Mitchell Lerner (lerner.26@osu.edu) is an associate professor of history and Director of the Institute for Korean Studies at the Ohio State University.

Seoul Journal of Korean Studies 31, no. 1 (June 2018): 75–98.© 2018 Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies

The Domestic Origins of the Second Korean War: New Evidence from Communist Bloc Archives

Mitchell Lerner

In the late 1960s, the Korean Peninsula suddenly exploded with a violence not seen since the end of the Korean War, driven by a sudden wave of North Korea aggression that culminated in January 1968 with the attempted assassination of Park Chung Hee and the capture of the USS Pueblo. For decades, scholars have struggled to understand this crisis, as they lacked access to materials that could open a window into DPRK policy. Only now, with the recent release of new materials collected from the archives of the Communist bloc nations, can we begin to understand the critical events of the Second Korean War and the larger environment that surrounded it. This paper integrates the most recent materials from former Communist bloc states to revisit our understanding of this dangerous situation, and to suggest that it was driven above all else by domestic political and economic circumstances inside North Korea.

Keywords: South Korea, North Korea, Pueblo, Blue House, Second Korean War

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Introduction

In the late 1960s, an explosion of violence shattered the relative calm of the Korean Peninsula, as a wave of North Korean military provocations swept across the 38th Parallel. Military incidents increased from 42 in 1965 to 286 in just the first six months of 1967.1 This period, sometimes called “The Second Korean War,” stands as one of the most dangerous times in modern Korean history, and yet it remains somewhat understudied by scholars. A number of works have focused on the military and diplomatic aspects of this period, particularly from the American perspective and with a focus on the relationship between Korea and the Vietnam War.2 Due largely to the paucity of materials, there has been much less scholarship on the North Korean side of the story. However, the fall of the Soviet Union and the subsequent release of some materials from the former Communist bloc states have begun to rectify that situation. Accordingly, the last decade has seen the emergence of an exciting body of literature that has opened a small window into the policymaking of the DPRK during this explosive period, and which, for the first time, points to some larger conclusions about the North during the Cold War.3

Although these newer sources offer insights into many areas from the time period, one critical aspect lies at the heart of this particular study: the motivation that underlay the North Korean aggression. Scholars have pointed to numerous possible explanations for their behavior. Some early studies claimed that the North was not the aggressive party, but that their actions were largely defensive responses to increased South Korean and American provocation.4 More recent analysis has focused on the changing dynamics on

1. “Telegram from the Commander in Chief, UN Command Korea and the Commander of US Forces Korea (Bonesteel) to the Commander in Chief Pacific (Sharp),” July 21, 1967, Country File, Korea, vol. 4, NSF (National Security Files), Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library.

2. See, for example, Nicholas Sarantakes, “The Quiet War: Combat Operations along the Korean Demilitarized Zone,” The Journal of Military History 64, no. 2 (1998): 439-457; Daniel Bolger, Scenes from an Unfinished War: Low Intensity Conflict in Korea, 1966-69 (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1991); Richard Mobley, Flashpoint North Korea (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2003).

3. See especially the working paper series at the Cold War International History Project (https://www.wilsoncenter.org/program/cold-war-international-history-project), including Bernd Schaefer, Working Paper #44, “North Korean Adventurism and China’s Long Shadow;” Sergey Radchenko, Working Paper #47, “The Soviet Union and the North Korean Seizure of the USS Pueblo;” and Mitchell Lerner, NKIDP Working Paper #3, “Mostly Propaganda in Nature.”

4. See, for example, Frank Baldwin, ed., Without Parallel: The American-Korean Relationship since 1945 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), 33.

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the Korean Peninsula, arguing that Kim Il Sung was acting with an eye towards destabilizing the situation in the South.5 Others have connected the crisis to the Vietnam War, suggesting that Kim was trying to emulate North Vietnamese guerilla tactics, or that he believed that America’s heavy commitment there would prevent the Johnson administration from responding forcefully to his provocations against the South.6 This paper, which builds on my earlier work with the North Korea International Documentation Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, argues instead that the primary driver of the Second Korean War actually lay much closer to home, as it can be found in the changing economic and political situation inside the DPRK itself.7

The Second Korean War

As the tenth anniversary of the end of the Korean War approached in 1963, an uneasy truce hovered over the Korean peninsula. Tension and suspicion remained high on both sides, marked by the occasional verbal (or even more infrequently, physical) confrontation. Still, the prospect of a significant eruption of hostilities appeared unlikely. Instead, the rivals who faced each other across the 38th parallel seemed generally content to exchange accusations instead of bullets. The relative calm was reflected in a meeting in April 1963 between the East German Ambassador to North Korea and Deputy Chairman Pak Kum Cheol of the Korean Workers Party in Pyongyang, where the DPRK leader spoke of his nation’s goal of peaceful reunification; the North Korean, reported the ambassador in some amazement, did not even mention the United States or the need to drive its forces from the peninsula.8 Behind the scenes, American

5. See, for example, Bolger, Unfinished War; and Charles Armstrong, Tyranny of the Weak (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013).

6. See, for example, Vandon Jenerette, “The Forgotten DMZ,” Military Review 68, no. 5 (1988); Donald Zagoria and Young Kun Kim, “North Korea and the Major Powers, ” Asian Survey 15, no. 12 (1975); and Narushige Michishita, North Korea’s Military-Diplomatic Campaigns, 1966–2008 (London: Routledge, 2010). The best discussion of the relationship between Vietnam and the Korean crisis can be found in Balázs Szalontai, “In the Shadow of Vietnam: A New Look at North Korea’s Militant Strategy, 1962–1970,” Journal of Cold War Studies 14, no. 4 (2012).

7. Lerner, “Mostly Propaganda by Nature.”

8. “Memorandum of a Conversation between the Czech Ambassador to the DPRK, Comrade Moravec, with the Soviet Ambassador, Comrade Moskovskii, and the GDR Ambassador, Comrade Becker, on 23.IV.1963,” May 16, 1963, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, State Central Archive, Prague, file A. Novotny, foreign affairs, KPDR, translated for NKIDP by Adolf Kotlik, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113714.

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officials were equally confident that another war was unlikely. A Special National Intelligence Estimate concluded, “As long as the Communist powers believe that the US will defend South Korea, they will almost certainly not launch an overt military invasion.”9 It wasn’t just political leaders who celebrated the new mood. Media coverage on both sides offered similarly optimistic assessments. “Not long ago the cities and industrial enterprises of North Korea lay in ruins, destroyed by a devastating war,” wrote one commentator in Pravda in 1961. “Today the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a strong and prosperous socialist state… The living standard of the working people is rising steadily. [North Korea] has become a lighthouse that illuminates the path toward the bright future for the whole Korean people.”10 Not to be outdone was Helene Adams of the Chicago Tribune, who, at roughly the same time, described the Republic of Korea as “an energetic country of 22 million friendly, optimistically courageous people.” Seoul, she wrote in an article entitled Korea is a Delight to Visit, “has emerged from devastation to a new city––interesting, vibrant, modern, interweaving the capital of ancient times side by side with the city of progress.” And if its history, heritage, and scenery were not enough, she concluded, “Korea also offers shopping for lacquerware, silk brocades, and hand carved wooden chests.”11 By the early 1960s, it seemed, Korea had entered an era that, while still more dangerous than peace, was also much less dangerous than war.

The calm, however, was shattered in 1966. That summer, the North Korean Navy intensified its seizure of ROK fishing boats off the eastern coast and the kidnapping of the sailors who operated them. “For these fishermen, and for the policemen on duty in the villages and hamlets inland, the second Korean War is already being fought,” reported the Los Angeles Times in July.12 The Times was perhaps somewhat premature, as the growing number of coastal raids certainly reflected an increase of tension but had not yet reached the standing of a “Second Korean War.” Soon, however, the phrase would become appropriate, as the peninsula exploded with hostilities that for more than two years would reach a consistent level of violence not seen since 1953. The North quickly began conducting regular operations across the DMZ for the first time since the Korean War. ROK soldiers patrolling the DMZ in late October reported a

9. “Special National Intelligence Estimate,” April 4, 1962, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, vol. 22 Northeast Asia, document #253.

10. Pravda, December 19, 1961, 27.

11. Chicago Daily Tribune, February 25, 1962, S12.

12. Los Angeles Times, July 27, 1966, 15.

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sudden increase in DPRK infiltration and subsequent violence, with a series of attacks on ROK soldiers between October 15 and 19, producing the first fatalities.13 In early November, six American soldiers and one South Korean soldier were killed by an attack approximately a half-mile south of the parallel, one of the earliest of the many deadly attacks that would characterize the next few years. Officials on the ground were troubled. “You are now travelling on a collision course,” Army Major General Richard Ciccolella warned his North Korean counterpart, Major General Pak Chung Kuk, at an emergency meeting of the Military Armistice Commission in November that had been called to address the sudden provocations. “The United Nations command seeks peace, but it will not stand idly by and watch your murdering bandits run rampant up and down this peninsula.” Pak responded in kind, blaming the US for provoking the incident by attacking DPRK guard posts. “It goes without saying,” Pak concluded, “that if such a situation continues, the armistice agreement cannot be maintained and will be wrecked in the long run and another bloody war will be brought to Korea.”14 Behind the scenes, Kim Il Sung was equally as blunt. “It is not enough only to rebuke American imperialism,” he declared at a Korean Workers Party conference in October 1966, “instead of taking concrete steps to stop its aggression.”15

Hostilities increased the following year. In April 1967, UN forces killed four North Korean soldiers who had snuck across the DMZ, although the DPRK insisted that UN forces had shot them north of the parallel and then dragged their dead bodies over the line in an effort to frame the North.16 Three weeks later, soldiers on patrol more than 1,000 meters into South Korean territory killed a DPRK agent and captured two more. Tensions continued to rise as the weather got warmer. In May 1967, a North Korean attack resulted in the destruction of two American infantry barracks, killing two men and leaving 19 wounded. In July, they launched five attacks against ROK border guards in a single week, the last of which killed one soldier and wounded 12. In September, the North launched strikes against trains in the South for the first time since 1953, attacking two ROK transports in separate attacks, one of which badly damaged a train carrying military supplies. “Never,” wrote the East German Ambassador to North Korea as 1967 drew to a close, “since the end of the

13. Bolger, Unfinished War, 36. For first fatalities, see Szalontai, “In the Shadow of Vietnam,” 137.

14. NY Times, November 5, 1966, 3.

15. Pravda, October 8, 1966, 1.

16. New York Times, April 6, 1967, 2.

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Korean War, have there been so many and such severe incidents at the armistice line as in 1967.”17

1968 proved to be the most significant year in the exploding conflict. In mid-January, thirty-one North Korean soldiers snuck across the DMZ into South Korea. They were part of the 124th Special Forces, an elite commando unit now charged with a mission to assassinate the South Korean president. “Your mission,” they had been told, “is to go to Seoul and cut off the head of Park Chung Hee.”18 Shortly after crossing into the South, the soldiers were spotted by a group of loggers. They detained the men and lectured them about capitalist oppression, but decided not to kill them, and instead continued on their mission. The loggers, however, informed local authorities, who placed Seoul on high alert. The commandos reached the Blue House on January 21, disguised as ROK soldiers and each carrying automatic rifles, 320 rounds of ammunition, 14 grenades, and pistols and knives. As they approached, a suspicious ROK policeman stopped them before they could attack, and the ensuing firefight saw eight South Koreans and five members of the commando team killed. The rest of the guerrillas fled, sparking a nationwide manhunt that left all but one of the intruders dead, along with 68 South Koreans and three Americans.

South Koreans demanded retaliation. The Korean People’s Anti-Communist League sponsored a rally in Seoul; despite freezing weather, 100,000 people showed up to march three miles and burn a ten-foot straw effigy of Kim Il Sung. “Anti-North Korean sentiment,” wrote the Czech embassy to Pyongyang, was so strong that “South Korean authorities did not even have to apply direct pressure to ensure participation in these demonstrations.”19 For his part, Park took advantage of the assassination attempt to rally the people behind him in the name of anti-communism by repeatedly emphasizing the Northern menace and depravity, including widely publicizing two funerals––one of a ROK army leader and another of a school child killed during the fight outside the Blue House–– that turned the public’s fury away from the government’s failures and towards the enemy in the North. It also generally rallied the political opposition

17. Letter from Ambassador Horst Brie of the GDR in the DPRK to Deputy MFA Hegen, December 8, 1967. History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, MfAA (Foreign Ministry of the former GDR), G-A 320, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113704.

18. Bolger, Unfinished War, 62.

19. “Pueblo and the US-South Korean Relations: Political Report No. 11,” February 9, 1968, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, no. 031/68, papers 1-8, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/ 116725.

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behind Park in the face of this perceived threat.20 The South responded with some small retaliatory raids but generally refrained, at the urging of the United States, from doing anything especially provocative. Still, the threat of a Cold War explosion hung in the air.

War seemed even more likely when North Korean forces captured the USS Pueblo, an American spy ship operating off the DPRK coast in the East Sea. The Pueblo was only the second ship operating as part of OPERATION CLICKBEETLE, a program run jointly by Naval Intelligence and the National Security Agency that transformed old and innocuous transport ships into signals intelligence collectors, and then dispatched them to various coastlines for electronic eavesdropping missions. Pueblo had departed Sasebo, Japan, on January 11, for her first mission, charged with intercepting communication off the coast of four North Korean ports and monitoring Soviet ships in the area. Now, as she operated outside Wonsan less than two weeks into the mission, DPRK forces with clearly hostile intentions approached. “Heave to,” ordered the lead North Korean SO-1 class subchaser, “or I will open fire.” Commander Pete Bucher of the Pueblo had been warned to expect challenges, and he confidently raised his signal flags in response: “I am in international waters. Intend to remain in the area until tomorrow.” Suddenly, a North Korean P-4 torpedo boat backed down on the American ship, with an armed landing party set to board. “They looked,” thought one crewman, “”like they wanted to eat our livers.”21 Pueblo headed towards open water but escape from the faster DPRK ships proved impossible. Once they had again surrounded their prey, the North Koreans opened fire. With his ship slow and lightly armed, the crew largely untrained for combat, and no support on the horizon, Bucher surrendered, with one man dead and numerous others injured. Pueblo was boarded and sailed into Wonsan, where its crewmen were violently dragged onto buses and taken to a North Korean prison camp. The 82 survivors would endure eleven months of torture, abuse, and public humiliation before being released just before Christmas.

This time it was the American public and its political representatives that demanded retaliation. The attack, noted the Washington D.C. Evening Star, had “touched off a mighty roar of rhetorical thunder in Congress.”22 “It is my feeling that if diplomacy fails at a very early date,” warned Senator Wallace Bennett (R-UT) “our naval armada should consider steaming into the port city

20. Ibid.

21. Mitchell Lerner, The Pueblo Incident (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 73.

22. Washington Evening Star, January 24, 1968, 18.

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of Wonsan, tossing a tow line aboard the Pueblo and bringing it out.”23 Congressman Mendel Rivers agreed, noting that he would do anything to get the ship back, “including declaring war if necessary.”24 The administration’s failure to launch a military response sparked howls of protest. “All of this took place,” wrote one Pennsylvania resident to the Los Angeles Times, “because cowards in Congress and the administration refused to take a stand…to defend not only the right and our honor, but to defend our own men.”25 Most Americans demanded immediate action. “I am confident,” explained one man, “there is at least a battalion of paratroopers who would volunteer to jump on the port of Wonsan in North Korea to free the Pueblo and its crew. No doubt they would be joined by other shock troops from the navy SEALS, marine reconnaissance, air commandos, and army special forces…And think what such an act of courage would do for the spirit of our nation.”26

In the wake of the Pueblo attack, Communist leaders outside Pyongyang worried that the Johnson administration might act on these calls for a more aggressive response. “Tension in the Far East has escalated seriously as of late, wrote Czech officials. “These events have brought the situation on the Korean Peninsula to a head and have threatened to create another center of military conflict in this area.27 Behind the scenes, the Soviets sought to reassure American officials that it was working to keep the crisis from escalating, and encouraged them to pursue a diplomatic solution.28 Soviet leaders sought to ensure that Kim would behave with restraint as well. The DPRK had “politically won,” Moscow informed the North’s leadership on January 31, but now it was time to “solidify these results, and at the same time, to demonstrate the peaceful character of the DPRK’s course in connection with the incident.”29 The Soviets, reported Czech embassy officials, “see to it that events around the incident do not grow out of certain boundaries, and it will make every effort so that they do not escalate

23. Chicago Tribune, January 25, 1968, 10.

24. Ibid.

25. E. Stanley Rittenhouse, letter to the editor, Los Angeles Times, January 21, 1969, C8.

26. John Possett, letter to the editor, Chicago Tribune, March 1, 1968, 18.

27. “Information about the Situation in Korea,” February 4, 1968, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, Czech Foreign Ministry Archives, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114572.

28. Lerner, The Pueblo Incident, 140.

29. “Study of Tension in the Korean Area (Military Part),” February 4, 1968, Archive of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Fund 02/1, Folder 68/61, reprinted in Christian Ostermann and James Person, eds., Crisis and Confrontation on the Korean Peninsula, 1968-69: A Critical Oral History, Critical Oral History Conference Series (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2011), document #16, 196.

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into an armed conflict.”30 Despite these efforts, however, many close to the scene remained concerned. The increased militarization on both sides, worried the Czechs, “together with the psychological conditioning of the population in the both parts of the Korea, create, on their own, a situation where any rather serious incident caused by one of the parties could escalate into a larger scale military conflict.”31

In Washington, the Johnson administration resisted the demands for dramatic action and sought a peaceful resolution. With a war already raging in Vietnam, a powerful enemy north of the 38th parallel, and 82 Americans held prisoner, the administration wanted to avoid war if at all possible. Instead, American officials followed Moscow’s urging and shifted their attention to Pyongyang in the hopes of finding a peaceful solution. Still, the prospects seemed bleak. The North was unwilling to talk at the United Nations, the World Court, or any other international side, unyielding to pressure from neutral nations and even their own allies, and uninterested in finding a compromise based on anything except a public letter from the United States that apologized for spying, admitted violating DPRK territory, and offered assurances that it would not happen again. No matter what the American––and to a lesser extent, the Soviet––leaders tried, the North simply refused to yield to external pressure. “They seem confident and sure of themselves,” wrote the American Ambassador to South Korea, “and appear convinced that we have neither the capability nor determination to deal with them while so heavily engaged in Vietnam.”32 The next eleven months proved this assumption was correct, as talks at the Military Armistice Commission––the only forum where the North would meet–– dragged on, with the US always looking for some way around the demanded apology letter but to no avail. Kim would not waver, regardless of the pressures exerted against him. The situation would not be resolved, North Korean officials insisted, until the US took steps to ensure that the “national dignity of the DPRK was not insulted.”33

The North’s behavior remained as belligerent as its rhetoric. Kim, lamented a Polish member of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission shortly after the Blue House and Pueblo attacks, was still launching “continuous attempts”

30. Ibid.

31. “Information about the Situation in Korea,” February 4, 1968. See note 27 above.

32. “Telegram from the Embassy in Korea to the Department of State,” January 24, 1968, reprinted in Ostermann and Person, Crisis and Confrontation, 165-166.

33. “Information about the Situation in Korea,” February 4, 1968. See note 27 above.

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to send DPRK commandos into the South.34 The second half of April 1968 saw a number of conflicts in the South that left nine US and ROK soldiers dead and another 11 wounded.35 A few months later, the Polish Ambassador to the DPRK reported that armed clashes over the preceding six weeks had resulted in an estimated 30 deaths along the southern side of the DMZ.36 DPRK propaganda stressed American culpability for the provocations, but even their allies knew who was responsible; Soviet officials in North Korea, according to one report, “held the view that they were mostly instigated by the DPRK.”37 In late October, the North smuggled 120 guerillas from the 124th Army Unit into eight separate locations along the ROK’s east coast, tasking them with organizing resistance units and recruiting agents for the North. The effort was unsuccessful, partly because of the reluctance of the local communities and partly because of an effective military response by the ROK and the US that left more than 100 infiltrators dead, along with 63 South Koreans.38 Still, the North’s bellicosity was clear. The second Korean War was exploding, and there seemed no end in sight.

By the end of 1968, however, North Korea began to reverse course, and tensions quickly returned to the level of the years that had preceded the Second Korean War. In December, the DPRK agreed to return the Pueblo men (but not the ship) in exchange for an American apology, one that was publicly repudiated by the Johnson administration at the same time that it was offered. Military incidents began to decline overall as well. The number of firefights along the DMZ fell from 236 in 1968 to just 39 in 1969,39 and when a North Korean attack against US forces in October of 1969 left four Americans dead,

34. “Note on a Conversation with the Polish Ambassador, Comrade Naperei, on 26 January 1968 in the Polish Embassy,” January 27, 1968, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, SAPMO-BArch (Foundation Archives of Parties and Mass Organizations of the GDR in the Federal Archives), http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113378.

35. “Political Report No. 21, To the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Prague, Military Situation in the DPRK, Pyongyang,” April 6, 1968, reprinted in Ostermann and Person, Crisis and Confrontation, document #24.

36. “Note on the Farewell Visit of the Polish Ambassador to the DPRK, Comrade Naperei, with Comrade Jarck on 26 July 1968 between 11:00 and 12:30 hours,” July 29, 1968, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, PolA AA, MfAA, G-A 360, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116684.

37. “Letter from Embassy of the GDR in the DPRK to Secretary of State and First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Comrade Hegen,” December 12, 1966, Archives of the Foreign Office, Berlin, Collection MfAA, G-A 316, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114569.

38. Bolger, Unfinished War, 86-87; Chuck Downs, Over the Line: North Korea’s Negotiating Strategy (Washington: AEI Press, 1988), chapter 7.

39. Bolger, Unfinished War.

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the New York Times covered it as an unusual event, one that had interrupted the “relative calm” of the Korean Peninsula.40 The Second Korean War had ended almost as quickly as it had started.

The North and the Communist Bloc

Access to newer materials from the Communist bloc has not only opened windows into the details of the events, however, but has also allowed us to draw larger conclusions about the relationship between the DPRK and the Communist bloc during the period. Perhaps most clearly, these new sources demonstrate the severity of the tensions between the North and its superpower patrons, particularly China. Although strains between the two nations had existed since the outbreak of the Korean War, the relationship was generally positive in the years afterwards. By the mid-1960s, however, the good feelings were crumbling. China’s cultural revolution had frightened Kim, who described the turmoil as “incredible madness,” and “mass lunacy,” and insisted that it violated true Marxist-Leninist principles.41 He also worried that the Chinese would try to impose similar change across the Yalu River, a possibility he attacked ferociously. “Revolution can neither be exported nor imported,” he declared in August 1966. “There can be no superior party nor inferior party nor a party that gives guidance… [The parties] should always do their own thinking and act independently.”42

The relationship declined quickly and precipitously. By 1966, students and professors at DPRK universities began openly criticizing Chinese policies. Soon, officials changed the frequency band on which Chinese radio broadcast into their nation and the hours they were available, making them less accessible.43

40. New York Times, October 16, 1969, 3.

41. “DVO [Far East Department] Memorandum about Sino-Korean Relations,” March 7, 1967; “Note on a Conversation with the First Secretary of the Soviet Embassy, Comrade Zvetkov on March 15, 1967,” GDR Embassy in Pyongyang, in James Person, ed., Limits of the “Lips and Teeth” Alliance: New Evidence on Sino-DPRK Relations, 1955-1984, North Korea International Documentation Project Document Reader #2 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2009), document #12, 38. (document readers available at https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication-series/nkidp-document-readers)

42. Washington Post, August 15, 1966, 14; Los Angeles Times, August 17, A5.

43. “First Secretary of the Soviet Embassy in North Korean Reports on Sino-Korean Relations in 1966,” December 2, 1966, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, AVPRF (Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation), f. 0102, op. 22, p. 109, d. 22, 38-49, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114591.

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They also attacked the broadcasts themselves, blasting the “false propaganda” coming from China that spoke of “political turmoil” in Pyongyang. “This is nothing but intolerable slander against the party, government, people and people’s army of our country,” the Korean Central News Agency thundered.44 “Sino-Korean cultural exchange,” reported the Soviet Embassy in Pyongyang at the end of 1966, “has been reduced to zero.”45 In 1967, China stationed several army divisions near the Yalu river, igniting border clashes between the two sides. Tensions reached such heights that in late 1967, Chinese Red Guards killed a number of Koreans living in the PRC, and then placed their dead bodies on a freight train that returned to the DPRK with anti-Korean writings scrawled all over it; “That’s how you will fare as well, you little revisionists,” warned one message.46 Chinese pamphlets from the period predicted that Kim’s own people would take vengeance upon him for his revisionist policies.47 Another PRC paper in October 1967 alleged that the DPRK was digging up the graves of Chinese soldiers who died fighting in the Korean War. “We sternly warn Kim Il Sung and his ilk,” it concluded, “that those who cooperate with the USA and the revisionists, and pursue an anti-Chinese policy, will come to a bad end.”48 “The relationship with the PR China hit rock bottom at the end of 1967,” noted the GDR Ambassador in Pyongyang.49

The relationship continued to deteriorate in 1968. DPRK officials denounced China as a paper tiger that talked about resisting American imperialism but provided little actual support. Kim Il Sung told the Soviet Ambassador at the end of the year that “Right now, the Chinese are not waging any fight against

44. Izvestia, January 28, 1967, 2.

45. “Excerpts of Memorandum from the Soviet Embassy in the DPRK about Embassy measures against Chinese Anti-Soviet Propaganda in the DPRK,” December 30, 1966, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, AVPRF, f. 0102, op. 22, p. 109, d. 22, 50-56, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116692.

46. “Note on a Conversation with the Acting Ambassador of the People’s Republic of Poland, Comrade Pudisz, on 9 October 1967 between 1000 and 1130 hours in the Polish Embassy,” October 20, 1967, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, PolA AA, MfAA, C 149/75, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116640.

47. “Report, Embassy of Hungary in the Soviet Union to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry,” November 25, 1967, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, MOL, XIX-J-1-j Korea, 1967, 61. doboz, 5, 002126/3/1967, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110624.

48. “Report, Embassy of Hungary in China to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry,” November 20, 1967, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, MOL, XIX-J-1-j China, 1967, 59. doboz, 1, 001187/62/1967, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116664.

49. “Letter from GDR Embassy in the DPRK to State Secretary Hegen,” December 22, 1967, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, PolA AA, MfAA, G A 360, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113367.

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imperialism, they just babble.”50 Chinese actions in Vietnam, another North Korean official echoed, “are not even a stab in the back but a stab right in the chest.” The Chinese refused to send a delegation to the celebration for the 20th anniversary of the republic, leading Kim Il Sung to declare that the Chinese had “deeply insulted us with this step.” Soviet officials spoke of “a sort of propaganda duel being waged on the Korean-Chinese border passing along the Yalu river [with] enormous portraits of the leaders, billboards with political content, and loudspeakers directed at the opposite bank…set up on both sides of the river.” Trade relations declined, positive editorials in both nations’ media outlets dried up, and official Chinese telegrams to the DPRK stopped using the word “comrade.” Violent clashes along the border between the two sides were reported as well, along with a somewhat comical scene along the border of Dandong, where the Chinese organized concerts for passengers on international trains with actors, dressed in traditional Korean costumes, singing toasts in honor of Mao and bowing down to his portrait.51

With Sino-Korean relations reaching their nadir at the same point that the DPRK was struggling with economic problems, Kim turned to the Soviets in the hopes of finding greater support. It would prove to be a difficult task. Connections between the two had been spotty in the past, especially in the early 1960s when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had not responded to Kim’s requests for aid with as much enthusiasm as the North Korean leader had hoped.52 The October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis had reinforced Kim’s belief in Soviet unreliability, and helped push him closer to the Chinese. When delegations from the two sides met in 1964, the DPRK made its displeasure clear, noting that they were distrustful of the Soviets and could not count on them to uphold their obligations to the North, since the Soviets had “betrayed” the Cubans, and later had not supported the North Vietnamese revolution nor the national liberation struggle of other nations in Asia and Africa with adequate

50. “First Secretary of the Soviet Embassy in North Korea, ‘Korean-Chinese Relations in the Second Half of 1968,’” January 6, 1969, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, RGANI (Russian State Archive of Recent History), fond 5, opis 61, delo 466, listy 1-14, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/134218.

51. “Korean-Chinese Relations in the Second Half of 1968,” Memo from the Soviet Embassy in the DPRK, January 7, 1969, no. 7, RGANI, f. 5, op. 61, d. 466, listy 1-14, obtained by the NKIDP, translated by Gary Goldberg; Dandong in “Concerning Korean-Chinese Relations,” April 25, 1969, Memo, no. 958-z, RGANI, f. 5, op. 61, d. 462, listy 96-99, obtained by the NKIDP, translated by Gary Goldberg.

52. “Report, Embassy of Hungary in North Korea to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry,” January 8, 1965, reprinted in “The Global Cuban Missile Crisis at 50,” CWIHP Bulletin (Fall 2012), 123.

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enthusiasm.53 North Korean officials expressed unhappiness with Soviet economic policy towards their country as well, accusing them of not buying DPRK products as a means of “extend[ing] the interparty disagreements to the state line.” The Soviet Ambassador, Vasily Moskovosky, dismissed the charge. The Soviets, he told the North’ Deputy Prime Minister, “did not purchase Korean machine-tools, because the latter’s quality was inferior to that of the Soviet machines, and the Soviet Union had no need of museum pieces.”54 Still, changing circumstances now forced Kim to try to mend fences. By the end of 1964, DPRK newspapers began to replace their criticisms of the Soviet Union with more favorable articles. Kim and other officials matched that effort with public hints to the USSR of their hopes for friendship and their disenchantment with the Chinese. In 1965, a military agreement was reached, providing significant Soviet military supplies to the DPRK, and expanded exchanges followed. The second half of the decade saw a steady increase in visiting delegations from each country, a growing trade relationship, and better overt relations between the leaders. “Our peoples are linked by the firm bonds of an alliance,” pledged one North Korean leader in Moscow at the signing of a series of exchange agreements in 1967. “The Korean people prize their friendship and solidarity with the Soviet people.”55

Still, new materials from the Communist bloc archives suggest that the deeply rooted hostility and suspicions never truly dissipated. Kim Il Sung led a delegation to the USSR in the summer of 1967 and while he was much more restrained in his behavior for fear of losing economic Soviet support, he still rejected the Soviet line on engagement with Japan; the “correctness” of the USSR approach to Japan, opined the a Czech official, was something “of which only life can prove to them.”56 In late 1967, Soviet officials bemoaned the lack of DPRK public support for their foreign policies, and complained that Kim was writing articles for the Cuban party journal that advocated for positions opposed by the majority of the Communist bloc, while rejecting invitations to

53. Ibid, 123-124.

54. “Report, Embassy of Hungary in North Korea to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry,” June 29, 1964, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, MOL, XIX-J-1-j Korea, 5. doboz, 5/bc, 004558/RT/1964, translated for NKIDP by Balázs Szalontai, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/112794.

55. Izvestia, March 4, 1967, 1-2.

56. “Regarding Some Questions about Soviet-North Korean Relations,” May 2, 1967, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, State Central Archives, Prague, file A. Novotny, foreign affairs, KPDR Sign., 82 b. 4, 6, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116739.

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write for Pravda.57 The Soviets also expressed unease about Kim’s growing cult of personality and a recent series of purges, and made clear how much they resented Kim’s refusal to provide them with accurate information related to his policymaking,58 and accused the North Koreans of exaggerating their break with the Chinese to try to win more aid from Moscow.59 Kim also resisted the urging of the Soviet Ambassador to personally lead a delegation to Moscow to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution.60 It was clearly a tenuous relationship at best. “Economic contacts between the two countries are improving,” noted officials in the Soviet Ministry in 1967. “Unfortunately, this statement cannot be applied to other fields of the relationship.”61

The seizure of the Pueblo and the attack on the Blue House exacerbated the already existing DPRK-Soviet tensions. Within hours of the Pueblo attack, Soviet officials in Pyongyang noted that they were “extremely worried” about the risks the two events had created.62 Materials from the Communist bloc clearly indicate that neither the Soviets nor any other Communist bloc state had been consulted before either event; the night after the attack, in fact, the North Korean Foreign Ministry hosted a meeting for the ambassadors of all socialist countries accredited to the DPRK. Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Dae Bong welcomed his audience by declaring his intention to “inform your governments” about the “invading armed American ship seized by our navy.” The attack, Kim noted, was one “of which you might already have read in the newspaper.” The subsequent conversation clearly showed that no one outside of North Korea had any knowledge of what had just happened.63 The DPRK’s refusal to bend

57. “Report, Embassy of Hungary in the Soviet Union,” November 25, 1967. See note 47 above.

58. Personality cult and purges in ibid.; for refusal to provide information, see, for example, “Report, Embassy of Hungary in North Korea,” June 29, 1964 (see note 54 above); and ibid.

59. “Report Prepared by the Hungarian Embassy in Moscow, Summarizing the Views of the Soviet Leadership with regard to the Korean Situation,” March 27, 1968, reprinted in NKIDP Document Reader, “New Evidence on North Korea,” June 2010 (James Person, ed.).

60. “50th Anniversary of the October Revolution in the DPRK,” November 13, 1967, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, PolA AA, MfAA, C 146/75, translated for NKIDP by Bernd Schaefer, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116659.

61. “Report, Embassy of Hungary in the Soviet Union,” November 25, 1967. See note 47 above.

62. “Telegram from Pyongyang to Bucharest, TOP SECRET, No. 76.017, Flash,” January 25, 1968, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, Political Affairs Fond, Telegrams from Pyongyang, TOP SECRET, 1968, Archive of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, obtained and translated by Eliza Gheorghe, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113944.

63. “Information of the Foreign Ministry of the DPRK on 24 January 1968, 9:00 P.M. to 9:40 P.M. for the Ambassadors and Acting Ambassadors of all Socialist Countries accredited to the DPRK,” History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, MfAA, C 1023/73, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113715.

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to Soviet desires continued throughout the year, with Moscow growing more and more frustrated. The Soviet government, noted a Hungarian official on January 30, believes that, “the further prolongation of the crisis would be seriously dangerous…[and] strives to induce the DPRK to find a right time for handing over of the Pueblo and its crew…so as to put an end to the crisis.”64 Instead of advancing their cause, the Soviets indicated, Kim had “actually reinforced the position of the South Korea dictatorship” by providing an excuse for Park to crack down on opposition and for the United States to increase its military assistance.65 At the April 1968 Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party Plenum, Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev blasted North Korea. “The measures taken in this case by the government of the DPRK appear unusually harsh,” he declared. “We insistently advised the Korean comrades…to show reserve, not to give the Americans an excuse for widening provocations, to settle the incident by political means…But the Korean comrades maintained [a] fairly extreme position and did not show any inclination towards the settlement of the incident.”66 Still, the North ignored the message and refused to bend in negotiations. Moscow was “showing impatience in regard to this question,” wrote the Czech embassy in Pyongyang in June. “All friends realize that that the DPRK’s handling of the Pueblo affair has been reverberating against the DPRK’s own interest. Soviet representatives have reportedly openly expressed their position along these lines to the Koreans.”67 Even the resolution of the crisis reflected the lack of communication between the two sides. Just days before the release of the men, the DPRK Foreign Minister met with Soviet officials in Pyongyang to discuss the pending resolution; “I expressed the wish,” noted the Soviet Ambassador, “that the Korean comrades inform us how the question of the Pueblo crew will be finally decided so we don’t find out about this from the newspapers.”68

64. “Report, Embassy of Hungary in the Soviet Union to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry,” January 30, 1968, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, MOL, XIX-J-1-j Korea, 1968, 58. doboz, 3, 00894/8/1968, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114571.

65. “Views of the Soviet Leadership,” March 27, 1968. See note 59 above.

66. Excerpt from Leonid Brezhnev’s Speech at the April (1968) CC CPSU Plenum, “On the Current Problems of the International Situation and on the Struggle of the CPSU for the Unity of the International Communist Movement,” April 9, 1968, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, RGANI, f. 2, op. 3, d. 95, listy 50-58, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110507.

67. “Military-Political Situation in the DPRK,” June 4, 1968, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, SM-023846/68, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114574.

68. “Record of a Conversation with KWP CC Politboro member, Deputy Chairman of the

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Other communist nations seemed equally as unhappy with the DPRK’s unwillingness to toe the party line. A memo from the Czechoslovakian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in early 1968 offered a lengthy analysis of the increased military tensions on the peninsula, and lamented that, “Due to the mobilization measures in the DPRK, movement of diplomats, including our military attaché, has been limited, and the Korean side does not inform him of its steps and intentions.”69 East German officials in Pyongyang agreed, noting in a March report that “There is still no reliable and comprehensible communication. Thus, all fraternal embassies, ours included, are working on only a basis of assumptions and a few facts in order to reach certain conclusions.”70 The party leadership in Vietnam had verbally supported the DPRK after the seizure, but soon lamented the action as well. By early February, a North Vietnamese cadre lamented the capture of the Pueblo to two Hungarian visitors, likely because of the American troop buildup in the region that followed. “We do not know what the Korean comrades want,” he complained.71 East German Ambassador to the DPRK Horst Brie gave voice to sentiments that seem likely to have been shared by most of the North’s ostensible allies: “In newspaper articles and statements we were on their side,” Brie recalled, “but not in reality.”72

The Domestic Sources of DPRK Behavior

The newer materials, however, not only provide insights about the DPRK and its inter-bloc relations, but also help us to understand North Korean policymaking itself, especially with regard to the motivation for the increased aggression of the Second Korean War. Although these newer materials offer support for many possible interpretations, they convincingly reject the idea that the ROK was the instigator and that the DPRK was simply acting defensively. Such was the theme of the propaganda emanating from the North and its Communist partners; “American provocations have intensified especially since the autumn of last year,” thundered Pravda in April 1967. “In the last five

Cabinet of Ministers, and DPRK Minster of Foreign Affairs Pak Song Chol, December 21, 1968,” from the journal of N.G. Sudarikov, 27 January 1969, N 37, RGANI F. 5, OP 61, D 466, LL 46-50.

69. “Tension in the Korean Area,” February 4, 1968. See note 29 above.

70. “On Current Relations between the DPRK and the PR China,” GDR Embassy to DPRK, March 3, 1968, reprinted in Ostermann and Person, Crisis and Confrontation, document #21.

71. Szalontai, “In the Shadow of Vietnam.”

72. Ambassador Horst Brie statement, in Ostermann and Person, Crisis and Confrontation, 75.

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months more than 10,000 shots were fired against the territory of the K.P.D.R. and warships intruded into its territorial waters more than 2,000 times, shelling its coast.”73 Despite such claims, however, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence clearly suggests that the North provoked the vast majority of the military confrontations, and their allies knew it. “The incidents in the demilitarized zone and to the south of it,” concluded a lengthy report from the Czechoslovakian government in 1968, “are intentionally and purposefully provoked mostly by the DPRK.”74 Czechoslovakian and Polish officials had some disagreement over the specific apportionment of responsibility, noted one letter from the GDR embassy, which explained that the Czechs were “crediting the aggravation of the situation exclusively to the DPRK,” while Polish officials simply though they were responsible for “the majority of incidents.”75 Regardless of that distinction, however, even the Communist side clearly recognized the source of the increased tension. Equally as clear is the fact that the Second Korean War was an indigenous DPRK effort, not ordered or even approved by the Communist superpowers in advance. Brezhnev’s speech at the April 1968 plenum made that point clear. DPRK officials, he reported, “spoke to the intentions to bind the Soviet Union somehow, using the existence of the treaty between the USSR and the DPRK to involve us in supporting such plans of the Korean friends, about which we knew nothing.”76 Ambassador Brie agreed. “North Korea’s actions resulted from a decision by Kim Il Sung and the North Korean government. North Korea was not influenced by China, the Soviet Union, or any other power.” Brie, in fact, had been specifically instructed to meet with Kim to determine if he was following the Chinese or Soviet line. After meeting, Brie concluded, “I determined that he was only following his own views and his own position, not those of anybody else.”77

Definitively rejecting the idea that the South had been the aggressor is significant, but the newer materials go even farther by suggesting that one factor—Kim’s need for domestic propaganda to rally the people behind him

73. Pravda, April 12, 1967, 5.

74. “Information on the Situation in Korea,” February 05, 1968, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, Archive of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Fund 02/1. Folder 68/61, on-line at: http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116724.

75. “Letter from Ambassador Brie of the GDR in the DPRK to Deputy MFA Hegen,” December 08, 1967, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, MfAA, G-A 320, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113704.

76. Excerpt from Leonid Brezhnev’s Speech, April 9, 1968. See note 66 above.

77. Ambassador Horst Brie statement, in Ostermann and Person, Crisis and Confrontation, 20-21.

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during a period of difficult economic and political times—might have played a much more critical role than previously thought. Economically, the North had outpaced the South during the immediate years after the Korean War. By the mid-1960s, however, the situation had changed dramatically, and the nation hovered on the brink of economic collapse. Recent revelations from the communist archives more fully demonstrate the depth of this economic crisis. As early as 1963, Kim confessed to Soviet Ambassador V.P. Moskovsky that coal and ore mines had fallen very much behind and were “failing to satisfy consumption.” Part of the problem, he admitted, was their technological underdevelopment. It was easy for the Soviets to develop new agricultural lands, he told Moskovsky, since they had tractors and other state of the art equipment. In the DPRK, however, “everything depends on manual labor that is mostly the same as it was centuries ago.” He also noted that the nation suffered from a “serious shortage” of basic economic textbooks, which had hindered their economists in their effort to understand the most basic issues of the socialist economy.78 Although they ordered the missing textbooks, little seemed to change. Agriculture was afflicted as well, Moskovsky reported, hindered by antiquated equipment, outdated approaches, and a manpower shortage so extreme that about a million urban industrial workers had recently been relocated to work the farms.79 So obvious was the economic decline that party officials even acknowledged it to foreign leaders; Deputy Prime Minister Ri Ju Yeon told Moskovsky in mid-1964 that he could “see with his own eyes that [the North Korean people] did not live well, food was scarce, clothes were in short supply.”80

This economic decline clearly impacted the DPRK’s national spirit, as a decline in public morale was noticeable. “The population is very displeased, as it notes no improvements in standards of living,” noted a report from the East German embassy. “Still, people keep silent out of fear for repression. Though they have not much too eat, and clothes are very expensive. Many families just live from watery soups.”81 Ambassador Brie also noted the sense of disillusionment. “The situation for healthy people in North Korea was so

78. “Memorandum of a conversation with the USS Ambassador c. V.P. Moskovskyi and the GDR Ambassador c. Otto Becker,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 7th Territorial Department, May 16, 1963, in Person, “New Evidence on North Korea,” document #27, 82-87.

79. “Memorandum of a Conversation on 23.IV.1963,” May 16, 1963. See note 8 above.

80. “Report, Embassy of Hungary in North Korea,” June 29, 1964. See note 54 above.

81. “Note about North Korean Internal Affairs,” May 19, 1965, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30, IV A2/20/252, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/111819.

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depressing that there was a tendency of demoralization,” he recalled. “People became alcoholics and things of this nature… Only very few withstood this.”82 It also revealed cracks in Kim’s political position, as the late-1960s saw an increase in factionalism within the party that did not approach the level of a coup but did suggest at least some divisions and unhappiness within the party hierarchy, and which lead to a series of replacements and reorganizations within the leadership. By 1967, the East German Ambassador was writing of a “tightened conflict, an oppositional movement in the party leadership…regarding the stance on domestic policy.”83 The domestic policy question clearly revolved around the economic shortcomings; at the June 1967 conference of the KWP CC, Politburo member Pak Kum Cheol was arrested after asking Kim for policies more focused on improving the nation’s standard of living.84 The purge of Pak and others, noted a Soviet official in Pyongyang, were “evidence of a desire of the Korean leadership to involve new people in running the party and the country from among those who unquestionably approve of Kim il Sung’s current domestic and foreign policies.”85

This changing domestic environment, the new documents suggest, helped encourage Kim to launch the Second Korean War as a means of rallying the North Korean people behind him in the face of an alleged foreign threat, and to justify the shortcomings in his own economic agenda. Throughout these difficult years, Kim took every opportunity to remind his nation of the tensions and likelihood of war. In 1967, his government began storing food rations in case of the American attack that officials so often warned against, and extended the training period for militias. Pro-government, anti-American rallies were organized; “All public demonstrations,” noted Brie, “which were made at this time were not spontaneous. They were all done under strict control. They were permanently mobilizing… All of this was going on and the newspaper was always proclaiming that aggression could come at any day.”86 The Pueblo raid seemed to take anti-war preparations to a new level. “The most important factor determining the domestic political situation in the DPRK in 1968,” concluded a Soviet report, “was the Korean leadership’s injection of a war

82. Ambassador Horst Brie statement, in Ostermann and Person, Crisis and Confrontation, 70-71.

83. “Letter from GDR Embassy in the DPRK to State Secretary Hegen,” December 22, 1967.

84. “Information about the Situation in Korea,” February 4, 1968. See note 27 above.

85. “The DPRK Attitude Toward the So-called ‘Cultural Revolution’ in China,” March 7, 1967, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, AVPRF, f. 0102, op. 23, p. 112, d. 24, 13-23, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114570.

86. Ambassador Horst Brie statement, in Ostermann and Person, Crisis and Confrontation, 71.

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atmosphere in the country in connection with the well-known Pueblo Incident.”87 The night of the attack, reported the GDR embassy in Pyongyang, there was no light on across the country “for they were obviously afraid of serious consequences.” For the next week, the same source noted, “there have been jets in the air [and] massive defense forces… concentrated in the harbor area.”88 Combat forces were placed on alert, and reserve divisions were mobilized, as allegations of impending American attacks became particularly common. Few could miss the overt preparations for the attack that seemed to be coming and which, it appears, Kim hoped would distract them from domestic shortcomings and rally them to his side. His official pronouncements frequently stressed the need to make these sacrifices in order to prepare for the American assault. “All our functionaries and working people,” Kim announced at the Fourth Supreme People's Assembly, “should work like masters, and live frugally, with a great revolutionary zeal, in the lofty spirit of supporting the South Korean people more actively in their anti-U.S., national salvation struggle, and of expediting the revolutionary cause of the reunification of the country. We can never get complacent and lax nor countenance the slightest laziness, immorality, or luxury.”89 Kim returned to these themes regularly, as the Soviet embassy noted: “DPRK propaganda explains the slow pace of the growth of material prosperity of the population by the fact that Korean workers have to live modestly and not envy others, think more about helping their South Korean brethren, who are in bondage, and give every effort to the Korean revolution, which has still not been finished on a Korea-wide scale.”90 Czech officials also recognized the relationship, noting that “the spreading military psychosis had other functions, like distracting people from the existing economic difficulties, ‘justifying’ stagnation of the standard of living, demanding the strictest discipline and obedience, and preventing any criticism.”91

The Blue House Raid and Pueblo Incident seemed to bring this domestic

87. “The Domestic Situation and the Foreign Policy of the Korean People’s Democratic Republic,” Soviet embassy report, March 28, 1969, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/134226.

88. “Memorandum on an Information of 1 February 1968,” February 02, 1968, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, MfAA, C 1023/73, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116723.

89. “Let us Embody the Revolutionary Spirit of Independence, Self-Sustenance and Self-Defense More Thoroughly in All Fields of State Activity,” speech at the Fourth Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK, December 16, 1967, reprinted in For the Independent Peaceful Reunification of Korea (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 124.

90. “The Domestic Situation and the Foreign Policy of the Korean People's Democratic Republic,” Soviet Embassy report, March 28, 1969, in author’s possession.

91. “Information about the Situation in Korea,” February 4, 1968. See note 27 above.

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focus to the next level, as Kim continued to stress the potential for war on the immediate horizon. “Korean propaganda,” wrote Czech officials in February “makes every effort to convince the citizens of the DPRK as well as the world’s public that the situation is quite similar to that just before the outbreak of the Korean War. Military training of civilians, including women and children, was justified by the thesis of ‘turning the DPRK into a steel, impregnable fortress,’ and reached unprecedented magnitude in the DPRK.”92 Kim had placed military forces on alert and ordered numerous wartime steps to be taken by the people, observed the GDR embassy in February 1968. “Although we believe the situation is already being stabilized, there are rumors that people still expect the outbreak of a war.”93 “All these [military] measures,” GDR officials concluded a month later, “are amplified through massive propaganda in the press, radio, and in newspapers propagating the situation as so tense that an outbreak of war can be expected every day… [even though] an analysis of the facts we were able to obtain on U.S. positions shows that the Americans are not interested in a major armed conflict in Korea.”94 Kim also used the crisis to expel from Pyongyang “elements which the [North Korean] security apparatus could not trust,” according to Romanian officials in the DPRK.95 “I think there were two reasons for it [DPRK aggression]:” explained Brie. “One was the internal motive of keeping control of the population with the daily threat of a coming war, and the second was to get more help from Russia economically and militarily.”96

The same focus on a need to prepare for a potential American attack marked the spring and summer months. Leonid Brezhnev himself explained that after the Pueblo attack, “DPRK propaganda took on a fairly militant characteristic; the population was told that a war could begin any day…In effect, a full mobilization was declared in the country; life, especially in the cities, became more militaristic.”97 Even when the situation seemed to be settling down, some foreign diplomats considered it just “the calm before the

92. Ibid.

93. “Informational Report by Ambassador Herrmann,” February 1, 1968, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, MfAA, C 1023/73, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113741.

94. “GDR Embassy Letter to State Secretary Hegen,” March 4, 1968, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, Pol A AA, MfAA, G-A 360, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114573.

95. “Telegram from Pyongyang to Bucharest,” January 25, 1968. See note 62 above.

96. Ambassador Horst Brie statement, in Ostermann and Person, Crisis and Confrontation, 67.

97. Excerpt from Leonid Brezhnev’s Speech, April 9, 1968. See note 66 above.

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storm, this being justified by the fact that the high military preparedness has been continuing as has the propaganda campaign aimed at the population.”98 It was the same at MAC negotiations, where DPRK officials seemed focused above all else on publicly demonstrating the determination of their leadership to withstand American pressures; “Speeches of a [North] Korean delegate are mostly propaganda in nature,” wrote Czech officials, “and are used namely in the internal propaganda of the DPRK.”99 The bottom line, then, appears to be that what lay at the heart of the Second Korean War was neither Vietnam, South Korea, or a changing international environment, but was instead rooted in Kim’s need to rally the people behind him. Ambassador Brie explained it well: “Conflicts were taking place every month, every week, and I think this was intended by Kim Il Sung. He needed 2 things for the strengthening of his power. Internally, he needed to paint the picture in the mind of his people that war could break out any day. He had to convince them he had to prepare for it. Secondly, he had to get more economic and military help from those who were willing to give it to him.”100

Conclusion

The Second Korean War quickly faded from public memory. Within a few years, the Los Angeles Times was reporting that the only battle that American troops were fighting in Korea was the one against “daily frustration,” as they had “too many [soldiers] with too little to do.”101 Communist bloc records paint a similar picture. In August 1969, Soviet officials visited Panmunjom and noted that on their entire 200 kilometer drive, they noticed no troop movements and were never stopped by military outposts. “Unlike last year here,” they reported back to Moscow, “we did not hear one artillery round or small arms fire here.”102 Even the recently-bellicose North seemed to have learned its lesson and sought to push back from the threshold of war. “The

98. “Military Situation in the DPRK,” April 6, 1968, in Crisis and Confrontation, 227. See note 35 above.

99. “Information about the Situation in Korea,” February 4, 1968. See note 27 above.

100. Ambassador Horst Brie statement, in Crisis and Confrontation on the Korean Peninsula, 1968-69, 79.

101. Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1973, D10.

102. “Minister-Counsellor of the Soviet Embassy in North Korea, ‘Information about a Trip to Panmunjom,’” August 4, 1969, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, RGANI, f. 5, op. 61, d. 466, listy 142-146, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/134249.

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KWP does not want a world war to break out because of Korea,” Kim told the Bulgarian Ambassador in 1970. “If we use sharper words now and then, this does not mean that we give up the idea of peaceful unification.”103 But the calm that came after the storm should not obscure historical memory of this important moment in the Cold War history of Korea, nor should it shroud the vital lessons that it offers. The Second Korean War stands as an important reminder that the Communist bloc was not nearly as unified as much of the world believed; that China and North Korea were not as close as lips and teeth; and that internal dynamics were important drivers of North Korean foreign policy. Today, fifty years after the crisis peaked, these lessons still have resonance for a divided Korea.

103. “Report, Embassy of Hungary in North Korea to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry,” December 12, 1970, reprinted in Christian Ostermann and James Person, eds., The Rise and Fall of Détente on the Korean Peninsula, 1970-1974, Critical Oral History Conference Series (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2011), document #1, 130.