Word: syngman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
...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 to the aid of Syngman Rhee? Kim won massive Soviet military assistance, inheriting all the weapons of the Soviet 25th Army, including those confiscated from Japan's defeated armies in the region...
...Ready to reunify the country by force -- and, with help from Moscow, strong enough to dare it -- North Korea sent its tanks south across the 38th parallel on June 25, 1950. Communist leader Kim Il Sung hoped to destroy the U.S.-backed regime of South Korean President Syngman Rhee in a bold blitzkrieg. Kim nearly succeeded before U.S. troops and a hastily assembled United Nations force pushed the North Koreans back to the Yalu River on the Chinese border, prompting the intervention of a 1.2 million-man Chinese army that ultimately brought the conflict to a stalemate. After three years...