Word: kim
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Conventional wisdom blames either Moscow or Washington for turning Korea into the first hot conflict of the cold war. Kim Il Sung, however, had reason to want such a war. He had always preached that war was the only way to unify the peninsula and drive out the U.S.-backed regime of Syngman Rhee in Seoul. Furthermore, it would bolster his stature against other Korean communists who were urging different ways to unite the country...
Even though Stalin regarded Kim as a puppet, it was often the Korean who pulled the Soviet leader's strings. According to Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean War, published last year by Stanford University Press with American, Russian and Chinese contributors, Kim made numerous trips to Moscow to convince Stalin that the South Koreans were ready to join his revolutionary forces. He also reinforced his Soviet patron's belief that the U.S. would never intervene in a Korean conflict. If the Americans would not help the Nationalist Chinese against Mao's forces, he argued, why would they come...
...short of arms?" Stalin asked Kim when he heard about the first / border clashes between North and South in 1950. "We'll give them to you. You must strike the southerners in the teeth." Still, Stalin warned, "if you should get kicked in the teeth, I shall not lift a finger. You have to ask Mao for all the help." Kim went to Beijing, where he convinced Mao that Stalin believed a Korean war was winnable. The Chinese leader allowed himself to be persuaded, and he promised to stand by his new ally. But Kim had miscalculated. The U.S. intervened...
...Kim Il Sung survived to purge his government of his enemies with a brutality he would exercise throughout his rule. The security apparatus he established is among the most sweeping in the world; it classifies the population in three categories: loyal, waverers and hostile elements. According to a recent Amnesty International report, there are "tens of thousands" of dissidents and Kim's political enemies in concentration camps. Untold numbers have been executed...
Meanwhile, the Chinese and the Soviets supported him politically and economically, though not always wholeheartedly. Kim's survival was an ideological point of honor; North Korea had become a front-line state, facing off against a permanent U.S. presence on the Asian mainland. Relations throughout the cold war might be intermittently rocky, but Kim could always depend on Moscow and Beijing...