"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
second half of the decade saw a steady increase in visiting delegations from each country, a
growing trade relationship, and better overt relations between the leaders.
Still, new materials from the Communist bloc archives suggest that the deeply rooted
hostility and suspicions never dissipated. When Soviet Premier Alexsey Kosygin met with Kim
during a visit to the DPRK in early 1965, as the first overt step towards re-establishing ties,
tensions were obvious. 125 Kosygin criticized the DPRK for its verbal attacks on Soviet policy in
the recent past. "You accused us of making a deal with imperialism," he charged. Kim defended
himself, faulting the previous Soviet leadership for inadequate defense of the international
socialist bloc. "We actually thought at that time," he told Kosygin, "that Khrushchev would sell
the GDR to West Germany." Subsequent years saw little real improvement. In 1966, Soviet
officials grumbled to Hungarian representatives about the DPRK insistence that its policies were
the only correct path towards socialism; about its rigidity regarding other communist states
having any interactions with Seoul; and about its excessive spending on defense. 126 The
following year, Soviet officials bemoaned the lack of DPRK public support for their foreign
policies. 127 They also complained that Kim seemed more concerned about impressing Third
World officials than about his relations with the USSR, noting that he was writing articles that
highlighted the DPRK's differences with the Soviets for the Cuban party journal, while rejecting
invitations to write for Pravda. 128 Perhaps most striking was the extent to which Soviet officials
resented Kim's refusal to provide them with information related to their policymaking. The
Hungarian Ambassador to the DPRK reported on the unhappiness of the Soviet Ambassador,
125
Memo from the Hungarian Embassy in Pyongyang, February 19, 1965, Hungarian National Archives, in North
Korean International Documentation Project (NKIDP) electronic archives, at
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/ index.cfm?fuseaction=topics.home&topic_id=230972.
126
See, for, example, "Report, Embassy of Hungary in the Soviet Union to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, 25
November 1967," in Person (ed.) North Korea International Documentation Project Document Reader #2,
document 18. [Document 4]
127
ibid
128
ibid
www.wilsoncenter.org/nkidp 38