The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot

by Blaine Harden

  “[Our people] have strong anti-U.S. sentiments because they suffered great damage”: Pyongyang Times, June 10, 1972, quoted in B. C. Koh, “The War’s Impact on the Korean Peninsula,” in Williams, Revolutionary War, 250.

  Schoolchildren are still trained to bayonet dummies of American soldiers: Associated Press, “In Korea, Learning to Hate U.S. Starts with Children,” USA Today, June 23, 2012, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-06-23/north-korea-teaching-hate-united-states/55784168/1.

  State media still lie about who invaded whom during the Korean War: “True Stories About Korean War,” Rodong Sinmun, July 3, 2013, http://www.rodong.rep.kp/en/index.php?strPageID=SF01_02_01&newsID=2013-07-03 -0008&chAction=L.

  Outside the stadium on the day of the celebration, a book was on sale: David Guttenfelder, Instagram image, July 22, 2013, http://instagram.com/p/cGOMm0Aw5l/?modal=true.

  “It is still the 1950s in North Korea”: Author interview with Weathersby.

  Chapter 1: Beginnings

  “heralded the dawn of the liberation of Korea”: Kim Il Sung, With the Century, 6:165.

  Stories spread about his wizardry: Hongkoo Han, “Wounded Nationalism: The Minsaengdan Incident and Kim Il Sung in Eastern Manchuria” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1999), 365.

  “Looking round the crowd, I found their eyes”: Kim Il Sung, With the Century, 6:163.

  A confidential American intelligence biography: “Biographical Sketches of Key Personalities” (Allied Translator and Interpreter Service report, 1952), 90.

  “[He] developed very early a preference for the company of people”: Bradley K. Martin, Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2004), 46.

  “Here he was busy running away”: Choe Hyon, quoted in Sydney A. Seiler, Kim Il Song, 1941–1948: The Creation of a Legend, the Building of a Regime (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1994), 26.

  the Jerusalem of the East: Donald N. Clark, Living Dangerously in Korea: The Western Experience, 1900–1950 (Norwalk, Conn.: EastBridge, 2003), 121–22.

  the United States, despite a late-nineteenth-century treaty of “amity and commerce”: See Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 142; William Stueck, The Korean War: An International History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), 13, 16.

  Manchuria became a fertile recruiting ground: Han, “Wounded Nationalism,” 9.

  Three years later, he was expelled from middle school: Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 7.

  “I believed that revolution in my country would emerge victorious”: Kim Il Sung, With the Century, 1:366–7.

  “It is his persistence and obstinate will”: Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung, 30, 54.

  He was “upper-class,” especially when compared with most Koreans: Author interviews with Kenneth H. Rowe, a.k.a. No Kum Sok, 2013–14.

  Four out of five Koreans held menial and unskilled jobs: Samuel Pao-San Ho, “Colonialism and Development: Korea, Taiwan, and Kwantung,” in The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945, ed. Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), 377.

  Food production increased sharply: Ibid., 379.

  most Koreans had none of these services: Jun Uchida, Brokers of Empire: Japanese Settler Colonialism in Korea, 1876–1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2011), 66–74.

  On buses, the Japanese forced Koreans to give up their seats: Ibid., 83.

  a “profound gratitude for the limitless benevolence of our Emperor”: Mark R. Peattie, “Japanese Attitudes Toward Colonialism, 1895–1945,” in Myers and Peattie, Japanese Colonial Empire, 121.

  Japan attempted to “blot out an entire culture”: Ibid., 122.

  Korea entered the 1940s with the best-managed network of railways, roads, and ports: Bruce Cumings, “The Legacy of Colonialism,” in Myers and Peattie, Japanese Colonial Empire, 487.

  the “Entrepreneurial King of the Peninsula”: Barbara Molony, Technology and Investment: The Prewar Japanese Chemical Industry (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1990), 156–57.

  Baseball blossomed in Korean schools in the 1930s and 1940s: Joseph A. Reaves, Taking in a Game: A History of Baseball in Asia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 114–17.

  The Japanese put a bounty on Kim Il Sung’s head: Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung, 52.

  This obscure racist purge on the eastern fringes of Manchuria—called the Minsaengdan incident: The most recent source for information about and analysis of the Minsaengdan incident is Hongkoo Han, “Colonial Origins of Juche,” in Origins of North Korea’s Juche, ed. Jae-Jung Suh (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2013), 33–62. Also see Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung, 32–34; Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, 1:168–70, 214–19.

  Kim called it a “mad wind”: Kim Il Sung, With the Century, 4:27–28.

  Chinese partisan leaders operated on the assumption that Koreans in eastern Manchuria were pro-Japanese: Han, “Colonial Origins of Juche,” 38.

  “Comrades, stop gambling on people’s destinies”: Kim Il Sung, With the Century, 4:56–57.

  Kim became the preeminent Korean guerrilla leader: Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, 1:214; Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung, 34.

  “When the bundles of papers turned into flames”: Kim Il Sung, With the Century, 4:328.

  a “parental leader”: Han, “Colonial Origins of Juche,” 54.

  They reportedly killed or captured twenty-seven Japanese officers and soldiers: Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung, 37.

  Kim was indeed an idealistic leader: Ibid., 46.

  “If you do not bring [money, food, and clothing]”: Dae-Sook Suh, Documents of Korean Communism, 1918–1948 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970), 450–51.

  Terrorized women began dressing as men: Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, 1:315n4.

  Industrial-scale looting began: Allan R. Millett, The War for Korea, 1945–1950: A House Burning (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), 49.

  Stalin himself ordered the commander of Soviet occupation forces to “strictly observe discipline”: Kathryn Weathersby, “Soviet Policy Toward Korea, 1944–1950” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1990), 191, cited in Sheila Miyoshi Jager, Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013), 20, 489n16.

  Chapter 2: Poodle and Pretender

  “please make it so that it appears as though the anti-Japanese partisans participated in the war of liberation”: Quoted in Seiler, Kim Il Song, 46, from Lebedev testimony in Chungang Ilbo, Aug. 26, 1991.

  Kim might have been kept out on direct orders from Stalin: Ibid.

  Kim and his men marked their first night in the fatherland with bowls of noodles: Yu Song Chol’s testimony, first printed in the Korean-language daily Hanguk Ilbo in a series that began Nov. 1, 1990, translated into English and available in an appendix to Seiler, Kim Il Song, 117.

  Kim “simply wanted to hide the truth of his shabby, humble return to Korea”: Ibid.

  “General Kim Il Sung returned home in triumph”: Baik Bong, Kim Il Sung Biography (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1969), 1:533.

  Stalin’s investment in Kim began in 1941: Sergei N. Goncharov, John W. Lewis, and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993), 131.

  the First Battalion of the Eighty-eighth Sniper Brigade: Kathryn Weathersby, “Dependence and Mistrust: North Korea’s Relations with Moscow and the Evolution of Juche” (working paper 08-08, U.S.-Korean Institute, SAIS, Washington, D.C., Dec. 2008), 4.

  He was “lean and weak, and his mouth was always open”: Seiler, Kim Il Song, 97–98.

  He married Kim Jong Suk, a partisan fighter seven years his junior: Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sun
g, 51.

  An official North Korean biography of Kim Jong Il: Kim Jong Il Brief History (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1998), 1. http://www.korea-dpr.com/lib/103.pdf.

  With the Soviets, Kim finally had time for political and military training: Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 131.

  At the military base, he was not the highest-ranking Korean: Yu testimony, in Seiler, Kim Il Song, 105.

  “No one among us was thinking that Kim Il Sung would become the new leader”: Ibid., 116.

  They soon dominated every police and military organization in the North: Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung, 69.

  To speed these appointments, Kim orchestrated boozy banquets for Russian generals: Yu testimony, in Seiler, Kim Il Song, 124.

  refusing to change his name from Korean to Japanese: Andrei Lankov, From Stalin to Kim Il Sung: The Formation of North Korea, 1945–1960 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 10–11.

  He was also proud and stubborn: Ibid., 14.

  General Lebedev introduced Kim as a national hero and “outstanding guerrilla leader”: Ibid., 19.

  Kim had never worn a necktie: Lim Un, The Founding of a Dynasty in North Korea: An Authentic Biography of Kim Il-song (Tokyo: Jiyu-sha, 1982), 144.

  “He looked like a callow young man”: Yu testimony, in Seiler, Kim Il Song, 124.

  “His complexion was slightly dark”: O Yong Jin, An Eyewitness Report (Pusan: Kungmin Sasang Chidowan, 1952), 141–43, translated in Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, 1:324–25.

  Photographs were retouched: See photographs of Kim Il Sung as reprinted in Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, 1:plates 1–2.

  They “were dancing with joy and hugging each other”: Baik, Kim Il Sung Biography, 2:55–56.

  Kim constantly and effusively praised Stalin: Weathersby, “Dependence and Mistrust,” 8–9.

  Five weeks after his bumbling performance in Pyongyang: This account relies on Adam Cathcart and Charles Kraus, “Peripheral Influence: The Sinuiju Student Incident of 1945 and the Impact of Soviet Occupation in North Korea,” Journal of Korean Studies 13, no. 1 (Fall 2008): 1–28.

  “Shooting between our people is not only a disgrace”: Kim Il Sung, Works, 1:97.

  He told a citizens’ assembly that “genuine Communists” could never have shot the young people: Charles K. Armstrong, The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003), 63.

  “Just as an army lacking iron discipline cannot win battles”: Kim Il Sung, Works, 2:18, quoted in Cathcart and Kraus, “Peripheral Influence.”

  About ten thousand soldiers a year were sent to Siberia for training: Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung, 102.

  according to American intelligence reports: Cathcart and Kraus, “Peripheral Influence,” 14, 26n103, citing declassified Central Intelligence Agency reports from 1947.

  In 1950, a student pilot taking MiG flight training suddenly disappeared: Author interviews with No Kum Sok.

  The Soviets left behind all the armaments: Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 133.

  Chapter 3: Sweet-Talking Stalin

  There was not a major event in the creation of North Korea that Shtykov did not influence: See Armstrong, North Korean Revolution, 53; Andrei Lankov, “Russia and DPRK at the Beginning,” Korea Times, Nov. 6, 2006; Jager, Brothers at War, 23.

  He deliberately downplayed efforts by the United States: Weathersby, “Should We Fear This?,” 5–6.

  Shtykov also supported Kim’s belief: Lankov, “Russia and DPRK at the Beginning.”

  Kim told Shtykov of the personal toll: Shtykov to Stalin, telegram, Jan. 19, 1950, cited in CWIHP Bulletin, no. 5 (Spring 1995): 8, trans. Kathryn Weathersby.

  “Lately, I’ve been feeling very frustrated”: Ibid., trans. Evgeniy P. Bajanov and Natalia Bajanova.

  “He thinks that he needs again to visit Comrade Stalin”: Ibid., trans. Weathersby.

  the “custodian-in-chief of the Soviet order”: Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), 9.

  His principal opponent was the United States: Robert Gellately, Stalin’s Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War (New York: Knopf, 2013), 13.

  Kim apparently had an outsized appetite: Yu testimony, in Seiler, Kim Il Song, 130; Service, Stalin, 79–80, 107, 133. Also Lankov, From Stalin to Kim Il Sung, 72n32.

  “Comrade Stalin, we believe that the situation makes it necessary”: The quoted conversation between Kim and Stalin on March 7, 1949, is from Evgeniy P. Bajanov and Natalia Bajanova, “The Korean Conflict, 1950–1953: The Most Mysterious War of the 20th Century” (unpublished working paper, CWIHP), 17–19. The authors found the conversation in the Archives of the President of Russia.

  “It is impossible to view this operation other than as the beginning of a war”: Politburo message to Shtykov, Sept. 24, 1950, trans. in Kathryn Weathersby, “To Attack, or Not to Attack? Stalin, Kim Il Sung, and the Prelude to War,” CWIHP Bulletin, no. 5 (Spring 1995): 8.

  “the Americans will certainly move their troops into South Korea”: Weathersby, “Should We Fear This?,” 8.

  “Such provocations are very dangerous for our interests”: Stalin to Shtykov, telegram, Oct. 30, 1949, cited and trans. in Bajanov and Bajanova, “Korean Conflict,” 12.

  His pleas produced forty-eight telegrams to the Kremlin: Kathryn Weathersby, “New Findings on the Korean War,” CWIHP Bulletin, no. 3 (Fall 1993): 14.

  “I understand the unhappiness of Comrade Kim Il Sung”: Stalin to Shtykov, cable, Jan. 30, 1950, Archives of the President of Russia, trans. in Bajanov and Bajanova, “Korean Conflict,” 36.

  “Explain to Comrade Kim Il Sung”: Stalin to Shtykov, telegram, Feb. 2, 1950, trans. in Bajanov and Bajanova, “Korean Conflict,” 37.

  In early February, Stalin had approved North Korea’s request: William Stueck, Rethinking the Korean War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), 73.

  North Korean reconnaissance teams had captured soldiers from the South: Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 143.

  The North was clearly superior: Weathersby, “New Findings on the Korean War,” 16.

  Stalin pledged delivery of more weapons: The most detailed account of the conversations between Kim and Stalin in April 1950 is found in Bajanov and Bajanova, “Korean Conflict.” Also see Shen Zhihua, Mao, Stalin, and the Korean War: Trilateral Communist Relations in the 1950s, trans. Neil Silver (London: Routledge, 2012), 122–23.

  He wanted to isolate China from any possible deals: See Stueck, Rethinking the Korean War, 76; Shen, Mao, Stalin, and the Korean War, 125.

  “If you should get kicked in the teeth, I shall not lift a finger”: Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 145. The quotation comes from the authors’ 1992 interview with M. S. Kapitsa, a Soviet official at the meeting with Stalin and Kim.

  The American military had quietly pulled out of China: Bajanov and Bajanova, “Korean Conflict,” 40–42.

  The defensive perimeter of the United States in the Pacific: See Weathersby, “Should We Fear This?,” 11; Stueck, Rethinking the Korean War, 73.

  As a result, an estimated thirty-six million Chinese died: See extensive account of the deaths under Mao in Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012).

  he made fun of the Soviet leader’s “mechanical thinking”: Author interview with Sidney Rittenberg, Sept. 10, 2013.

  “Had Mao died [in the 1950s]”: Philip Short, Mao: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 257), 629.

  “If the need arises, we can quietly send Chinese troops”: Quoted in Shen, Mao, Stalin, and the Korean War, 126.

  “a number-one pain in the butt”: Author interview with Rittenberg.

  Mao broke off the meeting with Kim: This scene
is drawn from ibid., 130; Weathersby, “Should We Fear This?,” 12–13; Alexander V. Pantsov, Mao: The Real Story, with Steven I. Levine (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), 379.

  “Comrade Mao Zedong would like to have personal explanations from Comrade Filippov”: Roshchin to Stalin, cable, May 13, 1950, cited in Bajanov and Bajanova, “Korean Conflict,” 51.

  “Instead of a local operation at Ongjin Peninsula”: Shtykov to Stalin, cable, June 21, 1950, cited in Bajanov and Bajanova, “Korean Conflict,” 59–60.

  Stalin cabled back the same day: Stalin’s cable to Shtykov, June 21, 1950, cited in Bajanov and Bajanova, 60.

  “This war,” Kim said on the radio, “is a war of righteousness”: Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, 1:397–98n32.

  Chapter 4: The Great Liberation Struggle

  Three days into the war, nearly 80 percent of the South’s army was unaccounted for: Jager, Brothers at War, 71.

  “Why heavens you’d see those fellows scuddle up to the Manchurian border”: Bruce Cumings, Origins of the Korean War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), 2:692, citing John Allison oral history, April 20, 1969; William Sebald oral history, July 1965, in John Foster Dulles oral history collection, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University.

  American soldiers believed officers: Ibid., 693.

  “We’ve got to stop the sons of bitches”: Robert J. Dvorchak, Battle for Korea: A History of the Korean Conflict (Boston: Da Capo, 2003), 9.

  After two weeks in Korea, about half of them were dead, wounded, or missing: Clay Blair, The Forgotten War (New York: Doubleday, 1987), 141.

  Stalin fretted when the Americans rushed into the war: See Weathersby, “Should We Fear This?,” 16.

  Stalin sent a cable in late August to Pyongyang: Stalin to Kim Il Sung (via Shtykov), cable, Aug. 28, 1950, cited in ibid., 17.

  It was undone, in large measure, by Kim’s impatience and incompetence as a war planner: Analysis of Kim’s war-planning failure is based on research by Joseph S. Bermudez, chief analytics officer at AllSource Analysis Inc. Using classified and open source information, Bermudez has studied North Korea for thirty years. Interviewed by author, Nov. 11, 2013.