Teaching East Asia: Korea Teaching East Asia: Korea | Page 78

Source: T. R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness.
Equally important, Red China was ready and spoiling for war. The Chinese Communists, newly
come to power, were driven by that dynamic puritanism that accompanies all great revolutions.
Like the French in 1793 , they not only desired conflict with the “evil” surrounding them; they
needed it….there was both a sullen sense of grievance against the West and a passionate national
pride in China’s millions….The West has dismissed the painful humiliations repeatedly visited upon
the ancient Sinic culture in the past hundred years.
Document H
Document G
Source: Dae-sook Suh, Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader, 1998.
Kim Il Sung wanted to reunify his country, if and when the international political situation sur-
rounding the Korean peninsula was suitable for such an undertaking. Kim considered military
reunification to be the most efficient solution and he was not alone in this line of thinking. Many
Korean revolutionaries who returned from abroad thought that Korea should be reunified, and
Syngman Rhee in the South made his intention, “to march North,” known to the people of Korea….
From the time he was installed as head of the provisional People’s Committee on February 8, 1946,
to the outbreak of war in June 1950, Kim never advocated peaceful reunification of Korea. He
thought that the only way to achieve national reunification was by force of arms.
Document I
Source: John Mack Faragher, Mari Jo Buhle, Daniel Czitrom and Susan H. Armitage, Out of Many: A
History of the American People, 1997.
Some experienced diplomats, such as George Ken