By Andrei Lankov
For decades, the question of who started the Korean War was controversial. Both the South and the North insisted that they were victims of unprovoked aggression, and their major allies, the USA and USSR respectively, supported their claims officially.
When I was a post-graduate in the Soviet Union in the early 1980s we already were told that the official Soviet line was a diplomatic lie, and that the war was actually started by the North. Frankly, I never quite understood how one could doubt it: the very nature of the military operations in the first weeks of the campaign clearly indicated who had started the shooting. Nonetheless, Western left-leaning academics with their propensity to distrust their own governments tended to give Pyongyang at least the benefit of the doubt. With political liberalization in the South, they were soon joined by a number of Korean left-wing scholar-politicians.
But the question was solved in the most clear-cut manner in June 1994 when the then South Korean President, Kim Young-sam, visited Moscow. The President received 216 classified Soviet documents from the Russian archives. The documents left no doubt: the Korean War was started by the North. The documents have been subjected to a thorough study by a number of scholars, Western, Korean, and Russian, especially by Kathryn Weathersby, Evgeny Bajanov, and Alexander Mansourov.
The Leftist scholars are correct in one regard: they insist that both sides wanted this war, and this was the case. In the late 1940s neither Korean government was ready to accept a lasting division of the country. Both sides wanted to unify Korea by force, since no other way appeared practical. But neither the South nor the North were able to make the first move without the support of their great power sponsors.
Thus, from Kim Il-sung’s viewpoint, his major task was to persuade Stalin that a war would be a quick fix for the Korean problems. Thus, when in March 1949 Kim Il-sung visited Moscow in person, he told Stalin “We believe that the situation makes it necessary and possible to liberate the whole country through military means.” Stalin said that a military operation was ``not necessary’’ and stressed that North Korean forces could cross the 38th parallel only if attacked by the South Koreans, in an act of self-defense.
But Kim Il-sung was persistent. A cable from the then Deputy Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko indicates that on Aug. 12, 1949, Kim Il-sung again asked for explicit Soviet permission to launch a military operation. On Sept. 3 Kim asked for permission once again, this time insisting that South Korea was ready to attack. Keeping Stalin’s earlier remarks in mind, he suggested a local operation, but then hopefully added that ``if the international situation permits,’’ the North could transform a local counter-offensive into a large-scale war which was certain to be victorious.
Such persistence led to a serious rebuff. On Sept. 24 the Soviet Politburo endorsed a cable to be sent to Pyongyang. The statement was a decisive rebuttal of the proposed North Korean attack on the South. The plan, however, was rejected not out of principle, but because the North, as Moscow believed, was not yet ready to stage such a campaign. According to Stalin: ``From the military viewpoint, it is not possible to consider that the People’s Army is ready for such an offensive. There are serious political problems as well: Currently, not much has been done in developing a guerrilla movement or preparation for an all-people uprising in South Korea, so one has to admit that the offensive against the South, which was proposed by you, is politically unprepared as well.’’
The statement also rebuffed the plans of a local operation on the Ongjin Peninsula, a strategically vulnerable area near Seoul. But Stalin insisted that ``this operation cannot be seen as anything else but a beginning of a [full-scale] war between North and South Korea, [a war] for which North Korea is not ready either politically or militarily, as has been emphasized above.’’
The 24 September cable made it clear that Stalin felt uneasy about the possibility of U.S. intervention: ``Apart from this, it’s necessary to take into account that if war operations are launched by the North they will drag on for a protracted time, and this will provide the Americans with a pretext for mingling into Korean affairs in many different ways.’’ With the wisdom of hindsight, it is clear that Stalin was right in his worries: the Americans would be ``mingling into Korean affairs’’ on a grand scale.
But Kim Il Sung knew that persistence, if applied properly, is the best way to win a battle. Thus, he kept the pressure on. On 17 January, 1950, Kim Il-sung complained to the then Soviet ambassador Terentii Shtykov: ``I can’t sleep at night because I am thinking of the unification of the whole country. If the cause... is postponed, then I may lose the confidence of the Korean people.’’
Finally, Stalin gave in. Obviously, he believed that the victory of the Communist revolution in China, and the development of Soviet nuclear weapons, made a war less likely. On 30 January, Shtykov met Kim Il-sung and told him of Stalin’s approval. As the ambassador’s cable to Stalin says: ``Kim Il Sung received my report with great satisfaction… Kim Il-sung, apparently wishing once more to reassure himself, asked me if this means that it is possible to meet with Comrade Stalin on this question.’’
Indeed, such a meeting took place, amidst great secrecy, in April 1950. And this meant that war preparations entered a new phase. But that is another story…