ABSTRACT
Relations between North Korea and the USA got off to the worst possible start. In June 1950, less than two years after being officially founded, North Korea invaded South Korea. Within two weeks of the invasion, US and North Korean forces were engaged in the first of several battles that took place during the Korean War. The armistice of July 1953 put an end to direct military clashes between both countries.1 However, the armistice did not bring an official halt to the war. Today, North Korea and the US remain technically at war, since no peace agreement has ever been signed. The enmity engendered by the Korean War and the inconclusive end to the
conflict, together with the realities of the Cold War, had a negative effect on relations between Pyongyang and the USA during the subsequent two decades. Kim Il Sung had been a division commander for the Korean communists fighting Japan in North-East China during the Korean independence war (Samuel S. Kim 2006: 49). Hence, when he became the paramount leader of the newly proclaimed North Korea he was inclined to align with China and the Soviet Union in order to balance external threats. This close relationship was further strengthened during the Korean War. It was the intervention of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army (CPVA), sent by the Chinese government, which saved North Korea from defeat at the hands of US-led UN forces and the South Korean military (Hoare and Pares 1999: 93-4). Soviet support, while smaller, was also important for North Korea. The Soviet Union provided weapons for the Korean People’s Army (KPA) and the CPVA, trained the former, and also provided some air cover (Stueck 1995: 31). Given that Chinese and Soviet support was the main reason why North Korea
was not annihilated, once the war was over Pyongyang logically balanced the threat of a US-South Korean attack through alignment with Beijing and Moscow. North Korea signed mutual defence treaties with both countries in July 1961. Although the treaty with the Soviet Union could be abrogated unilaterally by one of the two parties, the treaty with China established that the express consent of both Beijing and Pyongyang would be required in order to terminate the treaty (ibid.: 144-6). This made Sino-North Korean
alignment legally binding. Furthermore, even though North Korea played the Sino-Soviet rivalry to obtain economic and military help from both, the Kim Il Sung government never took this game to the extent of being at risk of losing the military support of either. North Korea was therefore a member of the communist camp in the years following the Korean War, which made good relations with the USA impossible at the height of the Cold War.
