¹ The quality of an earlier version of this paper was enhanced by generous comments provided by Mark Selden, and from questions and discussion following my presentation of this material at a seminar sponsored by the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia in February 2005. Its revision has benefited from painfully critical, but thought provoking, observations provided by two anonymous readers from an earlier submission for publication.

² In addition to research that exploits documents related to the origins of the Korean War (the topic of this paper), Soviet archives have also encouraged studies on Kim Il Sung's post-Korean War consolidation of power, including Andrei Lankov, Crisis in North Korea: The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005) and Balázs Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era: Soviet-DPRK Relations and the Roots of North Korean Despotism, 1953-1964 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005). In addition, Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev's Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary (New York: W. W Norton, 2006), is of peripheral interest to this history.

³ The most important studies that consider these documents include Sergei N. Goncharov, John W. Lewis, and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993); Jian Chen, China's Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); William Stueck, The Korean War: An International History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995); William Stueck, Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Kathryn Weathersby, Soviet Aims in Korea and the Origins of the Korean War, 1945-1950: New Evidence from the Russian Archives (Washington, D. C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1993); Kathryn Weathersby, “‘Should We Fear This?‘: Stalin and the Danger of War With America,” Working Paper #39, Cold War International History Project (July 2002); Kathryn Weathersby, “The Soviet Role in the Korean War: The State of Historical Knowledge,” in The Korean War in World History, edited by William Stueck (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004); A. V. Torcov, Chōsen sensō no nazo to shinjitsu (Truth and riddles of the Korean war), trans. Shimatomai Nobuo and Kim S⊖ngho (Tokyo: Soshinsha 2001); and Wada Haruki, Chōsen sensō zenshi (The complete history of the Korean War) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2002); Pak My⊖ngrim, Hanguk ch⊖njaeng ŭi palpar kwa kiwon (The Outbreak and Origins of the Korean War), 2. vols. (Seoul: Nanam, 2003); So Chinch⊖l, Hanguk ch⊖njaeng ŭi kiwon: “Kukje kongsanchuŭi” ŭi ŭmmo (The Origins of the Korean War: A Plot Conspiracy of “International Communism”) (Seoul: Wongwan Taehakkyo, 1997).

⁴ Kathryn Weathersby, “New Findings on the Korean War,” CWIHP Bulletin #3 (Fall 1993) 1, 14-18.

⁵ Indeed, most scholarly works on the Korean War's origins stop short of answering the question of which Korea fired the first shot in the war. Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War: The Roaring of the Cataract, 1947-1950 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 766; John Merrill, The Peninsular Origins of the Korean War (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), 13; Stueck, The Korean War, 10.

⁶ Kathryn Weathersby, “To Attack, or Not to Attack? Stalin, Kim Il Sung, and the Prelude to War,” CWIHP Bulletin #5 (Spring 1995) 1, 2-9; Wada Haruki, Chōsen sensō zenshi, 82, fn 36.

⁷ Weathersby, “Should we Fear This?,” 4.

⁸ Torcov, Chōsen sensō no nazo to shinjitsu, 61. Kim Il Sung met with the Russian Ambassador on August 12 and 14. A message sent by Shtykov to Moscow began by acknowledging that the peaceful unification option is clearly dead due to Seoul's unwillingness to accept its terms. Thus, he continued, there is no other option than to unify the peninsula by force.

⁹ Bruce Cumings (Origins of the Korean War, 388-98) details the border fighting.

¹⁰ These developments include the Soviet Union's successful test of an atomic weapon, the Communist Chinese victory over the Nationalist Chinese army, and finally a positive response from the Soviet Union and China regarding its plan.

¹¹ Torcov, Chōsen sensō no nazo to shinjitsu, 61.

¹² Ibid. 63-64. See also Weathersby, “To Attack, or Not to Attack?” Kim responded to Stalin's concerns on September 12-13 in a meeting with G. I. Tonkin, the Soviet diplomatic representative to P'yongyang.

¹³ Torcov, Chōsen sensō no nazo to shinjitsu, 104-105.

¹⁴ Ibid., 61. The Soviet ambassador offered this warning on August 27.

¹⁵ Ibid., 69.

¹⁶ Ibid., 112.

¹⁷ Ibid., 30.

¹⁸ Ibid., 36.

¹⁹ Ibid., 124.

²⁰ Wada, Chōsen sensō zenshi, 98; Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, 446.

²¹ Ambassador Muccio to the Secretary of State, June 9, 1950 in Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS)VII (Korea) (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1976), 98-99. North Korea's track record for peace initiatives was not good. One effort in April 1948 that was attended by two southern conservative leaders, Kim Ku and Kim Kyusik, was able to agree on a platform for peaceful unification. However, it cut off southern power soon after the two Kims returned and thus raised doubt over the North's sincerity. The failure of this last minute effort to prevent southern Korean elections smoothed the path for Syngman Rhee's rise to power. See Merrill, The Peninsular Origins of the Korean War, 75-77.

²² Weathersby writes that Stalin initially accepted Kim's limited offensive to capture the Ongjin peninsula, but later changed his mind after realizing the impossibility that this incursion would remain limited. North Korean actions would surely initiate fighting across the peninsula. Weathersby “Should We Fear This?,” 7.

²³ Torcov, Chōsen sensō no nazo to shinjitsu, 88-89, 92.

²⁴ Chen, China's Road to the Korean War, 126.

²⁵ Weathersby “Should We Fear This?,” 10. Pak H⊖ny⊖ng, a leader of the southern Korean Workers' Party who had fled north in October 1946 on the heels of General John R. Hodge's suppression of the party, paid with his life in the postwar purges of 1955 that allowed Kim Il Sung to strengthen his totalitarian rule. Kim blamed him for the war's ultimate failure when southern partisans did not rally following the North's push south.

²⁶ For discussion of Dean Acheson's speech see Cumings, Origins of the Korean War, chapter 13. Weathersby notes that the British spy, Donald McLean, had convinced the Soviets that the time was ripe for a northern attack on South Korea. Weathersby “Should We Fear This?,” 11.

²⁷ Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A History (New York: The Modern Library, 2010), 111.

²⁸ For an interesting account of the initial Stalin-Mao meeting in January 1950 see Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, chapter 3.

²⁹ Chin O. Chung provides a history of this triangular relationship from the 1960s in his P'yongyang Between Peking and Moscow (University: University of Alabama Press, 1978). Robert P. Simmons considers the pre-Korean War strains that characterized Soviet-Chinese relations in his The Strained Alliance: Peking, P'y⊖ngyang, Moscow and the Politics of the Korean Civil War (New York: The Free Press, 1975), chapters 3 and 4.

³⁰ Allen S. Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu: The Decision to Enter the Korean War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1960), 45-46.

³¹ In the end, however, Soviet pilots, outfitted in Chinese military uniforms, did participate in the Korean War.

³² O Ch'unggun argues that the Soviets boycotted the Security Council at the time of the outbreak of war out of fear of such criticism by the United States should they veto the resolution to come to South Korea's assistance. O Ch'unggun, “Han'guk ch⊖njaeng kwa Sory⊖n ŭi yuen anj⊖n pojangi sah⊖e ky⊖ls⊖k: hosaro kkutnan ‘sut'allin ŭi silli oekyo'” [The Korean War and the Soviet Union's boycott of the United Nations Security Council: A vain attempt resulting in Stalin's ‘loss' diplomacy], Han'guk ch⊖ngchi hakh⊖e boje 35, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 105-23.

³³ This opinion was part of a discussion that took place between the North Korean and Chinese leaders on May 15, 1950 in Beijing, as recounted by Pak H⊖ny⊖ng in Torcov, Chōsen sensō no nazo to shinjitsu, 113.

³⁴ Mao made this assumption as part of an exchange of letters between Kim Il Sung and Chinese officials in May 1950, as reported by Shtykov to Soviet officials. Ibid., 108-109.

³⁵ Ibid., 83-84. It was during this visit that Kim sent Kim Kwang-hyop to Moscow to meet with Mao to request that the Chinese leader release Korean soldiers who had fought in China's civil war (ibid., 88).

³⁶ Wada Haruki, Chōsen sensō zenshi, 111.

³⁷ Ibid., 112.

³⁸ On this day the United States Air force strafed Antung. See Stone, The Hidden History of the Korean War, 90-92. Stone contends that the first Chinese mission of 5,000 Chinese troops was primarily to protect the dams along the Yalu River from U.S. attacks (Ibid., 154-55). Alan Whiting adds that the United States offered compensation for this “mistake,” but two days later Beijing again accused it of firing on Chinese fishing boats in the Yalu River. Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu, 97.

³⁹ Cumings, The Korean War, 25. By this time South Korean troops had pushed to within thirty miles, and the United Nations forces to within sixty miles, of the Chinese border. Stone, The Hidden History of the Korean War, 154.

⁴⁰ Torcov, Chōsen sensō no nazo to shinjitsu, pp. 104-5.

⁴¹ The racial factor entered into Mao's reasoning that Chinese sharing the same hair color as Koreans made their participation more appropriate than the Soviet military. Wada, Chōsen sensō zenshi, 47.

⁴² Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu, “Occupation Policy and Postwar Sino-Japanese Relations: Severing Economic Ties,” in Democracy in Occupied Japan: The U.S. Occupation and Japanese Politics and Society, edited by Mark E. Caprio and Yoneyuki Sugita (London; Routledge, 2007), 202-204. Peter Lowe notes that MacArthur sent Japanese “volunteers” to Taiwan to assist the Kuomintang in his Origins of the Korean War (London: Longman, 1986), 114-15.

⁴³ Commanding officer John R. Hodge addressed both of these rumors in “Jacobs to Secretary of State: Press Release by General John R. Hodge” (June 16, 1948), Internal Affairs of Korea, 1945-1949, vol. 9 (Seoul: Arŭm, 1995), 493.

⁴⁴ Kathryn Weathersby, “New Russian Documents on the Korean War,” CWIHP Bulletin 6, 7 (Winter 1995/6), 48.

⁴⁵ See Roger Dingman, “The Dagger and the Gift: The Impact of the Korean War on Japan,” Journal of East Asian Relations 1 (Spring 1993): 29-55; Reinhard Drifte, “Japan's Involvement in the Korean War,” in The Korean War in History, edited by James Cotton and Ian Neary (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1989), 120-34; and Michael Schaller, “The Korean War: The Economic and Strategic Impact on Japan, 1950-1953,” in The Korean War in World History, edited by Stueck, 145-76.

⁴⁶ Drifte, “Japan's Involvement in the Korean War,” 130. North Korea sunk two of these vessels, another one struck a mine, and yet another ran aground.

⁴⁷ Japanese-Americans accounted for about 200 deaths, with about 5,000 participating in the Korean War. David Halberstam writes of one Japanese American, Gene Takahashi, who was taken prisoner. When asked to shout out to bring in other prisoners he shouted out in Japanese an opposite message—don't come in. Halberstam offers that his actions perhaps sent North Koreans the false message that Japanese were fighting among the UN forces. David Halberstam, The Coldest War: America and the Korean War (New York: Hyperion, 2007), 415.

⁴⁸ Soon after the war broke out, the Japan-based Mindan group issued a call for volunteers to fight in the United Nations forces. Four Japanese were among the 3,000 Koreans who answered this call. According to Reinhard Drifte “thousands of Japanese young people attempted to enlist in the American forces.” Drifte, “Japanese Involvement in the Korean War,” 129.

⁴⁹ Ōnuma Hisao, “Chōsen sensō e no Nihon no kyōryoku” (Japanese cooperation in the Korean War), in Chōsen sensō to Nihon, edited by Ōnuma Hisao (Tokyo: Shinkansha, 2006), 73-119.

⁵⁰ John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 76-77.

⁵¹ These include discussions held between Syngman Rhee and Douglas MacArthur in October 1948 and February 1950, and between Rhee and John Foster Dulles days before the outbreak of conventional war in June 1950.

⁵² Rhee acknowledged that the proposal to use Japanese-trained Koreans in the South Korean military had drawn criticism from a Major General John B. Coulter, who voiced concerns over the moral problems this might cause. The South Korean president, however, did not see this as a factor of significance. “Memorandum of Conversation by the Secretary of the Army (Royall)” (February 8, 1949), FRUS VII (Far East and Australia), 956.

⁵³ Ibid., 956-58. This is just one of many times in which the South Korean president openly voiced an interest in attacking North Korea. He also broached the idea in February 1950 while in Tokyo, and in a March 1, 1950 speech given before United Nations Commission on Korea (UNCOK). Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, 481.

⁵⁴ See Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, 392.

⁵⁵ “Memorandum of Conversation, by the Ambassador in Korea (Muccio)” (May 2, 1949), FRUS VII (Far East and Australia), 1003-1005. Rhee's reference to Theodore Roosevelt recalls the American president's inaction (and encouragement) of Japan's colonial subjugation of the Korean peninsula from 1905. Franklin Roosevelt “betrayed” Korea by pushing for a trusteeship administration over the Korean peninsula at his 1945 meeting with the Soviets in Yalta.

⁵⁶ “The Ambassador in Korea (Muccio) to the Assistant Secretary of East Asian Affairs (Rusk) (May 25, 1950), FRUS VII (Korea), 88-89.

⁵⁷ Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, 473.

⁵⁸ Torcov, Chōsen sensō no nazo to shinjitsu, 53-56 provides a Japanese translation of this letter.

⁵⁹ “Memorandum by the Ambassador at Large, Philip C. Jessup” (January 15, 1950), FRUS VII (Korea), 1.

⁶⁰ “Memorandum by the Department of the Army to the Department of State” (June 27, 1949), FRUS VII (Far East and Australia), 1047-1048. The Joint Chiefs of Staff deemed points three and four to be impractical. Ibid., 1055-1057.

⁶¹ Ibid., 1049. Here the terms of the March 1949 Soviet-North Korean agreement appear to be exaggerated. Bruce Cumings cites CIA reports claiming that the equipment that the Soviets sold to the North Koreans was dated, and not useful once the United States entered the war. Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, 445-46.

⁶² “Memorandum by the Department of the Army to the Department of State,” 1050. A number of studies suggest that had peninsula elections been held politicians of leftist suasion would have carried the day. The Soviet ambassador in P'y⊖ngyang quoted a North Korean statement that South Korea was preparing to invade because it could not survive a peaceful unification. As many as 80 percent of Koreans supported the North Korean system. Torcov, Chōsen sensō no nazo to shinjitsu, 40. Though the North Korean estimate may have been exaggerated, even the United States apparently recognized that conservatives would lose a general election.

⁶³ The southern Koreans held elections on May 10, 1948 and initiated the South Korean state on August 15, 1948. The northern Koreans declared the birth of North Korea on September 9, 1948.

⁶⁴ According to Kong Imsun, Syngman Rhee had to resort to forgery to get his list of supporters accepted by the United Nations' Commission after he missed the deadline. See her “Suk'aendŭl Pankong: Yoryu my⊖ngsa Mo Yunsuk ŭi ch'inil kwa pankong ŭi ichungchu” (Scandal and Anticommunism: The Duplicity of Mo Yunsuk as ‘Female Intellectual, ‘Pro-Japanese, and Anti-Communist), Han'guk kundae munhak y⊖ngu 17 (2008): 184.

⁶⁵ “Memorandum (UNCOK and U.S. Policy at the Fourth General [UN] Assembly)” (August 20, 1949) FRUS (Far East and Australia), 1073. We must also note that John Hodge had banned the Southern Korean Communist Party from 1946, thus exiling communists such as Pak H⊖ny⊖ng to the North.

⁶⁶ Matthew M. Aid, “US Humint and Comint in the Korean War: From the Approach of War to the Chinese Intervention,” in Richard J. Aldrich, Gary D. Rawnsley, and Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley, eds., The Clandestine Cold War in Asia, 1945-1965: Western Intelligence, Propaganda, and Special Operations (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 32. Wada Haruki reports that South Korean agents were organized in every northern province (Wada, Chōsen sensō zenshi, 49).

⁶⁷ Aid, “US Humint and Comint in the Korean War,” 34.

⁶⁸ The same informant also stated that the railroad connecting North Korea and Russia would be completed by April of this year. G-2 Periodic Report (February 10, 1950), HQ, USMAGIK G-2 Periodic Report (1949. 11. 23-1950. 6. 15) (Chunchon: Institute of Culture Studies, Hallym University, 1989), 293.

⁶⁹ Dean Acheson, The Korean War (New York: W.W. Norton, 171), 14.

⁷⁰ These reports began listing the number of casualties suffered by the two militaries, as well as by civilians, from April 1950. Between April 13-20, 1950, for example, it listed as KIA (killed in action) and (MIA) missing in action 17/106 South Korean forces, 130/20 North Korean forces, and 55/3 civilians. HQ, USMAGIK G-2 Periodic Report, (April 20, 1950), 472.

⁷¹ Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, 503.

⁷² Shtykov to Stalin, June 21, 1950, Torcov, Chōsen sensō no nazo to shinjitsu, 119. Translation from Weathersby, “Should We Fear This?,” 15. Apparently others were aware of South Korean troop movements around this time, as recalled by former Australian Prime Minister E. Gough Whitlam. See Cumings, Origins of the Korean War, 547.

⁷³ HQ, USAFIK Intelligence Summary, Northern Korea (1947. 4.1-1948. 1. 9) (Chunchon: Institute of Culture Studies, Hallym University, 1989), 31.

⁷⁴ North Korea predicted that the South Korean military would invade on August 15, 1949, and in early 1950. The Soviet Union and Chinese both cautioned the North to wait for this invasion rather than initiate combat on its own until it became clear that the South would not attack.

⁷⁵ “Rhee calls on Japanese to Join Anti-Red Battle,” Nippon Times (February 17, 1950), in Migun CIC ch⊖ngbo pogos⊖, vol. 1: Inmul chosa pog⊖ [US Military CIC Information Reports: Investigations on People], (Seoul: Chongang ilbo, Hy⊖ndaesa Y⊖nguso, 1996), 242.

⁷⁶ “Rhee Vows to Recover North Korea,” Stars and Stripes (March 1, 1950), in ibid., 238.

⁷⁷ “Rhee to Oliver” (March 8, 1950). The Syngman Rhee Presidential Papers (Yonsei University), File 83, #01260015. These papers are also a part of the Robert J. Oliver Papers.

⁷⁸ Ibid.

⁷⁹ John Merrill writes that North Korea believed that while in Tokyo Rhee had successfully gained the military assistance he desired. It also accused South Korea of moving toward a military alliance with Japan to use Korea as a “springboard” for attacking the Soviet Union. Merrill, The Peninsular Origins of the Korean War, 173. See also Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, 459-61. Cumings notes that a number of South Korean officials made trips to Tokyo to meet with MacArthur. Ibid., 459.