Crisis in North Korea

Notes

225 Notes 1. north korea and its leadership in the mid-1950s 1. Chosôn chônsa (Complete history of Korea), vol. 28, 187. 2. Of¤cial data from Nongôp hyôpdonghwa undong-ûi sûngli (The success of the agricultural cooperative movement), vol. 1, 34. 3. Comintern, or Communist International, was the headquarters of the worldwide Communist movement in 1919–1943. 4. According to Wada Haruki, a leading expert in the history of the Korean guerrilla movement in Manchuria, thirty of thirty-six guerrillas whose social origin is known were farmers or urban poor. Only one guerrilla is known to have had a college education, and only a handful of them had studied at a secondary level. According to Wada, “The majority of the guerrillas were people who prior to entering the guerrilla units had not had an opportunity to receive any education.” Wada, Kim Il Sông-gwa manju hang’il chônjaeng (Anti-Japanese War in Manchuria and Kim Il Song), 302–303. 5. Strictly speaking, the “Guerrilla faction” consisted of two subfactions: the Guerrillas proper (that is, former ¤ghters in Manchuria) and the so-called Kapsan group, which included underground activists who ran intelligencegathering , propaganda, and logistics operations for the guerrillas but did not¤ght themselves. The divide between these two groups became quite visible in the late 1960s, when the Kapsanites were subjected to severe purges by their onetime comrades. Nevertheless, this divide appeared only after the Guerrilla faction had been ¤rmly in control for a considerable length of time and internal feuds had begun to develop among them. For the 1950s this division between the “actual Guerrillas” and the “underground supporters of the Guerrillas” is irrelevant and anachronistic. To the best of my knowledge, it is not mentioned in any document predating 1960. 226 6. Hô Ka-i (1908–1953) was born Alexei Ivanovich Hegai in Khabarovsk. In the early 1920s, he became an active member of the Soviet Komsomol (a Communist Party youth organization) and, eventually, a party cadre. He was active in the Soviet Far East and, after 1937, in Central Asia. In 1945 he was dispatched to Korea by the Soviet military authorities and soon became one of the top KWP leaders. 7. The DPRK of¤cial propaganda never recognized that it was the North that started the war. According to the of¤cial Pyongyang line, the South Korean forces invaded the North, but the glorious (North) Korean People’s Army repelled the aggressors and launched a successful counteroffensive that made possible the crossing of the border just a few hours later. This remains an of¤cial position of the DPRK, despite its publishing of numerous Soviet and Chinese papers that have made these statements appear grotesquely unfounded. 8. The general history of factional con¶icts in the KWP has been studied by many scholars. For more information, two standard, already classic works on North Korean history are recommended: Suh, Kim Il Sung, esp. 55–175; and Scalapino and Lee, Korean Communism, vol . 1. 9. Sim Su-ch’ôl, interview with the author in Tashkent, January 23, 1991. In the late 1950s, Sim Su-ch’ôl was a head of the personnel department in the North Korean army headquarters. 10. As just one of many examples of this kind of required approval, on February 3, 1948, the Soviet Politburo made a decision “to allow the People’s Committee of North Korea to create the Department of National Defense and on the¤nal day of the session of the People’s Assembly to organize in Pyongyang a meeting and a parade of the Korean national military force” (copy of document in private collection; italics mine). Only after this decision from Moscow was the creation of a separate North Korean army (called Korean People’s Army, KPA) duly declared by Pyongyang on February 8, 1948. 11. It appears as if the late 1950s was actually the worst time for the Soviet Embassy. Prior to 1953, Moscow had viewed Korea as a strategically important point where direct con¶ict with a major Soviet adversary was taking place. At that time the embassy and other Soviet agencies in Pyongyang were often run by bureaucrats in Stalin’s mold: ef¤cient, ruthless, hardworking, and prepared to take responsibility and to make decisions (Shtykov, Ignatiev, Shabshin, and Tunkin are the best-known examples of such bureaucrats). Most of them left Korea during the Korean War or shortly afterward, to be replaced by mediocre personalities. In the...