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The Soviet Union and the Origins of the Korean War

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SimmonsRobert R., The Strained Alliance: Peking, P'yŏngyang, Moscow and the Politics of the Korean Civil War. New York, Free Press, 1975, 285 pp., $10.95.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

William Stueck
William Stueck
Affiliation:
Brown University
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Review Article
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World Politics , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , July 1976 , pp. 622 - 635
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Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1976

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References

1 I assume that North Korea did attack South Korea and that the attack was not a direct response to specific South Korean military action north of the 38th parallel. For a dissenting view, see Gupta, Karunker, “How Did the Korean War Begin?” China Quarterly, XIII (10-12 1972), 699–716CrossRefGoogle Scholar; rebuttals by Chong-sik Lee, Skillend, W. E., and Simmons, Robert in China Quarterly, XIV (04-06 1973), 354–68Google Scholar. Recent revisionist writers are inclined to concede this point; see Joyce, and Kolko, Gabriel, The Limits of Power (New York: Harper & Row 1972), 578Google Scholar. Authentication of the memoirs of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev should close the question for all but the most extreme doubters. Khrushchev makes it clear that large-scale hostilities were initiated by Korea, North; see Khrushchev Remembers, ed. Crankshaw, Edward, trans. Strobe Talbott (Boston: Little, Brown 1970), 367–70Google Scholar; for evidence of the volume's authentication, see Khrushchev, , Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, ed. and trans. Strobe Talbott (Boston: Little, Brown 1974), xi–xixGoogle Scholar. For further evidence, including orders for the North Korean army to attack across the 38th parallel, see Far Eastern Command, “Documentary Evidence of North Korean Aggression,” RG 6, Box 4, MacArthur Archives, Norfolk, Va.

2 See, for example, Beloff, Max, Soviet Foreign Policy in the Far East, 1944-1951 (London: Oxford University Press 1953), 183Google Scholar; Rubinstein, Alvin, The Foreign Policy of the Soviet Union (New York: Random House 1960), 251Google Scholar.

3 Ulam, Adam, Expansion and Coexistence (New York: Praeger 1968), 518Google Scholar.

4 Kolko and Kolko (fn. 1), 585-87.

5 See Dallin, David, Soviet Foreign Policy After Stalin (Philadelphia: Lippincott 1961), 60Google Scholar.

6 See Kolko and Kolko (fn. 1), and Fleming, D. F., The Cold War and Its Origins, II (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday 1961), 604–8Google Scholar.

7 In 1951 Wilbur Hitchcock argued that North Korea surprised Moscow by invading South Korea in June 1950, but he offered a decidedly traditional view of Soviet foreign policy in “North Korea Jumps the Gun,” Current History, XX (03 1951), 136–44Google Scholar. On the other hand, Walter LaFeber, whose survey of Russo-American relations in the cold war qualifies as revisionist, offers a traditional interpretation of the Kremlin's role in the outbreak of war in Korea, in America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1966 (New York: Wiley 1967), 96–97Google Scholar.

8 Among the most important works on Korean politics are Henderson, Gregory, Korea: The Politics of the Vortex (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1968)Google Scholar, and Scalapino, Robert and Lee, Chong-sik, Communism in Korea, 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press 1972)Google Scholar.

9 Simmons does not use the Hitchcock-Kolko argument that the North Korean attack was contrary to Soviet interests because it “mobilized the United States Congress and advanced the many bottlenecked military programs that the Truman administration had on paper, thereby reversing the narrow gap between Soviet and American military power.” See Kolko and Kolko (fn. 1), 585; Hitchcock (fn. 7), 537. For a detailed critique of the Kolko presentation, including rebuttals from the Kolkos, see Stueck, “Cold War Revisionism and the Origins of the Korean Conflict: The Kolko Thesis,” and Kolko, and Kolko, , “To Root Out Those Among Them,” in Pacific Historical Review, XLII (11 1973), 537-60 and 560-66, respectivelyGoogle Scholar.

10 For Simmons's criticism of American intervention see “The Korean Civil War,” in Baldwin, Frank, ed., Without Parallel (New York: Pantheon Books 1973), 537–75Google Scholar.

11 Khrushchev, , Khrushchev Remembers (fn. 1), 368–70Google Scholar.

12 Ibid., 369.

13 See Khrushchev, , Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament (fn. 1), xivGoogle Scholar, for evidence of the withdrawal of some materials from the tapes. No evidence has appeared, however, of the intentional fabrication of stories.

14 Monat, Pawel, “Russians in Korea: Hidden Bosses,” Life, xxxxvm (06 27, 1960), 76–102 passimGoogle Scholar.

15 Robert Scalapino and Chong-sik Lee, who interviewed many North Koreans who had defected or had been captured, state that Khrushchev's account is, in this case, “at variance with numerous Korean accounts.” See Scalapino and Lee (fn. 8), II, 399n. A captured North Korean officer, Second Lieutenant Pae Chun Pal, reported in interrogation that Russian advisers were in several of the attacking units; see Far Eastern Command (fn. 1). A C.I.A. report of July 27, 1950, indicates that a South Korean refugee stated he had seen “about 50 Soviet officers” in Seoul on July 6. The source was marked “Usually Reliable.” (The report is available in the Records of the Occupation of Japan, Federal Records Center, Suitland, Md.)

16 Department of State, North Korea: A Case Study in the Techniques of Takeover (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office 1961), 1Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., 114.

18 See Central Intelligence Agency, “Current Capabilities of the North Korean Regime,” June 19, 1950, Records of the Occupation of Japan, Federal Records Center, Suitland, Md. Since this report was not declassified until late 1974, Simmons had probably not seen it when he submitted his manuscript for publication.

19 See Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Facts Tell (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House 1960)Google Scholar, for documents relating to South Korea's intelligence operation in the north.

20 The State Department study states that “perhaps 40,000” of these troops had entered Korea by the time of the attack and “accounted for at least one-third of the spearhead divisions of the North Korean army.” Department of State (fn. 16), 117. The official U.S. Army history puts the number at 28,000. See Appleman, Roy, South to the Nafyong, North to the Yalu (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office 1961), 9Google Scholar. Far Eastern Command Intelligence Headquarters in Tokyo reported that “[c]umula-tive evidence indicates that, as of 24 June 1950, the total strength of Korean-Manchurian troops in Korea who formerly served with the Communist Chinese Forces amounted to at least 23,000; and it is possible that this total has been augmented considerably.” Far Eastern Command, Intelligence Summary, 07 6, 1950Google Scholar, Records of the Occupation of Japan, Federal Records Center, Suitland, Md.

21 Scalapino and Lee, I (fn. 8), 401.

22 Central Intelligence Agency (fn. 18), 11.

23 It should be noted, however, that a major buildup of North Korean forces had taken place in the months before the invasion. See Appleman (fn. 20), 10-12.

24 Khrushchev, , Khrushchev Remembers (fn. 1), 369Google Scholar.

25 Adam Ulam makes the point about the impact on Soviet thinking of America's failure to “save” China; see The Rivals (New York: Viking Press 1971), 170–71Google Scholar. General MacArthur and Secretary of State Acheson both made public statements that left South Korea out of the American Pacific defense perimeter. For MacArthur's, , see New York Times, 03 2, 1949, p. 5Google Scholar. For Acheson's, , see Department of State, American Foreign Policy, 1950-1955 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office 1957), 2529–31Google Scholar. The defeat, in the House of Representatives, of the Korean aid bill is noted in Acheson, Dean, Present at the Creation (New York: Norton 1969), 358Google Scholar. Senator Tom Connally's statement about the probable fall of South Korea was made during an interview; see U.S. News and World Report, XXVIII (05 5, 1950), 30. Since it was not unreasonable to interpret Article 27 of the U.N. Charter as barring Security Council action on substantive matters in the absence of a permanent member, Moscow may have seen its boycott as advantageous in June 1950. (Paragraph 3 of Article 27 reads as follows: “Decisions of the Security Council on all other than procedural matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of seven members, including the concurring votes of the permanent members…”) Stalin may have been surprised not only that the United States took any decisive action at all, but especially that the action taken was through Security Council auspicesGoogle Scholar.

26 Khrushchev, , Khrushchev Remembers (in. 1), 370Google Scholar.

27 Mao was in Russia from December 1949 through mid-February 1950, when a Sino-Soviet treaty of alliance was concluded.

28 See Ulam (fn. 25), 171.

29 Stalin also may have seen the North Korean conquest of South Korea as a means of neutralizing the American position on Japan. See Kennan, George, Memoirs 1950-1963 (Boston: Little, Brown 1972), 41–45Google Scholar.

30 The response of the Japanese press to the North Korean attack was reported in the intelligence summaries of the Far Eastern Command during the last week of June. These reports are available in the Records of the Occupation of Japan, Federal Records Center, Suitland, Md. Western European support for American intervention in Korea is best demonstrated by the favorable votes of France and Great Britain on the Security Council resolutions of June 25 and June 27. For other evidence of Western Europe's support of the strong American response, see Paige, Glenn, The Korean Decision (New York: Free Press 1968), 192, 200-201, 213–14Google Scholar.

31 For warning, Acheson's, see Department of State Bulletin, XXII (04 17, 1950), 602Google Scholar.