China’s perception of the U.S. role in both places as well as South Korea’s sensitivity to any commitments of the U.S. alliance network to defend Taiwan in event of an attack by the PRC.9 Fears of a “two-front” conflict may temper South Korea’s criticism of China’s destabilizing actions in the Taiwan Strait.10
Yet Kim Il Sung kept Beijing out of the loop regarding Pyongyang’s planning and early conduct of the war; only after the UN Command’s counteroffensive routed the KPA and began advancing north of the 38th parallel did Kim Il Sung request China’s intervention in the conflict. The threat of U.S. troops approaching the Yalu also helped Mao to win the support of other CCP leaders in launching what they would call the “War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea.”
Beijing’s intervention saved Kim Il Sung’s regime from extinction, but the Chinese and North Korean leadership clashed repeatedly over the conduct of the war. Peng Dehuai, the commander of what China called its “People’s Volunteer Army,” quickly assumed control over military operations and North Korea’s railways, and privately dismissed the DPRK’s “extremely childish” military command.11 Kim Il Sung would later blame Peng’s hesitancy to rapidly move south of the 38th parallel as United Nations (UN) forces were retreating from the Chinese advance as a lost opportunity for military victory and unification.12
China, through its People’s Volunteer Army, was a party to the prolonged Armistice negotiations that eventually ended fighting in the Korean War, along with the DPRK and the United Nations Command. After the Armistice Agreement was signed in 1953, China retained a large troop presence in North Korea, which would remain until 1958. Along with the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc satellites, China also provided massive amounts of aid for the postwar reconstruction of North Korea, with its “People’s Volunteers” serving as a major source of free labor.13
Yet in the years after the Armistice was signed, North Korea’s internal propaganda would minimize the significance of China’s contribution to the war, despite the central role of the People’s Volunteer Army in turning the tide of the conflict and the massive casualties it suffered (including the death of Mao Zedong’s eldest son). Soviet diplomats in Pyongyang noted as early as 1955 that “the Korean comrades underrate the role and importance of Chinese aid to Korea and, in particular, downplay the role of the Chinese volunteers in the fight against the American intervention.”14 As the North Korean state began constructing a mythologized narrative of its history centered on the exploits and iconography of Kim Il Sung, the foreign contributions to its origins could not remain at the center of the story.