Establishment of the DPRK
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was established on September 9, 1948, three weeks after the Republic of Korea was formed in Seoul on August 15. Kim Il Sung was named premier, a title he retained until 1972, when, under a new constitution, he was named president. At the end of 1948, the Soviets withdrew their occupation forces from North Korea. This decision contrasted strongly with Soviet policies in Eastern Europe. Tens of thousands of Korean soldiers who fought in the Chinese civil war (1946–49) also filtered back into Korea.
In 1949, the DPRK instituted compulsory military service, bringing the total number of troops to between 150,000 and 200,000, organized into ten infantry divisions, one tank division and one air force division. This large military force was equipped with Soviet weapons, including T-34 tanks and Yak fighter planes. These forces were further bolstered by the return of 45,000 war-hardened Korean soldiers from China following the end of the civil war there.
Between 1945 and 1948, the 38th parallel turned into a heavily guarded border, while both sides of the divided peninsula contemplated the use of military force to achieve reunification. Tensions and military provocations increased after the respective departures of Soviet and United States forces in 1948.
All through 1949, tough, crack troops with Chinese, not Soviet, experience returned to be integrated with the KPA; the return of these Korean troops inevitably skewed North Korea toward China. It enhanced Kim’s bargaining power and enabled him to maneuver between the two communist giants. The Soviets kept advisers in the Korean government and military, although far fewer than the thousands claimed by South Korean sources. There were probably 300 to 400 advisers assigned to North Korea, although many of those were experienced military and security people. Both countries continued to trade, and the Soviets sold World War II–vintage weaponry to North Korea.
In 1949 Kim Il Sung had himself named suryong an old Koguryo term for “leader” that the Koreans always modified by the adjective “great” (as in Great Leader). The KPA was built up with recruiting campaigns for soldiers and bond drives to purchase Soviet tanks; meanwhile, the tradition of the Manchurian guerrillas was burnished in the party newspaper, Nodong Shinmun (Workers’ Daily), perhaps to offset the influence of powerful Korean officers who fought with the Chinese communists, such Mu Chong and Pang Ho-san.
North Korea seemed to be on a war footing in early 1949. Kim’s New Year’s speech—analogous to a “state of the union” address in spelling out guidelines—was bellicose and excoriated South Korea as a puppet state. The army expanded rapidly, soldiers drilled in war maneuvers, and war-bond-purchasing drives continued for the purchase of Soviet weaponry. North Korea fortified the thirty-eighth parallel, and soon border incidents began breaking out. Neither side recognized the parallel as a legitimate boundary; the Rhee regime also wanted to unify Korea under its rule, by force if necessary. Rhee often referred to a “northern expedition” to “recover the lost territory,” and in the summer of 1949 his army provoked the majority of the fighting along the thirty-eighth parallel (according to declassified US documents), fighting that sometimes took hundreds of lives.
This belligerent attitude was a prime reason why the United States refused to supply tanks and airplanes to South Korea: it feared that they would be used to attack the North. When US Secretary of State Dean Acheson made a speech in January 1950, in which he appeared to place South Korea outside the US defense perimeter in Asia, he was mainly seeking to remind Rhee that he could not count on automatic US backing, regardless of how he behaved.
Joseph Stalin backed Kim Il-sung’s war by withdrawing his earlier opposition to it, minimizing his own contribution and putting the onus of support on Mao Zedong’s new government in China. The Soviet Union provided heavy weaponry to the DPRK but did not provide troops. Nevertheless, Kim Il-sung’s top military advisors in the early phase of the war were Russian generals who re-drew North Korean invasion plans to their own specifications. Mao pledged to send Chinese troops if the Americans entered the war.
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