History of North Korea - Postwar

Postwar

See also: Korean DMZ Conflict (1966-1969)

The whole of the Korean peninsula lay in ruins when the armistice was signed at Pammunjon on July 27, 1953. Despite the failure of his attempt at unifying the nation under his rule, Kim Il-sung considered the war a victory in the sense that he remained in power. The armistice was celebrated in Pyongyang with a military parade in which Kim declared "Despite their best efforts, the imperialist invaders were defeated with great loss in men and material."

Reconstruction of the DPRK proceeded with Chinese and Soviet assistance, a task that took the next few years. Meanwhile, Kim began gradually consolidating his power. Up to this time, North Korean politics were represented by four factions: the Yan'an faction made up of returnees from China, the Soviet Koreans, native Korean communists, and Kim's own group, those who had fought guerrilla actions against Japan in the 1930s and 1940s.

Pak Hon-yong, party vice chairman and Foreign Minister of the DPRK, was blamed for the failure of the southern population to support North Korea during the war and was executed after a show-trial in 1955. Most of the South Korean leftists and communist sympathizers who defected to the North in 1945–1953 were also accused of espionage and other crimes and killed, imprisoned or exiled to remote agricultural and mining villages. Potential rivals from other groups such as Kim Tu-bong were also purged. Then in 1956, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev made a sweeping denunciation of Stalin, which sent shock waves throughout the communist world. North Korea, Albania, and China were among the loudest opponents of de-Stalinization. While Kim Il-sung was visiting Moscow that August, a group of his opponents tried to seize control of the government in Pyongyang. They denounced Kim as a tyrant who practiced arbitrary, one-man rule. When he hastily returned home, the brief attempt at political liberalization in North Korea was ended. Kim and his guerrilla faction had the advantage of appearing as national heroes due to their resistance against the Japanese and there was no question about their patriotism. By contrast, the Yan'an and Soviet Korean groups tended to appear as the representatives of other nations. A series of purges followed in 1956-1958, and by 1961 the last remaining opposition to Kim had disappeared.

Stalin continued to be honored in North Korea long after his death in 1953, and a street in Pyongyang bore his name until 1980. By contrast, neighboring Chinese leader Mao Zedong was mostly ignored and Kim Il-sung rejected most of his policies such as the Hundred Flowers Campaign and (later) the Cultural Revolution. However, the Great Leap Forward led to a Korean imitation in 1958-1960 known as the Chollima (Flying Horse) Campaign. Still, Kim himself remained the primary object of veneration in the DPRK. He had always had a personality cult from 1949 onward, and by the 1970s it would reach unprecedented dimensions.

The gradual rift between China and the USSR that developed in the early 1960s caused North Korea to pursue a delicate balancing act between the two communist giants. By 1963, this balance clearly tipped towards Beijing. North Korea joined the Chinese in criticizing Khrushchev for "revisionism" and for being too soft on the United States. Official proclamations stated that the DPRK and PRC were in "complete agreement" on all major issues. Racial, cultural, and historical ties also pulled North Korea closer to China. However, Kim Il-sung eventually decided that he was moving too far towards becoming a Chinese satellite. China was also comparatively un-industrialized and could not provide the technical and military assistance Pyongyang sought. Finally, the PRC exploded its first atomic bomb in October 1964 and subsequently refused to give North Korea any nuclear weapons of its own, apparently fearing that Kim was too likely to use them in his quest to reunify the peninsula. In 1965, the pro-Chinese stance of North Korea had noticeably diminished.

Meanwhile, the peninsula remained divided and relations with the ROK and the United States were bitterly hostile. But when the US became engaged in Vietnam around this time, Kim saw an opportunity. Inspired by the actions of the Vietcong, he began employing his own guerrilla squads to infiltrate South Korea, spread propaganda, and commit sabotage. North Korean agents came south in 1966-1969, creating disruption, but ultimately failing to win over the South Korean populace. Actions such as an attempted assassination of ROK president Park Chung-Hee in Seoul failed, and Kim publicly disclaimed any responsibility for them. North Korean fighter pilots were also sent to Hanoi's assistance (and conversely South Korea sent a contingent of troops to aid the government in Saigon).

Relations with China collapsed when that country became engulfed in the Cultural Revolution. North Korea refused to condemn the campaign, stating that it was Beijing's internal affair. However, when visiting Moscow in 1966, Kim expressed to the Soviets his bewilderment at the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guards then denounced Kim as a "millionaire, a revisionist, and a capitalist" who lived in splendor and luxury while American imperialists made war on Vietnam (all the while ignoring Pyongyang's secret assistance to the DRV). In the end, North Korea could not condemn a neighbor that was easily capable of putting a million troops on its border poised to invade, and had no choice but to lie low until the Cultural Revolution ended. There were isolated clashes with Chinese troops along the border in 1968, and Red Guards erected loudspeakers on the border facing North Korea where they denounced Kim Il-sung and read quotations from Mao's Little Red Book. North Korean troops responded by erecting their own loudspeakers towards the Chinese border and airing quotations from their leader's writings. But by 1970, the storm clouds of the Cultural Revolution had blown away and relations with China returned to normal. Chinese premier Zhou Enlai visited Pyongyang that year and apologized for the attacks made on Kim by the Red Guards. At the same time, the Soviets were again criticized by both Chinese and North Korean officials for being too soft on the United States.

The year of 1968 was mainly dominated by the capture of the USS Pueblo, a reconnaissance ship captured in the Sea of Japan that January. The crew were held captive throughout the year despite American protests that the vessel was in international waters and finally released in December after a formal US apology was issued. North Korea went in for a repeat performance in April 1969 by shooting down an EC-121 aircraft, killing everyone on board. The Nixon administration found itself unable to react at all, since the US was heavily committed in Vietnam and had no troops to spare if the situation in Korea escalated. However, the Pueblo capture and EC-121 shootdown did not find approval in Moscow, as the Soviet Union did not want a second major war to erupt in Asia. China's response to the USS Pueblo crisis is less clear.

In 1972, the first formal summit meeting between Pyongyang and Seoul was held, but cautious talks did not lead much of anywhere and relations between the two Koreas continued down the path of hostility.

With the fall of South Vietnam, Kim Il-sung began to feel that the US had shown its weakness and that reunification of Korea under his regime was finally possible. Kim visited Beijing in May 1975 in the hope of gaining political and military support for this plan to invade South Korea again, but Mao Zedong refused, saying that China would be unable to assist North Korea this time because of the lingering after-effects of the Cultural Revolution throughout China, and because Mao had recently decided to restore diplomatic relations with the US. Kim therefore went home empty-handed.

Relations with China remained on an even course after Mao's death on September 9, 1976. China's new leaders, Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping, both visited North Korea in 1978, although they failed to reach a common understanding on relations with the Soviet Union (Beijing was not on friendly terms with Moscow during the 1970s, while Pyongyang continued its usual balancing act).