Telegram to T.F. Shtykov

Source: Tom 18

October 8, 1950

Pyongyang, Shtykov
for
Kim Il Sung

Top Secret.

Comrade Kim Il Sung!

My reply was delayed owing to consultations with the Chinese comrades, which required several days. On October 1, I sent Mao Zedong a request asking whether he could immediately dispatch to Korea at least five or six Chinese divisions under whose cover the Korean comrades could form reserves. Mao Zedong replied with a refusal, citing his unwillingness to draw the USSR into the war, the technical weakness of the Chinese army, and the fact that the war could provoke great discontent in China. I replied to him with the following letter:

"I considered it possible to approach you with the question of five or six Chinese volunteer divisions because I was well aware of a number of statements by leading Chinese comrades regarding their readiness to move several armies in support of the Korean comrades should the enemy cross the 38th parallel, and I attributed the readiness of the Chinese comrades to send troops to Korea to China's interest in preventing the danger of Korea being turned into a staging ground by the USA or a future militarist Japan against China.

In raising with you the question of sending troops to Korea -- and I regarded five or six divisions not as the maximum but as the minimum -- I proceeded from the following considerations of an international character:

1) The USA, as the Korean events have shown, is not ready at present for a major war;

2) Japan, whose militarist forces have not yet been restored, is in no position to render the Americans military assistance;

3) The USA will therefore be compelled to yield on the Korean question to China, behind which stands its ally the USSR, and will agree to such terms of settlement of the Korean question as would be favorable for Korea and would not give the enemy the opportunity to turn Korea into their staging ground;

4) For the same reasons, the USA will be compelled to abandon not only Taiwan but also to abandon a separate peace with the Japanese reactionaries, to abandon the restoration of Japanese imperialism, and to abandon the transformation of Japan into their staging ground in the Far East.

In this I proceeded from the premise that China cannot obtain these concessions as a result of passive waiting, that without a serious struggle and without a new and imposing demonstration of its strength, China will obtain not only none of these concessions but will not even obtain Taiwan, which the Americans hold in their hands as a staging ground -- not for Chiang Kai-shek, who has no chance of success, but for themselves or for tomorrow's militarist Japan.

Of course, I also took into account the possibility that, despite its unreadiness for a major war, the USA might nonetheless, out of considerations of prestige, become drawn into a major war, which would mean that China, too, would be drawn into the war, and along with it the USSR, which is bound to China by the Pact of Mutual Assistance. Should we be afraid of this? In my opinion, we should not, because together we will be stronger than the USA and Britain, while the other capitalist European states -- without Germany, which is unable at present to render the USA any assistance -- do not represent a serious military force. If war is inevitable, then let it come now, rather than in a few years, when Japanese militarism will have been restored as an ally of the USA and when the USA and Japan will have a ready-made staging ground on the continent in the form of Syngman Rhee's Korea.

Such are the considerations and perspectives of an international character from which I proceeded when requesting from you a minimum of five or six divisions."

In response to this, I received from Mao on October 7 a letter in which he expresses solidarity with the main points of my letter and states that he will send to Korea not six but nine divisions, that he will send them not immediately but after some time, and that he asks me to receive his representatives and discuss the matter with them in detail. I, of course, agreed to receive his representatives and to discuss with them a detailed plan of military assistance for Korea.

From the foregoing it is clear that you must hold firmly to every piece of your land, that you must intensify resistance to the American occupiers in Korea, and that you must prepare reserves, using for this purpose the military cadres of the Korean People's Army who are emerging from encirclement. It is also clear from this that you are entirely correct in proposing to transfer all Korean comrades studying in the USSR to aviation training.

I shall keep you informed of further negotiations with the Chinese comrades.

October 8, 1950

Fyn Si

I ask you, Comrade Shtykov, to read this letter to Kim Il Sung. He may copy it in your presence, but owing to the letter's extreme secrecy, you are not to hand it over to Kim Il Sung.

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Vestnik, 1996, No. 1, pp. 132-133.

AP RF. F. 45. Op. 1. D. 347. L. 65-67.