable, but for us it would be favorable to delay its beginning. At present, war is not feasible, because we have just tested the atomic bomb, the country is exhausted, and the people of the USSR would not understand and support such a war’ ” (Goncharov, Lewis and Xue,
Uncertain Partners,
p. 108). Noting that the hydrogen bomb was not yet a part of the American arsenal, the authors cite political scientist David Holloway’s conclusion “that Stalin had decided that the maximum danger of an American strike would come around 1954, and that the Soviet Union might be wise to back, though not to wage, a preemptive war before then.” Stalin’s remark to Mao, they write, “suggests that Stalin was leaning toward what might be called a limited preemptive conflict” (ibid., pp. 108–109).

Goncharov, Lewis and Xue say (pp. 130 ff.) that Mao, although he approved in principle Kim Il-sung’s plan for forcible reunification, was a reluctant partner at first. He wanted to focus his resources on reconstructing his civil war–ravaged country and, by invading Taiwan, fully uniting it. Stalin, however, insisted that he needed China to back up North Korea so that the USSR could remain in the background—since a more visible Soviet role might bring on World War III prematurely.

96.
Ibid., p. 146. The authors say Mao, evidently more worried than when he had messaged Stalin earlier, raised to Kim the possibility of U.S. intervention, “and this time in a way that did not exclude the possibility. Mao asked him whether he would like China to send troops to the Sino-Korean border if the Americans did become involved.” Kim replied that he could win the war within a month, before the United States could intervene, and thus he “rejected the need for sending Chinese troops to the border and appeared confident that the Soviet assistance in hand or in the pipeline was all that would be needed.”

Also see Son Key-young, “Kim Il-sung .Masterminded Korean War,”
Korea Times,
July 21, 1994, and Yonhap News Agency dispatches from .Moscow published in the
Korea Times:
“Russian Natl TV Airs Documentary Proving NK Provoked Korean War,” May 24, 1994, and “Stalin, Mao Gave Their Blessings to Kim Il-sung s Korean War Plan,” August 8, 1993.

On Mao’s need for Soviet aid as the decisive factor in his acceptance of Stalin’s request, see George Wehrfritz, “History Lessons, Take Two,”
Newsweek International,
July 14, 1997, pp. 28–30. The article cites articles by a Chinese revisionist historian, writing under the pen name Qingshi, in the Chinese Communist Party magazine
Hundred Year Tide.

97.
Goncharov, Lewis and Xue,
Uncertain Partners,
pp. 132–133, citing reports from Kim to Stalin, and p. 140, citing interviews to the effect that “Stalin appears to have been taken in.” As the authors note, John Merrill has argued that Kim in tensified guerrilla activities in the South and exaggerated the successes of those operations as part of his campaign to persuade Stalin that the success of a south ward invasion was assured. Merrill,
Korea,
pp. 187–188.

Goncharov, Lewis and Xue also marvel (p. 146) at “how skillfully Kim had achieved his ends by playing on the complicated relations between Stalin and Mao. We would predict that if any transcripts of conversations turn up, they will reveal a pattern of Kim exaggerating Stalin’s support to Mao, and vice versa. In the process, Kim was restricting his own future options and his ability to hedge against failure.”

98.
Interview in
U.S. News and World Report,
May 5, 1950.

99.
Cumings,
Origins
II, p. 431.

100.
Both comments quoted by Cumings
(Origins
II, pp. 420 and 503), who adds on the latter page that “Koreans viewed Dulles’s speech as, in Chong Il-gwon’s words, evidence of ‘an absolute guarantee’ to defend the ROK”

101.
Yu, who was present at the meeting in Moscow, told the Goncharov-Lewis-Xue team in an interview that Kim argued, “(1) it would be a decisive surprise attack and the war would be won in three days; (2) there would be an uprising of 200,000 Party members in South Korea; (3) there were guerrillas in the southern provinces of South Korea; and (4) the United States would not have time to participate”
(Uncertain Partners,
p. 144). On p. 146, the authors describe Kim as likewise telling Mao during their meeting in May 1950 that North Korea “would achieve victory within a month, and that the United States could not deploy its forces before then.”

102.
“Stalin had no incentive to question Kim’s arguments, but he gave the go-ahead on the basis of Soviet interests and on the condition that Mao agree. … Stalin was willing to support Kim only if the possibility of a Soviet-American clash in Korea would be excluded. He determined that the way to do this was to implicate Mao in the decision and thereby make him bear the full burden for ensuring Kim’s survival if the Americans intervened. A Sino-American war, should it erupt in Korea, would have the added benefit of widening the break between Beijing and the West” (Goncharov, Lewis and Xue, p. 214).

103.
Kim and Stalin, if they were both mistaken on U.S. capability, were not necessarily mistaken on the same grounds since their interests were different. However, they may well have held some common assumptions. For speculation on the grounds for Stalin’s judgment, see Goncharov, Lewis and Xue,
Uncertain Partners,
pp. 151–152: “Stalin would have concluded from press reports and
intelligence that, though the Americans might want to aid Taiwan or even South Korea, it would take them many months to amass and get that aid to the western Pacific. The timing was on Kim’s side if he moved quickly and decisively. In the worst case, U.S. intervention would lead to a clash between Beijing and Washington and a denial of Taiwan to the Chinese Communists. The resulting rise in Sino-American hostilities would only increase Mao’s reliance on Stalin.

“Furthermore, Stalin was well aware that the United States would be most reluctant to go to war with the Soviet Union over Korea. With an army that had been sharply reduced after World War Two, it could not run the risk of Soviet retaliation against Western Europe or Japan. .Moreover, the Soviet leader reportedly minimized the danger of any such escalation because he had bought Kim Il Sung’s argument that a North Korean attack would touch off a revolution in the South, making for a quick and easy consolidation of control.

“Thus, we would argue, it was a mixture of short- and long-term estimates of the U.S. posture in Asia, as of April 1950, that finally led Stalin to become directly involved in Kim’s military designs.”

On p. 214 the authors add, “In our view, the decision to go to war cannot be laid alone to Stalin’s pressure [on Mao], or to Kim’s adventurism, or to a Soviet–North Korean (let alone Sino –North Korean) conspiracy. In fact the decision came in bits and pieces and was never coordinated or even thoroughly scrutinized by the three states. It was reckless war-making of the worst kind. Each of three Communist leaders was operating on premises that were largely concealed and facts that were fabricated or at best half true.”

5. Iron-Willed Brilliant Commander.

1.
Hankuk Ilbo,
November 9, 1990, in Seiler,
Kim Il-song 1941–1948
(see chap. 2, n. 18).

Goncharov, Lewis and Xue say
(Uncertain Partners
[see chap. 4, n. 1], p. 149) that Kim and Mao at this point were in a race to finish war preparations first and fire the first shot in their reunification campaigns, since China could not fight a war on two fronts as it would have to do if it joined North Korea in fighting the United States while invading Taiwan. If China failed to act first it would have to wait. China did fail to build up its invasion troops opposite Taiwan by the summer of 1950 as planned (p. 152)—and thus had to wait for decades without getting another chance at Taiwan. The authors add (p. 153) that while Mao knew Kim was preparing for war, “there are good reasons to accept the conclusion of Korean and Chinese authors that Mao was not informed about the details of the Korean plans or the timing of the assault. … Keeping Mao out of the picture was Kim’s intention. A striking fact about the two months before the war is that the North Koreans—and the Soviets—took steps to keep the Chinese in the dark about their military preparations.”

Newsweek’s
George Wehrfritz (“History Lessons, Take Two” [see chap. 4, n. 96], p. 30), reports that a revised history by a Chinese scholar writing under the pen name Qingshi and using both Chinese and Soviet sources begins “with Stalin playing China against North Korea to serve his own interests. In 1949 Mao asked for 200 Russian warplanes and pilots to support an invasion of Taiwan. … Stalin was supportive but noncommittal. What Mao didn’t know, says Qingshi, was that the Soviets had trained and supplied North Korea’s military
in preparation for an attack on South Korea. Indeed, Stalin urged Kim to seek Mao’s approval only because he assumed, correctly, that Mao needed Soviet aid too much to say no. Stalin got his way. The invasion came five weeks after Kim’s Beijing visit. Within hours the Americans vowed to turn back communist aggression in South Korea. To thwart Chinese adventurism, the U.S. Seventh Fleet sailed into the Taiwan Strait to shield Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists in Taipei. Mao’s planned invasion of Taiwan was thwarted. He quickly grew dismayed by events in Korea, particularly when Kim’s assault crumbled after U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s landing at Inchon on Sept. 15.”