Hello everyone!
I was under the impression that the North Koreans began the Korean war in 1950, but I'm reading through a Soviet letter that is saying the South Koreans were the initial aggressors. I can't get to a library today, so I've been relying on Google, but I'm not seeing anything to support this (although I haven't sorted through the millions of search results). I did find something about Syngman Rhee, and his threat to attack North Korea, but the site didn't go into too much detail. Was this a legitimate threat? Who was the initial aggressor? Was it a lame threat (a sort of flex of the muscle, without intention to swing, so to speak) or were the North Koreans genuinely preemptively striking? I'm made more curious, because of the fact that Kim Il-sung did go to Stalin and Zedong for a pseudo-approval some time before the invasion, which has me doubting the position of the Soviets.
The North Koreans invaded the South. It's unambiguous. However, the propaganda in North Korea is that the US attacked them. Everyone is taught this, and it's part of the whole almost religiously revered history that is taught in North Korea. The Soviet Union, as their ally, also taught the same version of events. In reality, what happened was that: in 1905, Japan invaded Korea and made it part of Japan. After Japan lost World War II, the US and the Soviet Union divided up Korea, to administer it and to re-establish it as a country. The Soviets administered the northern part of Korea, while the US administered the southern part. It was clear, though, that the US and the Soviet Union wouldn't be able to come to a compromise on the nature of the new nation. The Soviets, which had a small border with Korea, wanted it to be a Soviet satellite and ally, and the US wanted it to be a US ally. So tensions rose. But ultimately, it was North Korea, led by Kim Il-Sung, who invaded the south to attempt to push the US out of it. It was a suprise attack, so they rapidly gained ground and pushed US forces all the way down to the tip of the peninsula. But the US then gained ground and Harry Truman finagled things so that it was ostensibly a whole UN coalition of troops fighting against the North Koreans, who were backed by both the Soviets and the Chinese. Ultimately, the two sides ended up back about where the original division was, and they froze it there, though no peace treaty has been signed and hostilities are not officially ended and some troops are still there.