government documents, Bruce Cumings argued that it was a civil war, and that the socialist state established in North Korea had considerable popular support at the time. Industry had been nationalized, land redistributed, and public education expanded to the workers and peasants, while the regime placed women and lower class men into positions of leadership (Cumings 427)
Kim sees Stalin as becoming more aggressive and overconfident by 1949-50, though, encouraged to go on the offensive in the Cold War by the successful test of the Soviet atomic bomb in 1949 and by the success of the Chinese Revolution that same year. Kim Il Sung "did not have the means to achieve his goal without Stalin's assistance," which he finally got in January 1950 (Kim 137)
He had indeed inveigled the Chinese and Soviets to support his bid for military conquest of the South in 1950, after the popular uprisings were defeated, and neither Stalin nor Mao was pleased with the results. No real coalition ever formed in North Korea to remove him from power, however, and "the challenge of Kim's opponents was no match for his talent for survival" (Suh 157)
, UN, or other nations. Some of the counters of these policies are showing respite to the Korean populace and could potentially include efforts like the law passed by the government of Kim Dae-Jung as a reaction to the 1948 Cheju Uprising and the policy passed as a reaction to the 1980 Kwangju Massacre by Kim Young-Sam (Akira, 2010)
troops had upturned and completely annihilated 64 of the major areas and had dropped the atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the effects of which have still not completely been cleaned off in the country. American troops had used over 635, 000 bombs in the Korean War alone -- that's, majority essentially on the region of North Korea -- these also included a total of 32, 557 a lot of napalm explosives; the amount of these bombs of course seems to take a whole new weight of importance when compared with 503, 000 and upwards of the bombs dropped in the whole Pacific region in the events of the Second World War (Armstrong, 2010)
A civil conflict. Hence, the historical accounts on the national and local level have very different opinions and versions of the war that took place nearly crippling the entire structure of the Korean peninsula (Kwon, 2010)
An important part of the job of the control -- the 2nd takeover that southern Korea had undergone since the year 1945 -- was to tackle the refugees' rehabilitation issue. By August 1950, while the territory under UNC jurisdiction shrank and found centre round the Ky-ngsang region, many of the South Korean local authorities asserted and testified that it was the ambush by the northern forces that had caused the displacement of more than one million people from the South (Lee, 2010)
This may not be all that surprising given Stalin's experiences during World War II with the German offensive sapping its manpower and resources while the Allied forces took their time in coordinating a D-Day invasion of the continent. At any rate, what is known is that, "Chinese and Russian sources verify that Mao and Stalin formed their Sino-Soviet alliance of friendship and security during Mao's visit to Moscow from December 1949 to February 1950" (Brune, 2005, p
This may not be all that surprising given Stalin's experiences during World War II with the German offensive sapping its manpower and resources while the Allied forces took their time in coordinating a D-Day invasion of the continent. At any rate, what is known is that, "Chinese and Russian sources verify that Mao and Stalin formed their Sino-Soviet alliance of friendship and security during Mao's visit to Moscow from December 1949 to February 1950" (Brune, 2005, p
On the other hand, the research also made it abundantly clear that there was more taking place that was released for public consumption throughout the war effort and for several decades following its end. As one critic puts it, "The Korean War nearly got us into a war on the Chinese mainland, made China dependent on the Soviet Union and made Sino-American relations impossible for a quarter-century" (Cumings 1986, p
S. had withdrawn all of its military forces from the Korean peninsula, Stalin felt assured that the United States would regard a military action by North Korea as a localized matter and remain out of the conflict (Fritz 2004)
26). When the American led-UN coalition forces crossing the demarcation line of the 38th parallel and driving far into North Korean territory, the North Korean leader, Kim Il Sung, petitioned China for assistance (Guo & Ren 2003)
20). Of course, the "elsewhere" was the Korean peninsula where the Chinese were going head-to-head with the American forces (Jasper 2003)
For example, recently released documents from Russia, China and various Korean sources support Khrushchev's account of the events that led up to the Korean War. According to Jian, "Khrushchev's description of Zhou Enlai's secret visit to the Soviet Union after the UN landing at Inchon, for example, is compatible with new Chinese sources even in small details" (Jian 1994:86)
Not surprisingly, American media paid close attention to MacArthur's proclamations about the war based on his larger-than-life stature as one of the major heroes of World War II. The American media was especially focused on MacArthur's views concerning the ultimate result of the war in Korea being a stalemate, and public opinion polls reflected severely diminished support for the war as well as for the Truman administration (Patterson et al
192). Following his trips to Moscow in late 1949 and early 1950, though, the North Korean leader was successful in persuading Stalin that his military forces were capable of overwhelming the South Korean forces so quickly that the United States would be unable to mount a defense (Roe 1999)
3). The end of this era also marked the end of the allied powers that had brought about this successful conclusion to the greatest war the world had ever known, which consisted primarily of the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, with China playing a more strategic regionalized role during the conflict (Sandler 1999)
3). For the combatants on the ground, the story was slightly different than the drama being played out in the air war portion of the conflict (Shrader 1995)
47). After the end of World War II, the United States quickly demobilized its military forces and the Air Force lost many of its most valuable members to the private sector (Suit 2002)
Newly discovered and released documentary evidence also indicates that this legacy had some far-reaching effects. When the North Korean leadership determined that they could not depend on the Soviet Union for direct support, their philosophical and doctrinal views shifted to reliance on Russia and China to one of self-reliance, an approach known as "Juche" (Weathersby 1999)