"Mostly Propaganda in Nature:" Kim Il Sung, the Juche Ideology, and ...

"Mostly Propaganda in Nature:" Kim Il Sung, the Juche Ideology, and the Second Korean War
NKIDP Working Paper #3
propaganda tune." 60 Park himself, wrote Secretary of State Dean Rusk, had "become
increasingly obsessed with the desire to strike back across the DMZ." 61
Many on the Communist side also expected war, including the Polish Ambassador to
North Korea. "If the DPRK does not accede to U.S. demands to return the ship and crew," he
told a fellow Ambassador, "we might probably witness an armed conflict here." 62 Chinese
officials reported that the North Korean people were rallying for war, confident that the USSR
and China would back them with nuclear weapons if needed. 63 The Embassy of the German
Democratic Republic (GDR) agreed, adding that "the most significant element of the current
domestic situation in the DPRK is the creation, respectively fueling, of an all-out war psychosis
among the population…. Average citizens must arrive at the conclusion that war is imminent in
the very near future. Apparently there are discussions about his context in wide swaths of the
population." 64 Moscow desperately tried to keep Kim under control. The Soviet government,
noted a Hungarian official, believes that, "the further prolongation of the crisis would be
seriously dangerous…[and] strives to induce the DPRK to find a right time for handing over of
the Pueblo and its crew…so as to put an end to the crisis." 65 In mid-February, the Soviet
Ambassador to the DPRK quietly informed Kim that "we need a peaceful resolution and a
60
"Humiliating appeasement" in telegram 4015 from American Embassy Seoul to State Department, February 6,
1968, LBJL, NSC Histories, Pueblo Crisis, 1968, box 34-5, volume 16, telegrams from Seoul, tabs 1-5; "propaganda
tune" in New York Times, February 8, 1968, p. 15.
61
Telegram 120315 from Rusk to Porter, February 24, 1968, National Archives II, 1967-69 Central Files, Pol 33-6,
box 2255, 2/21/68 folder.
62
"Note on a Conversation with the Polish Ambassador, Comrade Naperei, on 26 January 1968, in the Polish
Embassy," GDR Embassy to DPRK, 27 January 1968, PolA AA, MfAA, G-A 360, p.1. [Document 8]
63
East German in "Memorandum on an Information of 1 February 1968," Embassy of the GDR in Pyongyang, 2
February 1968, MfAA C 1023/73; Chinese in "Excerpt from a Personal Letter of the Acting Ambassador of the
GDR in Pyongyang, Comrade Jarck," attachment to a letter from GDR Foreign Minister Hegen to GDR officials,
February 23, 1968, MfAA C1093/70.
64
Letter from GDR Embassy to DPRK, March 4, 1968, to State Secretary and First Deputy of the Minister of
Foreign Affairs, PolA AA, MfAA, G-A 360, p. 2. [Document 11]
65 "Report, Embassy of Hungary in the Soviet Union to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, 30 January 1968," MOL,
XIX-J-1-j Korea, 1968, 58. Doboz, 3, 00894/8/1968. [Document 9]
www.wilsoncenter.org/nkidp 22